Your perspective fits within an equity/efficiency debate. It's a big debate that would deserve many posts! In the case of the rise of hierarchy/power, I actually think this is not the key pressure. The kind of prestige reward you describe existed in hunter‐gatherer societies and does not need to lead to hierarc…
Your perspective fits within an equity/efficiency debate. It's a big debate that would deserve many posts! In the case of the rise of hierarchy/power, I actually think this is not the key pressure. The kind of prestige reward you describe existed in hunter‐gatherer societies and does not need to lead to hierarchical organisation. As I'll discuss in the next post, higher levels of hierarchy are needed to coordinate collective work: building a fence around the village, waging a war campaign, organising irrigation, and so on. In line with your comment, communities that were able to organise hierarchically were bound to be collectively more effective and, therefore, their institutions were likely to spread to other communities either by war, economic domination, or through imitation.
Thanks for the comment, Ax.
Your perspective fits within an equity/efficiency debate. It's a big debate that would deserve many posts! In the case of the rise of hierarchy/power, I actually think this is not the key pressure. The kind of prestige reward you describe existed in hunter‐gatherer societies and does not need to lead to hierarchical organisation. As I'll discuss in the next post, higher levels of hierarchy are needed to coordinate collective work: building a fence around the village, waging a war campaign, organising irrigation, and so on. In line with your comment, communities that were able to organise hierarchically were bound to be collectively more effective and, therefore, their institutions were likely to spread to other communities either by war, economic domination, or through imitation.