A new working paper by SFI Science Board member and External Professor Tim Kohler and colleagues suggests that for the Prehispanic Pueblo Indians, political hierarchy, and inequality, could have emerged to develop and regulate public resources for a growing population.
The researchers created a simulation to observe how Pueblo societies might have evolved from AD 600 - 1280, when the first signs of hierarchy appear in the archeological record for the central Mesa Verde region of Colorado.
They observed that a leaderless society could thrive so long as the group remained small. But once an egalitarian society began to grow, it could no longer force freeloaders to contribute to public goods, which in the real world would have been resources such as defensive walls, reservoirs, and the fruits of communal hunts.
By contrast, groups that paid taxes to a leader who punished freeloaders continued to thrive in the face of population growth.
Read the article in the SFI Update (September/October 2011)
Read the SFI working paper