Title:
Researchers Have a Controversial New Hypothesis For How Civilization First Started
Author:
Carly Cassella
Published:
Science Alert, 15 April 2022
From the article:
The dawn of human civilization is often pinned down to the rise of farming. As food production grew, so did human populations, trade, and tax.
Or so the prevailing story goes.
Economists have now put forward a competing hypothesis, and it suggests a surplus of food on its own was not enough to drive the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to the hierarchical states that eventually led to civilization as we know it.
Note:
This study was published in the Journal of Political Economy.