Intensification of agriculture and social hierarchies evolve together, study finds
Intensive agriculture and social hierarchies in a feedback loop
The results of the study showed that there was not a simple causal connection between changes in a society's mode of agriculture and increasing hierarchy. Although in many cases agricultural intensification appeared to coevolve with sociopolitical hierarchy, in other cases, these traits appeared independently of each other. When both traits did appear, it was not always the case that intensive agriculture came first. "There's a widely held view that material changes to the environment drive social evolution and not the reverse," states Atkinson. "Our findings challenge that view and show that the causal arrow actually goes both ways."
"The findings suggest that intensification and hierarchy promoted each other, perhaps as a part of a feedback loop that may also have involved population growth," explains first author Oliver Sheehan, also of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Auckland. "These results reveal how social and political factors, far from being secondary to the process of cultural evolution, are among its most important drivers."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180319155739.htm