The Original Rich Society

What time period did the first rich society emerge?  Was it the Renaissance era?  Britain after industrialization?  The first rich society was actually the Paleolithic hunter-gather society, dating from the dawn of human civilization to around 8000BC.  Hunter and gatherers did very little work, and managed to live happy lives with lots of leisure time. 

Men spent 2 to 3 days out of the week hunting big game.  When they managed to kill a large animal, such as a giraffe, the meat provided the tribe with enough food for a week. Men had superior statuses due to their strength and ability to hunt large game.   Women gathered, trapped small animals, and raised the children.  With the accompaniment of children, women gathered 80% of the calories the tribe consumed.  They gathered medical herbs that relieved tribesmen when they fell ill. The remedies were passed down through oral tradition because they did not have a writing system. 

There was no government in the hunter-gatherer societies.  If tribesmen had disputes, they would have to talk it out, or seniors would come in and vote on a solution.  There was little inequality in the society. If someone had more food than they needed, there was pressure in the tribe to give some of it away to the hungry. Tribes were very cooperative.  In a sense, tribesmen pooled the risk by sharing.  They depended on reciprocity, it was expected. 

Although not everyone could hunt, everyone got meat.  Because paleolithic societies did not have technology to store food, all surpluses had to be eaten or it would go to waste.  When the food supply got thin, tribes migrated to new lands.  The old and the sick would be left to die.  There was no more than 50 to 100 people in a tribe.  If the population grew beyond this capacity, the tribe tended to have a dispute and split into two tribes.

People were few compared to the abundant resources available, but as populations grew tribes ran into Malthusian Constraints.

Malthusian Constraints

As populations grew, societies pressed up against resource constraints.  Archaeological evidence of resource constraints can be seen in the diet of the societies.  As big game was hunted to extinction, tribes began eating varied kinds of food, things they wouldn't have eaten unless they had to, Broad Spectrum Theory. 

Tragedy of the Commons - a communal good with no property rights, treated like a free good, ends up being over-consumed until it is gone.


Since tribes could no longer rely on an abundance of big game, they had to abandon hunting and gathering for agriculture.  Tribes became adaptive to the environment.  They learned the properties of plants.  Some tribes dipped the tips of their arrows in a poisonous juice extracted from beetles to bring large animals down.  Agriculture relieved the constraints of an expanding population.  Archaeological evidence suggests big game had died out after humans appeared. 


Are people really happier today?  There is no evidence of that.