Bruce Trigger in, "Understanding Early Civilizations" (2003), Examines 7 early complex societies:

Mesopotamia
Old Kingdom Egypt
Shang Dynasty, North China
Maya Lowlands
Aztec Empire, Basin of Mexico
Inca Empire, Highland Peru
Yoruba, SW Nigeria

He finds several common threads among many, but not all early civilization: Kingship and political organization, urbanism, class systems, family
organization, gender roles, administration, law, military organization, food
production, land ownership, trade and craft specialization, cosmology and
religion, cult, elite art, literacy, values
...

The one common element in all early civilizations was a religion which explained inequality (for example, chiefs were here [and in charge] in order to act as an intermediary between the rest of the civilization and the gods). All of these civilizations had some religion to explain why there was someone in charge.

Something like:

Farmers
supplied
nourishment

Rulers
nourished
deities.

Deities
supported
natural world.


What does this imply about human nature? It's not simply that early civilizations had some concept of "gods," but that these gods explained the fact of peoples' subjugation. Give me some theories.

Without having access to the study, I'll say that there's at least a potential cart-before-horse issue (I'm assuming your aim is to present religion as a tool of social control/norm reinforcement). People construct explanations for phenomena they encounter. This occurs (simply put) on both an individual and a cultural level.

So it could be argued that those cultures all had religions which sought to explain deeply ingrained inequalities simply because all of those cultures featured such inequalities.

As an aside, Bruce Trigger is an amazing name. Straight out of Mickey Spillane.

whats the oldest civilization there?

People have a natural desire for freedom and equality, so a class society will have to justify itself.

Without further evidence, I'd say this is a pretty dubious claim.

Though not the freedom to be unequal

Can you justify this? I mean, at least regarding freedom, I don't think this is true as a blanket statement, although it might be true as a general principle. I am much more skeptical that humans have a natural desire for equality.

I would say BH is probably implicitly restricting the desire to those who are on the wrong end of any given equality. If all people had that natural desire then I don't see why it wouldn't be the case.

I am skeptical that even that is true.

I'd bet a steak dinner and some scotch that if you asked a peasant of the middle bronze or earlier whether he wanted to be free, he'd just stupidly blink at you and ask if freedom is edible.

Sure, just for my money the stronger claim is obviously wrong.

Id take that bet. But id want to ask him if there is something he cant do but wants to if he where allowed to would he.

You could ask him if he would like to be free from hunger after defining a notion of free.

I'm also think there are enough conflicting accounts of freedom and inequality that the statement is inherently contradictory on a number of them.

I'd also consider that my dog doesn't have health insurance*


*I don't have a dog I have cats and they're insured.

Has there ever been a civilisation that didn't have religion?

If you want a genuine puzzler, you should compare the pre-agricultural revolution cultures to the post ones. In these hunter-gatherer "rulership" was often completely different. Leaders would often not intervene in conflict, and conflict would often be resolved by people finding leaving the tribe as opposed to normative resolutions (and potential punishment).

So basically "civilization" instituted rulership in a completely new manner, and our typical way of approaching status and rulership by being "subjugated" (as you call it) isn't necessarily instinctive at all, but instead born out of a combination out of respect for authority and rationality.

How do you know that?

Some of us listen to anthropology podcasts while commuting, you know.

While that is actually sadly true, on a more serious note these are anthropological theories that are peer reviewed and tested like any other academia. I can also compare these papers with findings and research in my own field in my own field, social psychology.

If you are interested in the methodology that is used, researchers generally use a combination of archeological and fossil evidence, experimental method, inducing from the behavior of advanced apes (chimpanzee, bonobo, gorillas) and looking at tribal and hunter-gatherer societies that exist today.

Christopher Boehm is a nice name to start of with, if you are interested.

Yeah, I was curious about that claim until I thought about primates. Can't imagine silverback gorillas doing authority-backed third party conflict resolution.

But if you asked him whether he liked being under the thumb of the landed proprietor, he would probably say no.

Indeed, and many people from before our societies of "stategiven freedom" would likely look at our freedom with scepticism.

In societies that are mainly based on agriculture the concept of free is typically connected to a) owning land and b) being free of debt... in other word a person with the means to be self-sufficient (or close to) should the need arise. Compare this to our modern societies where most of us are indebted monetarily and almost all dependant on the system to spin to live... and we could end up with the man of the past not thinking we are very free at all.

This isn't in any way or form implying that (the majority of posters on this forum atleast) are not well off. For the most part we live in a lifestyle that would be the envy of most people from past ages... especially women in modern western societies compared to women of the past - but it is still healthy to maintain some perspective. Our growth in freeedom doesn't stem solely from distributing more of it, we have also redefined what it is.

I think that definition can be outlined with 2 questions:

1) Can one be free while trapped in cage (can freedom be partial?)?

2) Can part of mankind be free, while another part is not free?

I think it can at least put it in perspective. The first question is very relevant these days, with the debate on monitoring and freedom of communication et cetera. The classic safety vs freedom.

And the last question points to an uncomfortable truth; Sometimes our freedoms are affordable only because other people lack theirs. We might not hold slaves anymore, but seen from a macro-perspective the difference might be negligible. Maybe in 500 years our descendants will look at us like we look at slavedrivers of the past.