ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Ecological variation and institutionalized inequality in hunter-gatherer societies.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- Institutionalised Commitment and Its Origins.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Human prestige psychology can promote adaptive inequality in social influence.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Modeling the rise and demise of Classic Maya cities: Climate, conflict, and economies of scale.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Complex systems perspective in assessing risks in artificial intelligence.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2024Article
- Lake-centred sedentary lifestyle of early Tibetan Plateau Indigenous populations at high elevation 4,400 years ago.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Institutional complexity emerges from socioecological complexity in small-scale human societies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Whither dominance? An enduring evolutionary legacy of primate sociality.Personality neuroscience · 2024Review
- "But some were more equal than others:" Exploring inequality at Neolithic Çatalhöyük.PloS one · 2024Article
- Identifying key socioecological factors influencing the expression of egalitarianism and inequality among foragers.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Modelling the role of environmental circumscription in the evolution of inequality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Toward an evolutionary ecology of (in)equality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- The economics of early inequality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Female cooperative labour networks in hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- An evolutionary perspective on social inequality and health disparities: Insights from the producer-scrounger game.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2023Article
- On the interplay of hierarchies, conflicts, and cooperation: An experimental approach.PNAS nexus · 2023Article
- Managing the stresses of group-living in the transition to village life.Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Relatedness within and between Agta residential groups.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Research examining institutionalized hierarchy tends to focus on chiefdoms and states, while its emergence among small-scale societies remains poorly understood. Here, we test multiple hypotheses for institutionalized hierarchy, using environmental and social data on 89 hunter-gatherer societies along the Pacific coast of North America. We utilize statistical models capable of identifying the main correlates of sustained political and economic inequality, while controlling for historical and spatial dependence. Our results indicate that the most important predictors relate to spatiotemporal distribution of resources. Specifically, higher reliance on and ownership of clumped aquatic (primarily salmon) versus wild plant resources is associated with greater political-economic inequality, measuring the latter as a composite of internal social ranking, unequal access to food resources, and presence of slavery. Variables indexing population pressure, scalar stress, and intergroup conflict exhibit little or no correlation with variation in inequality. These results are consistent with models positing that hierarchy will emerge when individuals or coalitions (e.g., kin groups) control access to economically defensible, highly clumped resource patches, and use this control to extract benefits from subordinates, such as productive labor and political allegiance in a patron-client system. This evolutionary ecological explanation might illuminate how and why institutionalized hierarchy emerges among many small-scale societies.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.