Origin of Inequality in Transegalitarian Societies: An Agent Based Model

We present an agent based model (ABM), describing the origins of inequalities and social stratification in certain class of affluent hunter-gatherer societies. These societies, defined in the anthropological literature as transegalitarian, are characterized by availability of surplus resources and emergence of social inequalities, predating more complex structures found in sedentary agricultural communities. The relative simplicity of social structure allows to create a model, which focuses on a few key drivers of the process. These are: variability of key individual characteristics (skills and talents, luck, greediness), effects of the tendency for assortative matching, genetic heritability of certain advantages and disadvantages, and the presence of teaching/learning.. Our results provide insights into the relative importance of these individual and societal conditions in the appearance of stable stratification in initially egalitarian societies. Depending on the choice of which individual characteristics are more prized by the society (skills and contributions to the community versus accumulated and used surplus wealth), the resulting structure may be more meritocratic or oligarchic.