The Human Fabric of Inequality: How We Wove Hierarchy Into Society’s Core

The forgotten choices that built our world of divide

In the heart of New Orleans, a city known for its vibrant culture and stark contrasts, Orleans Parish stands as a testament to modern inequality. Here, amidst the bustling tourism industry and corporate headquarters, one in six workers earns their living in the low-wage leisure sector while households with incomes below $10,000 per year exist alongside extreme wealth. The Gini index—a measure of income inequality—reaches 0.56, one of the highest in the United States .

This pattern isn’t unique to New Orleans. Across the United States, 41% of counties now experience both high poverty and high inequality—a significant increase from just 29% in 1989 . Similar stories play out globally, where the poorest 40% of the population saw their incomes growing faster than the national average in most countries before COVID-19 potentially reversed this trend .

How did we get here? For centuries, we’ve been told that social hierarchy is the price of civilization—that without the constraints of government and social structure, human life would be, as Thomas Hobbes famously claimed, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” . But what if this story—the very foundation of our social contract—is built on a myth? What if inequality isn’t the inevitable cost of peace and stability, but rather a human construction that serves specific interests?

Notion that inequality is the inevitable price of civilization. It shows that for millennia people farmed, built towns, and created elaborate cultures without locking in permanent hierarchies. Inequality as we know it today – rigid class structures, state violence, institutional patriarchy – was not a foregone conclusion of human “progress” but rather one path among many, solidified relatively late. In fact, the authors suggest that if anything, our distant ancestors enjoyed greater freedoms than we do now in key respects. Early societies, even when they had wealth differences, often maintained what the authors call an “equality of social participation” – everyone had a voice in community decisions and a say in shaping social rules . People also had what Graeber and Wengrow describe as three fundamental freedoms that have since been curtailed :

1. The freedom to move – the ability to freely leave one’s community and join another, or just wander off to start a new group elsewhere.
2. The freedom to disobey – no individual held absolute authority, so people could refuse orders or customs they didn’t accept without facing state violence .
3. The freedom to create or transform social arrangements – the option to form a new way of living together, to “shape entirely new social realities, or shift back and forth between different ones” .

These freedoms made early human societies remarkably dynamic. One moment in prehistory, a region might see the rise of a small “chiefdom” or kingdom; a generation later, that hierarchy might be dismantled or abandoned by choice. As Graeber and Wengrow put it, our distant forebears were not helpless puppets of material forces or evolutionary stages – they were “masters of their own trajectory” . This perspective fundamentally challenges the conventional view that complex societies must inevitably sacrifice equality or that history unfolds in fixed stages from “savages” to “civilized”. The book “The Dawn Of Everything” even highlights cases like the ancient city of Teotihuacan in Mexico, which may have started with kings and nobles but later reorganized itself to provide high-quality housing for ordinary people and left little evidence of rulers – essentially a city that reversed course toward egalitarianism . Such examples defy the usual evolutionary script and suggest that progress is not a one-way street; societies can and do change direction.

The Myth of the Savage Ancient: What Anthropology Actually Reveals

The philosophical concept of the “state of nature” has long been used to justify social hierarchy. Thomas Hobbes’ depiction of perpetual war among humans in their natural state provided the rationale for strong central authority . This narrative gained power through what we might call the myth of inevitability—the idea that hierarchy is the necessary alternative to chaos.

What Archaeological Evidence Tells Us

Recent archaeological discoveries challenge these assumptions. In 2020, excavations at Cloggs Cave in southeastern Australia uncovered something extraordinary: 11,000 and 12,000-year-old miniature fireplaces with carefully trimmed wooden artefacts made of Casuarina wood smeared with animal or human fat .

These artefacts weren’t merely functional objects. They matched nineteenth-century ethnographic descriptions of GunaiKurnai ritual installations used by Aboriginal medicine people in secluded spaces for spiritual practices . The discovery revealed something profound: rather than being solely focused on survival, these ancient peoples maintained complex spiritual traditions that required knowledge transmission across approximately 500 generations .

This finding contradicts the notion that pre-state societies were constantly struggling against chaos. Instead, it suggests they maintained stable cultural systems with sophisticated practices that persisted for millennia.

Anthropological Debates: Hawks vs. Doves

Anthropologists have long debated the nature of pre-state societies. The “Hobbesians” or “hawks” argue that non-state societies experienced extremely high rates of violent death, while “Rousseauians” or “doves” maintain that war and violence increased with the emergence of states .

