14 DAY TRIAL // A collaboration of archaeologists in the United Kingdom says that the roots of hereditary inequality have been with our species for at least 7,000 years. They arrived at this conclusion after analyzing more than 300 human skeletons dating from that time.
This period coincides with the early Neolithic Era, the team reports. Scientists from the University of Bristol, the University of Cardiff and the University of Oxford worked together on this investigation.
Details of the work were published in the May 28 issue of the esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The group found that farmers buried with their tools used to have access to better lands than those buried without.
This study is the first to look at the type of lands the earliest farmers had access to. All the skeletons investigated for this research were discovered at sites across central Europe. University of Bristol professor Alex Bentley was the leader of the investigation.
Funds for the research came from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. The work was carried out by analyzing strontium isotopes recovered from the skeletons. These isotopes were then used to establish the place of origin for each of the ancient individuals.
Farmers buried with Neolithic stone adzes showed less strontium variations in their skeletons, suggesting that they had access to lands located nearby, and that were most likely of better quality. Adzes are tools that were being used at that time to smooth out or carve wood.
“The men buried with adzes appear to have lived on food grown in areas of loess, the fertile and productive soil favored by early farmers. This indicates they had consistent access to preferred farming areas,” says Bentley, a professor of archeology and anthropology at the university.
The study also revealed that women were likely not to originate in the areas where they were found buried. This suggests that they moved to a different location once they married, following their men.
“Our results, along with archaeobotanical studies that indicate the earliest farmers of Neolithic Germany had a system of land tenure, suggest that the origins of differential access to land can be traced back to an early part of the Neolithic era,” the expert adds.
“It seems the Neolithic era introduced heritable property (land and livestock) into Europe and that wealth inequality got underway when this happened. After that, of course, there was no looking back: through the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Industrial era wealth inequality increased but the ‘seeds’ of inequality were sown way back in the Neolithic,” he concludes.