Archaeologists discover historical link between inequality and sustainability
- A team published findings on wealth disparity across six continents over 10,000 years, released April 14 in PNAS.
- Traditional views expect inequality to increase with larger societies and the advent of farming practices.
- Researchers analyzed house sizes from 1,000 sites, using a Gini coefficient to compare inequality across time and space.
- The dataset included 50,000 homes; Feinman called it "an unprecedented data set in archaeology."
- The study suggests that inequality is not inevitable; human choices and governance can minimize economic injustice.
10 Articles
10 Articles
Inequality isn’t inevitable, according to ‘unprecedented’ archeology study
A team at Chicago’s Field Museum has published a first-of-its-kind study analyzing 10,000 years’ worth of wealth disparity across six continents. The results, published on April 14 in the journal PNAS, contradict many longstanding assumptions about inequality’s inevitability and how societies organize over time. America’s wealth disparity is arguably wider than it has ever been in modern history. But such economic injustice—even when not as star…
The study of more than 1,000 sites indicates that inequality emerged long after agriculture
He must have been the philosopher and one of the parents of the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), one of the first to relate, in his Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men, the appearance of differences of wealth (moral or material) with the advance of complex societies. Later, in the early works that documented the Neolithic Revolution, social scientists established a direct connection between the abando…
Archaeologists measure and compare size of 50,000 ancient houses to learn about history of inequality
In a study published in the journal PNAS, researchers compared house size distributions from more than 1,000 sites around the world, covering the last 10,000 years. They found that while inequality is widespread throughout human history, it's not inevitable, nor is it expressed to the same degree at every place and time.
Archaeologists Examined Ancient Houses To Learn About History Of Inequality - Ancient Pages
Jan Bartek - AncientPages.com - Archaeologists have conducted a comprehensive study to understand the history of inequality by analyzing house size distributions from over 1,000 sites globally, spanning the past 10,000 years. Their findings reveal that although inequality has been a common feature throughout human history, it is neither unavoidable nor uniformly expressed across different […]
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