Archaeologists Discover Wealth Gaps Started Over 10,000 Years Ago, So The Divide Between The Rich And Poor Is Nothing New
Today, the gap between the rich and poor only seems to grow wider each year. But economic inequality isn’t just a modern problem—it actually began over 10,000 years ago.
A new archaeological study has revealed that high wealth inequality was driven by farming practices that used up a lot of land.
In places where land became scarce, wealth inequality among households grew. On the other hand, wealth was more evenly distributed in areas with lots of land.
A team of researchers from around the world worked together to analyze about 47,000 houses from over 1,700 archaeological settlements.
“Past societies are often presumed to be egalitarian, but our research shows that high wealth inequality could become entrenched where ecological and political conditions permitted,” said Amy Bogaard, a professor of European archaeology at the University of Oxford.
“The emergence of high wealth inequality wasn’t an inevitable result of farming. It also wasn’t a simple function of either environmental or institutional conditions. It emerged where land became a scarce resource that could be monopolized. At the same time, our study reveals how some societies avoided the extremes of inequality through their governance practices.”
Land use and farming practices had implications for wealth distribution, which could be seen in the size of houses and storage space within settlements.
The research team found that in regions with land-intensive farming systems, high wealth inequality became persistent.
The land was controlled by a small number of households. In regions without traction animals for plowing, land became highly valued through irrigation, drainage, or terracing.
High wealth inequality also emerged in diverse world regions. Local population growth puts land under pressure but also makes it more valuable. Over time, larger settlements developed and were sustained through land-intensive farming systems.
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High wealth inequality was often a consequence of expanding societies that did not have political systems in place to deal with land fairly.
There have been some examples of ancient societies practicing land-intensive farming that avoided extreme inequality through governance, such as Teotihuacan in Mexico and Mohenjo-daro in the Indus River Basin.
This demonstrates that wealth inequality has been a problem for a long time, but that governance and changes in farming practices could curb it. Overall, the findings could help us address inequality today.
“High wealth inequality has been a challenge for thousands of years,” said Bogaard. “Understanding how wealth inequality has changed over the very long term enables us to understand the role of land-use systems that prompted competition.”
“The past offers us lessons to navigate these pressing issues today. The good news is that societies can and have resisted the extremes of high inequality through governance.”
The details of the new study were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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