The archaeological evidence from Cloggs Cave adds nuance to this debate. It suggests that rather than being constantly violent or perpetually peaceful, these societies developed complex cultural systems that addressed human needs beyond mere survival .

The Great Transition: How Hierarchy Became Embedded

If the state of nature wasn’t the war of all against all, how did hierarchy become so dominant? The evidence suggests that inequality emerged not as a solution to chaos, but through specific historical transitions.

The Agricultural Revolution and Its Consequences

The shift from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural civilizations created the conditions for institutionalized inequality. As the European Anti-Poverty Network notes, poverty is primarily “the consequence of the way society is organized and resources are allocated” . With agriculture came:

· Surplus production: Allowing accumulation of resources

· Property rights: Creating concepts of ownership and exclusion

· Specialized labor: Enabling social stratification

· Population density: Requiring new forms of organization

This transition didn’t immediately create extreme inequality, but it established the possibility of wealth accumulation and intergenerational transfer that would eventually lead to the disparities we see today.

The Role of Narrative in Maintaining Hierarchy

Once hierarchical structures began emerging, they required justification. This is where the myth of inevitable hierarchy proved crucial. By claiming that hierarchy was necessary to prevent chaos, emerging elites could legitimize their privilege.

As the discussion of Hobbes in the anthropological notes observes: “Hobbes provides a rationale for imperialism. If you buy Hobbes’s story about how bad life is without the state, then you can see a rationale for colonization: it gets the natives out of the brutal war of all against all” .

This narrative framework wasn’t merely descriptive—it was politically useful. It provided moral justification for imposing European governance structures on indigenous peoples worldwide, despite the fact that many of these societies had functioned without such hierarchies for millennia.

The Modern Landscape of Inequality: Deliberate Choices, Not Natural Laws

Today’s inequality isn’t the inevitable result of human nature or natural forces. It is the cumulative result of countless policy decisions, economic arrangements, and power structures that advantage some at the expense of others.

The Structural Nature of Modern Poverty

Research identifies several key factors that make individuals vulnerable to poverty:

· Unemployment or poor-quality jobs: Limiting access to decent income

· Low education and skills: Restricting access to better opportunities

· Family structure: Large families and lone parents face higher risks

· Discrimination: Based on gender, disability, ethnicity, or migration status 

These factors don’t operate in isolation. They function within larger systems that determine how resources are allocated. As the European Anti-Poverty Network emphasizes: “The decisions over how to eradicate poverty in the end are political choices about the kind of society we want” .

The Inequality-Poverty Nexus

Recent research confirms that inequality itself drives poverty. The Economic Policy Institute reports that “the main cause of persistent poverty now is high inequality of market income” . Their analysis shows that had income growth been equally distributed since 1979, the poverty rate would have been 5.5 percentage points lower—essentially 44% lower than it actually was .

This finding turns conventional wisdom on its head. Poverty isn’t primarily caused by individual failings or lack of effort—it’s created by systemic imbalances in how wealth is distributed.

Beyond Inevitability: Reimagining Our Social Contract

If inequality isn’t natural or inevitable, we’re faced with a powerful possibility: we can choose to organize society differently.

Learning from Anthropological Diversity

The archaeological evidence from Cloggs Cave joins a growing body of research suggesting that human societies have always been diverse in their organization. Some were violent, others peaceful; some hierarchical, others egalitarian. This diversity itself is instructive—it suggests that human social possibilities are broader than we typically imagine.

As Rousseau argued against Hobbes, humans weren’t naturally cruel or violent but were shaped by their social conditions . This perspective doesn’t require romanticizing pre-state societies—only recognizing that they demonstrate alternative ways of being human.

Policy Choices That Matter

The research is clear: countries that prioritize adequate minimum incomes, access to services, social protection, and decent jobs—especially for young people, migrants, and refugees—have lower inequality and poverty . These aren’t radical or impossible interventions—they’re political choices.

Specific effective policies include:

· Progressive taxation: Redistributing wealth more fairly

· Strong social protection: Ensuring basic security for all

· Investment in education: Especially for marginalized communities

· Combating discrimination: Addressing structural barriers

· Fair wages: Ensuring work provides a decent living 

The Power of Narrative Change

Perhaps most fundamentally, we need to challenge the story that hierarchy is inevitable for peace and stability. The evidence suggests that extreme inequality doesn’t promote stability—it threatens it. As the United Nations notes, inequality “threatens long-term social and economic development, harms poverty reduction and destroys people’s sense of fulfillment and self-worth” .

We might instead draw on different philosophical traditions. Like Mozi, the early Chinese philosopher who argued for adopting a single moral standard (fa, 法) that would allow for cooperation and joint efforts . Or Indigenous traditions like those preserved at Cloggs Cave, which suggest humans have long sought meaning and connection beyond mere material accumulation.

A Path Forward: Reweaving the Social Fabric

The wooden artefacts found in Cloggs Cave—carefully crafted and preserved for 12,000 years—offer a powerful metaphor. They remind us that human culture is both fragile and enduring, that practices and values can be transmitted across millions of lives and thousands of years, but they can also be forgotten or suppressed.

Inequality persists not because it is natural or inevitable, but because we continue to recreate it through daily choices, institutional arrangements, and—perhaps most importantly—the stories we tell ourselves about human nature and social possibility.

The real state of nature isn’t a war of all against all—it’s the human capacity for both competition and cooperation, for both hierarchy and equality. Which tendencies we encourage depends on the social structures we build and the narratives we embrace.

As we face growing global challenges—from climate change to pandemics—the question of how we organize our societies becomes increasingly urgent. The evidence suggests that more equal societies aren’t just fairer—they’re more resilient. By letting go of the myth that hierarchy is the price of peace, we might just discover more creative and equitable ways to live together on this changing planet.

The choice isn’t between hierarchy and chaos. The true choice is between social arrangements that benefit the few and those that allow all of us to flourish. And that choice begins with changing the stories we tell about who we are and what we can be.

Here is a list of the sources provided in the search results, formatted with their titles, URLs, and a brief summary of their content relevant to the topic of inequality and the state of nature:

The Dawn of Everything by “David Graeber and David Wengrow

“THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING” by David Graeber and David Wngrow
A New History of Humanity

Most of human history is irreparably lost to us. Our species, Homo sapiens, has existed for at least 200,000 years, but for most of that time we have next to no idea what was happening.

1. Title: The Deep History of Human – Economics from the Top… Inequality
2. Summary: Explores the evolutionary history of human inequality, challenging Rousseau’s idea of a harmonious “state of nature” by arguing that ancient ancestors may have had significant inequality, particularly in mating practices, based on biological evidence like sexual dimorphism.
3. Title: Anthropologists on the state of nature
4. Summary: Discusses anthropological debates between Hobbesians (who argue non-state societies were violent) and Rousseauians (who argue violence increased with states), touching on imperialism’s justification through Hobbes’ theory.
5. Title: The Archaeology of Inequality
6. Summary: Uses archaeological evidence (e.g., burial goods, house sizes, health indicators) to trace inequality in ancient societies, showing how it evolved with agriculture, metal use, and population growth, and compares Gini coefficients across civilizations.
7. Title: Rethinking Inequality : What 10,000 Years of House Sizes Reveal…
8. Summary: Presents a study analyzing house sizes over 10,000 years to argue that inequality is not inevitable but a result of human choices and governance structures, with some societies maintaining low inequality through cooperative systems.
9. Title: State of nature
10. Summary: Explores philosophical concepts of the “state of nature” from thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Mozi, discussing whether humans are naturally peaceful or violent and how this justifies political societies.
11. Title: Archaeological Evidence: Inequality in Human Settlements …
12. Summary: Summarizes archaeological findings that inequality dates back over 10,000 years, often correlating with longer-lasting settlements, but emphasizes that inequality is not inevitable for sustainability.
13. Title: Iron law of oligarchy
14. Summary: Describes Michels’ theory that oligarchy is inevitable in complex organizations, with elites dominating power structures, though exceptions and critiques are noted.
15. Title: The History of Inequality | ReVista – Harvard University
16. Summary: Focuses on Latin America’s inequality, tracing it to colonial and post-independence periods, and discusses how factors like land distribution, labor systems, and elite power shaped enduring disparities.
17. Title: How the dimensions of human affect who and what we are inequality
18. Summary: Proposes a framework for understanding human inequality through vital (health/lifespan), existential (dignity/recognition), and resource (wealth/power) dimensions, emphasizing how social constructs like racism perpetuate disadvantage.

These sources collectively provide insights into the historical, philosophical, anthropological, and archaeological perspectives on inequality and the “state of nature.”