Without question, this is the best series I’ve encountered in Medium. It has required me to ditch my notions about the beginnings of civilization.

Specifically, I had, well, presumed that fortifications — and (relatively) large-scale enslavement (or at least forced labor) — had preceded the development of cities, that fortresses, almost assuredly built by such labor, must have been the ‘seed crystals’ around which cities formed. If I now understand correctly, fortifications built by such labor for protection did eventually become the model, at least for major cities, especially those that were the centers of power of city-states and empires, but that was not how civilization got started.

Still, inequalities of power in other forms apparently were intrinsic to the process. Either way, the development of civilization did crush the egalitarianism that had been the norm of human existence up till then.

[By the way, Ms. Kynefin, if you are not familiar with “Ancient Origins,” I highly recommend it. The contributors are academics. There was recently a piece there about oxen as the origin of differences in economic power.]