Origins of hierarchy

[Fawkes]

When did humans begin to organize themselves hierarchically? When did it become institutionalized? Where did it first become institutionalized? What forms did it take? Why did they?

[Dimentio]

When did humans begin to organize themselves hierarchically? When did it become institutionalized? Where did it first become institutionalized? What forms did it take? Why did they?

I think it is derived from when societies started to emerge in two differing forms.

When people started to organise agriculture, the concept of property developed.

We should however remember that the first agricultural societies in general had neighbours which were nomadic, pastoralising tribes. These pastoralists occasionally attacked and plundered peasants, and eventually started to require a steady stream of food in return for protection from other pastoralists.

In general, pre-modern history seems to be about small elites, which were ethnically and culturally of a differing origin than the people they ruled over, because they had invaded and enslaved the original population due to military superiority, as was the case with the Indo-European conquest of Europe, Iran and India.

The Aztecs/Mexica were also similar.

In China and Egypt, the elites seems to have been forged in a fusion between the shamanistic past and the need for central planning in order to control the flow of the rivers. In that case, we could also see a different view on the roles of the elites, both as a link between the divine and the worldly, and as paternal father figures who were obliged to provide all of the population with food, clothes and protection.

In general, Bronze Age Europe seems to have been quite egalitarian (and matriarchal).