Here’s an article by anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow shedding light (archaeological evidences and studies left out from the mainstream) on some notions widely held in the social sciences and the popular metasphere regarding the emergence of hierarchical structures in “complex” hunter-gatherers societies. They challenge the contemporary idea that to form an egalitarian society means to take a retrograde step, one that would involve dismantling/giving up the plethora of complexes we have built as a civilization. After all, what do the hippies know about sophistication.
Here’s a (brilliant) talk they gave three years prior to writing that article. Their research has culminated in an upcoming book: The Dawn of Everything.
Also, a graph by Jason Hickel (an economic anthropologist at LSE) based on data from the World Bank:
