Richard2d ago
Archaeology News 

New study reveals wealth inequality was never inevitable

A groundbreaking study published in the journal PNAS is overturning traditional wisdom regarding the origins and inevitability of wealth inequality. Based on a massive dataset of over 50,000 houses in some 1,000 archaeological sites worldwide, the study suggests that economic inequality is not an inevitable result of societal advancement, agriculture, or population...

More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2025/04/study-reveals-inequality-was-never-inevitable/

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New study reveals wealth inequality was never inevitable

A recent study published in the journal PNAS is overturning traditional wisdom regarding the origins and inevitability of wealth inequality

Archaeology News Online Magazine
Apr 26 at 1:49pmWeb
Show threadZ2d ago
@archaeology hahaha, i cant help but laugh at this whole article. like of course they enforced the ideals of inevitable inequality for hundreds of years, so they could sow the panic of lack and excuse enforced inequality like caste and class ..acting all false enlighted "oh, its all up to peoples choices!" naw, rly now?
Show threadCésar Flores Huallpa2d ago
@JustUs4Pali @archaeology Me pregunto cómo habrán medido las paredes de las casas de la gente más pobre que sólo podía construir con madera, paja o adobe y que por ello no llegaron a nuestros tiempos.
Show threadZ2d ago
@unosorojo @archaeology 🤭 en serio!!! ...o aquéllos qué migraron de un sitió a otro con postes y pieles... jajaja 😅
Show threadRa2d ago
@archaeology #DavidGraeber The Dawn of Everything
Show threadFrank2d ago

Strong Graeber-Wengrow vibes here ... ("The Dawn of Everything")

@archaeology
https://archaeologymag.com/2025/04/study-reveals-inequality-was-never-inevitable/

New study reveals wealth inequality was never inevitable

A recent study published in the journal PNAS is overturning traditional wisdom regarding the origins and inevitability of wealth inequality

Archaeology News Online Magazine
Show threadmechanistisches Entmench13h ago

@footils @archaeology @unosorojo @GiftArticles

https://ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/1604.02370

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-inequality-inevitable/

The Affine Wealth Model: An agent-based model of asset exchange that allows for negative-wealth agents and its empirical validation

We present a stochastic, agent-based, binary-transaction Asset-Exchange Model (AEM) for wealth distribution that allows for agents with negative wealth. This model retains certain features of prior AEMs such as redistr…

ar5iv
Show threadCésar Flores Huallpa2d ago
@archaeology Si sólo se basan en las casas cuyos restos han llegado a nuestros días, ¿no serían victimas de un sesgo de supervivencia al momento de tomarlas como muestra pues estas habrían sido las construidas con materiales mínimamente duraderos?
Show threadBill Seitz2d ago
@archaeology I'm curious to see that dataset - what "polities" had over 1M people? Fig1C makes it look like some had 100M...
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2400698121#fig01
Show threadRobin Barton2d ago
@archaeology That is a very interesting study which does suggest that wealth distribution is possible
Show threadPeter Brown2d ago
@archaeology you only have to look at the Scandinavian countries for evidence of that.
Show threadyou know, from cohost7h ago
@archaeology Hiya! Your website appears to be a little broken (flickering and constantly reloading!)--is there a reader view of this article?