Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Apr 22;122(16):e2400697122.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2400697122. Epub 2025 Apr 14.

100 generations of wealth equality after the Neolithic transitions

Tim Kerig  1   2 , Enrico R Crema  3 , Jennifer Birch  4 , Gary M Feinman  5   6 , Adam S Green  7   8 , Detlef Gronenborn  9 , Dan Lawrence  10 , Cameron A Petrie  3 , Paul Roscoe  11   12 , Amy E Thompson  13 , Timothy A Kohler  14   15   16
Affiliations

100 generations of wealth equality after the Neolithic transitions

Tim Kerig et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

From Rousseau onward, scholars have identified the transition to sedentary agriculture as crucial to the history of wealth inequality. Here, using the GINI project's global database on disparities in residential size, we examine the effects of important innovations in plant cultivation, animal husbandry, and traction on wealth inequality. Over a series of regional case studies, we find no evidence of major changes in residential disparity before or after these technological innovations became widespread, and where the effects of systemic change are recognizable, they are ambiguous. The introduction of horticulture/farming is accompanied by a slight general increase in inequality, while subsequent innovations tend to have a leveling effect. Although increasing productivity and surplus are critical to generating wealth inequality, nothing in our data suggests that rising productivity alone led to greater wealth inequality.

Keywords: archaeology; comparative archaeology; economic archaeology; neolithic; social inequality.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Neolithic transition inequality. Gini coefficients at site-level against the spread of the Neolithic. Shown are the 2,000 y before and after domesticated plants became commonly produced (dt common). Isolines of dt common are calculated from dt dates of the sites (method: inverse distance, modified, see SI Appendix).
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Neolithic transition inequality. Box plots of Gini coefficients at site-level by regions, before and after domesticated plants, animals, and traction became common.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Neolithic transition inequality. Result of the beta regression: location and dispersion parameters of posterior estimates (additional information on case studies in SI Appendix).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Allen R. C., The Neolithic revolution in the Middle East: A survey and speculation article. Econ. Hist. Rev. 77, 1154–1196 (2024), 10.1111/ehr.13307. - DOI
    1. Scheidel W., The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2017).
    1. Chayanov A. V., The Theory of Peasant Economy (The American Economic Association, 1966).
    1. Schwinn T., Soziale Ungleichheit in differenzierten Ordnungen—Zur Wechselwirkung zweier Strukturprinzipien (Mohr, 2019).
    1. Kerig T., et al. , “An archaeological perspective on social structure, connectivity and the measurements of social inequality” in Connectivity Matters! Social, Environmental and Cultural Connectivity in Past Societies, Müller J., Ed. (Sidestone Press, 2023).

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources