6000–3000 BCE: (Technology, Social Differentiation, and the Origins of Inequality — The Development of New Technologies Possibly Stimulated in Part by Emergi…

6000–3000 BCE: (Technology, Social Differentiation, and the Origins of Inequality — The Development of New Technologies Possibly Stimulated in Part by Emerging Social Differentiation as Growing Agricultural Productivity Allowed Differential Accumulations of Wealth, Historical Linguistic Evidence Indicating That the Earliest Use of Metals Such as Copper and Even Iron Tended Often to Be for Ornamentation as Much as or More Than for Tools or Weapons, Metal Ornamentation Becoming an Accompaniment and Indicator of Wealth Status and Power, Raising the Question of Whether Social Stratification Itself Drove Demand for Prestige Technologies): The development of these technologies may at least in part have been stimulated by emerging social differentiation in many areas, as the growing agricultural productivity of the age of agricultural exchange allowed differential accumulations of wealth in many societies. The evidence from historical linguistics gives reason to argue that the earliest use of metals such as copper and even iron tended often to be for ornamentation as much as or more than for tools or weapons. Because of the ability of privileged people to command greater access to desired products, metal ornamentation over time tended to become an accompaniment and indicator of one’s possession of wealth, status, and power. A possible question for historians to consider is the extent to which the developments toward social stratification, in bringing about differential access to resources, themselves drove demand for prestige technologies. The relationship between technology and social hierarchy, in other words, may run in both directions. The standard narrative treats technology as the driver: new tools create new economic possibilities, which create new forms of wealth, which create new social classes. But Ehret suggests the reverse may also be true: emerging social differentiation creates demand for prestige goods — metal ornaments, fine textiles, elaborately decorated ceramics — which in turn stimulates technological innovation to satisfy that demand. The earliest copper was not forged into plowshares or swords. It was fashioned into jewelry. The earliest textiles were not woven for warmth alone. They were woven for display, for distinction, for the marking of status in societies where status was becoming something that mattered. Technology and inequality grew together, each feeding the other, in a spiral that would eventually produce both the glories and the oppressions of the state-level civilizations of the fourth and third millennia BCE.