May 03, 2025 18:00:00

A study on house size shows that social inequality is not inherent to civilization, but is merely the result of political choices

There is concern about the widening

gap between rich and poor in modern times, but some people may have given up, thinking that inequality is inevitable as long as society exists. However, a study of more than 1,000 settlements around the world that existed over the past 10,000 years suggests that social inequality is not necessarily an inherent part of civilization.

Assessing grand narratives of economic inequality across time | PNAS
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2400698121

Did every civilization have inequality? New 10,000-year study reveals a surprising answer. | Live Science
https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/inequality-isnt-new-but-its-far-from-inevitable-10-000-year-archeological-study-reveals

It has long been argued that human societies are attracted to inequality and that they naturally become unequal. Indeed, traces of social inequality from past civilizations can be found all over the world, from the opulent tombs of Egyptian pharaohs to forgotten treasure troves and ritual child sacrifice .

There is also a theory that says, 'Hunter-gatherer societies have less social inequality than agricultural societies.' Although the introduction of agriculture and livestock has indeed tended to intensify wealth inequality, it seems that significant wealth inequality can also occur among hunter-gatherer societies.

To examine inequality over time in societies, an international team of archaeological researchers, as part of the Global Dynamics of Inequality (GINI) project , calculated the Gini coefficient for a number of historical societies using a simple measure of house size recorded across a range of archaeological datasets.

The Gini coefficient is often used to indicate the wealth gap between social classes, and is expressed as a number between '0' and '1.' '0' is a completely equal world where everyone has the same amount of wealth, and '1' is a completely unequal world where one individual owns everything. According to the World Bank , the Gini coefficient for the United States is '0.41,' for Norway it is '0.28,' and for Japan it is '0.33.'

The study looked at about 50,000 houses in 1,000 settlements built between the end of the Pleistocene epoch, about 12,000 years ago, and the 15th century in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Using the variability in house size in these settlements as a rough proxy for wealth, the archaeologists calculated the Gini coefficient for each society. They then carried out statistical analyses to compare the Gini coefficient with each society's political complexity.

As a result of their analysis, the team concluded that 'historical inequality does not occur in the same way everywhere, nor does it naturally increase with population growth and political complexity.' Rather than being natural, social inequality was a result of 'society's choices about how to distribute wealth.'

Many societies also tended to adopt tax systems and laws that redistributed wealth or prevented it from becoming too concentrated. For example, in ancient Athens, wealthy individuals were expected to fund public works and certain festivals. Many societies also redistributed the wealth of the dead or cancelled the debts of the deceased.

Gary Fineman , a co-author of the study and curator at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, said the findings were not surprising to him, but he was pleased to be able to document trends across many communities and societies over time and hopes that ideologies like 'inequality is inevitable' and 'inequality is natural' won't emerge in the future.