What archaeology can teach us about inequality

Today's state of extreme economic inequality is a problem best approached with science - using it to make specific measurements, identify root causes, and develop workable solutions.

- F.D. Flam, Tribune News Service

Archaeology is revealing a broad picture that spans thousands of years of prehistory, challenging some of the pervasive biases about the inevitability of inequality as people form larger communities or advance technologically.

In a vast region of central Europe, farming communities defied expectations by living in houses that were all roughly the same size, leaving no trace of palaces, kings or other nobility - and they did so for five millennia. When future archaeologists study the 21st century, they'll find the opposite. According to recent global data, the bottom 40% of the population on the economic ladder possesses just 0.68 of the world's wealth.

"We're in probably the greatest [period of] inequality our species has ever seen, and so the natural question for many of us arises, 'how did we get here?'" said archaeologist Paul Duffy of Kiel University in Germany. The findings he and his colleagues are unearthing challenge the common assumption that inequality was the unavoidable price of human development as we progressed from being hunter-gatherers to farmers, and eventually to an industrial society.