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You need surplus to establish a hierarchy. A migratory hunter-gatherer band has no surplus - people collect enough food to feed themselves, their children, and

You need surplus to establish a hierarchy. A migratory hunter-gatherer band has no surplus - people collect enough food to feed themselves, their children, and perhaps some older people, and that's it. Once there is a hierarchy with taxes and such you no longer have a migratory hunter-gatherer band. So you're talking about what happened during the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago. I am talking about what happened before that.

tinco 12y ago
You don't need a surplus to establish a hierarchy, you need a deficit. Deficit creates the need for structuring. If you're in a band and you can't get enough food to survive, there's going to be some tough decisions to be made. Who gets a cut and who doesn't is decided by those in power. Besides that, I don't think it's absolutely necessary for a hunter gatherer band to be migrationary, that's only when a tribe becomes too big and exploits its territory faster than the territory can recover.