New @science.org Advances model finds all small-scale societies—from Inuit to Amazonian farmers—obey the same law of innovation: each new tool costs more than it gives. The politics of invention began long before the state.
#Anthropology #Archaeology #CulturalEvolution https://www.anthropology.net/p/the-politics-of-tools-how-small-scale
The Politics of Tools: How Small-Scale Societies Engineered the First Technologies of Power

Even the simplest toolkits, those of hunter-gatherers & early farmers, follow deep mathematical laws of innovation, revealing how efficiency, scarcity & identity shaped hierarchies

Anthropology.net