Technology, education, wealth: what distinguishes an advanced society from an archaic one?

Because the invention of agriculture is not only a technical issue, but also a social one: it implies the need to live closer, to share risk, to organise work and to protect the harvest...

That is, it implies the existence of large human groups. The benefits are enormous but the costs are not. It is far from a foregone conclusion. In fact, the growth in size of agricultural groups stems from very real pressures. Allen Johnson and Timothy Earle explain this well in their The Evolution of Human Societies. From Foraging Group to Agrarian State (Stanford University Press, 2000).

"The intensification of the subsistence economy," the two anthropologists write, "itself an outcome of population growth and technological innovation, creates specific problems that are best solved by working in larger groups" (p. 198). The domestication of plants that marked the beginning of the so-called 'Neolithic revolution' not only changed the way food was produced, but triggered an increase in population density on a global scale. More people, more mouths to feed, more land to defend.

There are two main benefits of living in larger farming villages: food sharing and defence. More people means more strength to repel attacks, more arms to cultivate and harvest.

But also the need for more rules to be enforced. Interdependence grows, and with it the need to build stable alliances. "Since those who share defence also tend to share food, and since commensality is among the most powerful ways to build alliances, it is not easy to separate and measure the relative importance of defence and sharing in determining the increase in group size" (p. 198). One reinforces the other. More security means more sharing; more sharing, more cohesion; more cohesion, more capacity for defence. It is a virtuous cycle, but not without costs.

Putting down roots, both concretely and metaphorically, also means giving something up. "Moving to an agricultural village also entails costs," the authors warn. "A concentrated population requires families to live further away from their fields, and all resources (game, wood, building materials, etc.) are depleted more quickly, requiring longer journeys to obtain them" (Ibid.).

The risk of internal conflicts also increases, because living in confined spaces increases the risk of disease transmission, the likelihood of theft and suspiciousness of other people's sexual relationships. In other words, the larger the size of the groups, the more difficult it is to live together. Quantitative growth requires a qualitative leap. A new grammar of living together is needed.

New forms of coordination, of defence, of distribution are needed. And thus was born something radically new in human history: 'chiefdom', centralised power.

"In simple terms, a chiefdom is a stratified society based on unequal access to the means of production" (p. 361).

The availability of surplus food, made possible by agriculture, has powerful but ambivalent effects. On the one hand, it fuels development; on the other, it creates the conditions for accumulation and inequality.

Surplus is not only abundance, but also an object of contention. The hierarchy is formed. Here come the 'bosses'. "The control exercised by a chief," the two scholars write, "translates into the ability to manipulate the economy in such a way as to derive a surplus that can be invested. He is given the power to control or monopolise economic management under certain specific conditions, arising from the same factors that we have identified as responsible for the need for individual households to regroup: risk management, technology, war and trade. With increasing population, there comes a time when the local group or intergroup collectivity can no longer be trusted to manage matters vital to survival." (p. 361).

In societies based on small groups, risk management and redistribution occur informally, among peers. But as the population grows, and environmental pressures become more intense, this system collapses.

At a certain point, the informal rules of the group can no longer be relied upon in handling vital issues. It is here that leadership becomes institutionalised. Leaders are no longer just charismatic 'big men', but hereditary figures with privileged access to resources and the ability to wield coercive power.

Politics is born, bureaucracy is born, the first hierarchical structures are born. The accumulation of surplus fuels the emergence of a redistributive economy. It is not the market, nor is it spontaneous barter: it is a centralised system in which goods are collected by an authority and then redistributed according to political and religious logic.

"Families have to surrender a share of their harvest (...) to maintain rights to use subsistence plots and other resources. This surplus, which often represents a quarter or a third of all family production, is taken from each family to finance the institutions of the new society' (p. 347). This extraction of wealth creates a new social order. "This ownership manifests itself through a constructed landscape of power, including monuments, warehouses, roads and barriers. Collective identity is solemnly expressed in group ceremonies, linking people to land and other resources, under the sacred leadership of the ruling elite' (p. 349).

But why do people agree to surrender part of their production to an elite? The answer, according to Johnson and Earle, lies in the dual role of leadership: control and service.

The services provided by leaders to local groups include the management of large-scale subsistence activities, long-distance trade, storage of food and goods, and the maintenance of alliances through credit and debt relationships. In other words: in exchange for taxation, the chief offers protection, security, stability. It is a primitive, but already recognisable, form of social contract.

As economic life intensifies, so does the need for coordination. It is a crucial transition. From instruments of service, institutions turn into mechanisms of dependency.

It is no longer enough to cooperate, now one must obey. As Johnson and Earle observe, "Covenant violators (the 'free-riders') must be punished. Only through the political development of institutions and rules to control violators can larger communities of small family groups be maintained in a competitive environment' (p. 49).

It is the moment when vengeance gives way to law. Punishment must become impersonal. It is the moment when institutions are born. They are not artificial superstructures, but evolutionary solutions. They respond to concrete pressures: risk management, internal conflicts, redistribution of resources.

"The political economy is directed towards the mobilisation of a surplus [...] used to finance social, political and religious institutions" (p. 265). In the absence of a recognised authority, every conflict risks degenerating. Instead, with the institution, common codes, shared sanctions, standard modes of resolution are established. The great discovery of that time is that charismatic leadership is no longer enough. Institutionalised control is needed. "A leader has sufficient institutionalised control over the political and economic organisations of his society that he can reserve leadership for an elite segment" (p. 266). This does not necessarily mean justice, but certainly order. Institutions are created to regulate and discipline behaviour, not to guarantee absolute fairness. However, their presence makes interactions predictable, reduces ambiguity and strengthens cooperation.

Historian Norman Yoffee analyses this pivotal moment in his Myths of the Archaic State (Cambridge University Press, 2004) in which he argues for the interdependence of the three main manifestations of power.

On the one hand, there was the economic power held by elites who began to assert themselves through their control of resources. It was not just about accumulating wealth, but about creating dependency. If you wanted to eat, you had to join the network of those who distributed food. Then there is social power. These early large groups were anything but homogenous.

There were ethnic differences, there were castes, guilds of craftsmen, priests, merchants, peasants. Each with its own rules, its own rituals, its own spaces. Power was also at stake in the ability to hold these differences together, or to set them in competition with each other. Finally, political power. The chiefs did not rule alone.

They needed administrators, soldiers, scribes. But above all, they needed an ideology: a narrative that legitimised their role, that explained why they had to rule. And this is where temples, monuments, public ceremonies come in. The economy also served this purpose: to finance the staging of power.

These three manifestations of such power were not separate, but fed off each other. Long-distance trade, for instance, was not only an economic affair: it was also a way of forging alliances, displaying prestige, and strengthening control over distant territories. Temples were not only places of worship, but also centres of storage and redistribution. Religious ceremonies served to legitimise the social order, but also to display the wealth of those in power.

Of course, institutions can be put in check by the very power that feeds them. Power can stiffen, elites can become parasitic. As Johnson and Earle again remind us, 'the political economy [...] is geared to maximising production for use by the ruling elite, is growth-oriented [...] and is thus inherently unstable' (p. 266). This is the institutional paradox: they are born to regulate cooperation, but may end up exploiting it. From moral infrastructures, they risk becoming instruments of domination.