this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
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Anarchism

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Does anyone have a estimated date or something like that?

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[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 hours ago

The Dawn of Everything goes into that subject pretty well.

What Is Politics also made a video series on that subject, which goes into where and when hierarchies began to form.

[–] alapakala@quokk.au 1 points 4 hours ago

The discovery of the Zachelmie trackways in 2010 suggests that stegocephalians possibly emerged 395 Ma or earlier.[5]

[–] valar@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

I'd wager social heirarchy is as old as homo sapiens if not older

[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Hard to think of any ape or monkeys that don't have hierarchies. Pulling back to all mammals, hierarchies are more common than not.

[–] Juice@midwest.social 1 points 7 hours ago

So I read some of Marx's notes on the writings of social theorist Lewis Morgan. Obviously, a territory ruled over by a king is a hierarchical system. But the notes discuss how it may have become this way, that I found really interesting.

The works of Morgan was an analysis of the ancient Greek gens, gents, and gentiles. If you understand how Marx views history, I think he makes some interesting points, although these notes were not finished like Capital vol 1 (incidentally, when Marx died and Engels discovered he had been studying anthropology rather than writing subsequent volumes of Capital, he wanted to burn Marx's notes.)

So there are gens, which are like these egalitarian (non hebrew) religious groupings. And individual member of a gen, is a gentile. And the gens were like little religious communes, with egalitarian social sharing and authentic fraternity between members. But over time, despite the material egalitarianism, there develops differences in social standing, and accumulation of social capital. This informal hierarchy develops into formal castes. And the fraternity, while still present in an abstract way, gives way to individual interests, or caste interests.

Over time, these distance castes begin to compete with each other. Eventually, one caste becomes socially and materially dominant over the others, establishing a hierarchy. As this develops, the fraternal and egalitarian nature of the society becomes more abstract, like an ideal that everyone gives lip service to, but which a ruling caste has actual material and social control over. Eventually, this develops into an aristocracy that has a formal ruling class and formal domination, and all the fraternity, symbolic and concrete, has disappeared, and is replaced with divine right to rule.

Now this is a study of a society from around 500BC, and aristocracy precedes that by a thousands of years. Basically, we can date the rise of monarchial social relations by the rise of the major religions, since religion is a necessary component, and caste within, monarchial relations. But the study of how those societies may have gotten there is seething I think about a lot. Granted, I'm no expert, this is a single source, and even then its just notes.

But I thought it was still a better answer than all the people who are guessing based on preconceived notions of how hierarchy "has always existed".

[–] punkisundead@slrpnk.net 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Some anarchists, feminists and anthropologist would say the first long term hierarchy was patriarchy. When men established positions of power (priest, warrior) that fit their interests well, they changed the societal structure from matricentric to patriarchal and started to establish the state.

Öcalan (not a scientist) dates this in his work Beyond State, Power, and Violence at around 6 thousand years ago for the area of the so calles Middle East.

Dont know how others see this but there probably is not a scientific or anarchist consensus on the topic.

[–] Sour_Kabos@reddthat.com 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Since before we were homo sapiens distinct from our evolutionary cousins. Probably before our ancestors were recognizable as mammals, or even terrestrial.

[–] alapakala@quokk.au 1 points 4 hours ago

Came here to check if someone mentioned our stegocephali hierarchical ancestral societies. Glad to see folks are still reading anthropologies.

[–] imeansurewhynot@sh.itjust.works 0 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Tens of thousands of years old at least, lots of mummies and corpses have burial adornments and items that indicate they were the leader of the pack in the same way rulers later were and are buried with ceremonial offerings and adornments and written descriptions of them being a ruler.

As far back as we have any evidence for.

Aboriginal Australians might be interesting for you to look at as they had a much looser authority structure as nomads and have a societal history of 50,000 plus years old now(keeps getting updated as more sites are found).

[–] TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca 2 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

"tens of thousands" would be a bold claim for even something like a human civilization as distinct from just naked monkeys in the jungle existing.

Agriculture is only about 6000 years old, before that all evidence are that hunter gather societies were FAR more egalitarian than those that arrived after agriculture. Even claiming that strict human cultural hierarchies existed a single 10,000 years ago is very dubious

[–] Souvenir@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Agriculture is only about 6000 years old,

Older than that.

[–] imeansurewhynot@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Anthropologists and archaeologists are bold people.

Aboriginals reporting they have elders with authority throughout their unbroken oral history is fairly definite, especially considering the practice of elder authority carries into today in most human cultures as far back as written evidence and in identical circumstances before written confirmations of societal authority.

[–] punkisundead@slrpnk.net 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

Aurhority is not necessarily hierarchy. Ideally I follow an elders authority based on their experience and from my own free will, not because of coercion or force. Especially when following an elders advice might be a matter of live and death for me and my group.

[–] imeansurewhynot@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 hours ago

This is why I suggested aboriginal Australians here as an alternative. Their authority figures definie their social hierarchy, but given the more narrow colloquial label-based understanding of authority and hierarchy, one can freely think of Australian Aboriginal hierarchy as anarchic.

[–] A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

gonna chime in here. we refer to this as the authority of the boot-maker.

[–] alapakala@quokk.au 1 points 4 hours ago

then the first homonids were already epistemically authorizing their care givers through imitations.