by This is an interesting re-print of a nearly 20 year old opinion piece printed in Discover.
I’m curious as to other opinions about it.
The concept that social parasites, all too common in modern-day America, originated with agricultural society caught my attention because it has the ring of truth about it. This is not to say that hunter-gathers didn’t have a social hierarchy, they did, but rather that once a population settles into a location from which an individual’s relocation is difficult or impossible the tendency for non-merit-based dominance becomes much more normal than in a non-nomadic society.
Thoughts?
