The dawn of some things: a few thoughts on Upper Paleolithic social inequality
The dawn of some things: a few thoughts on Upper Paleolithic social inequality

Summary/Abstract: Spurred by the scientific and media debates surrounding the recent apparition of D. Graeber’s and D. Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Mankind, the paper focuses on a key chronological and cultural segment, the European Upper Paleolithic, in at attempt at assessing the presumed early emergence of social stratification. A brief discussion on the limits of interpretation challenging Paleolithic archaeology is followed by a critical review of the existing archaeological record. While various lines of evidence hint for social inequalities (i.e., age, gender, individual status and abilities etc.), no convincing proof for social stratification (i.e., hereditary ranking) or major seasonal social restructuring is identified, even in the most culturally complex Upper Paleolithic contexts, such as the Gravettian or the Magdalenian. The causes of such absence are not related to the coarse-grain archaeological record, but to the unique environmental and demographic circumstances of Late Glacial Europe (low population numbers, wildly unstable climate, seasonally limited environmental productivity, high-mobility etc.) that apparently made egalitarian arrangements a most effective, evolutionary-stable strategy.

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