Assessing grand narratives of economic inequality across time

Abstract

Long-entrenched grand narratives have tied inequality in large human aggregations to generally linear trends, a direct outcome of domestication, then fostered by population growth and/or stepped scalar transitions in the hierarchical complexity of human institutions. This general pattern has been argued to short-circuit or reverse only in the context of cataclysmic disasters or societal breakdowns. Yet, for the most part, these universal deterministic frameworks have been constructed from historical or ethnographic snapshots in time and afford little systematic attention to human institutions or agency. Here, we leverage quantitative, temporally defined archaeological, and ethnographic data from a suite of global regions, most of which transitioned through the process of urbanism and complex hierarchy formation, to examine shifts in degrees of inequality over time. Although broad temporal patterns are evidenced, the regional trends in inequality are neither linear, uniform, nor triggered immediately or mechanically by Malthusian dynamics or scalar increases.