<HTML>Mikey,
The title of the book furthers a misconception - it should read Last Gatherer/First Farmer. Only in extreme environments, such as the arctic, do humans get most of their calories from hunting, and even there gathered resources make up somewhere in the neighborhood of 40% of caloric intake.
Also, what we've learned here in the Pacific Northwest is that gatherer/hunter societies were sometimes stratified. Even to the point that many NW coast elite individuals/families owned slaves.
We are in a unique position here in that the first instances of archaeologically recognizable social stratification occurred within the last several thousand years rather than some 8-10 thousand years ago as in the Old World, Mesoamerica and South America. As a result, the archaeological expression of this change has not been as severely overprinted as it has been elsewhere. Our research suggests that agriculture (planting and harvesting of crops) is not a sine qua non for the development of social classes. However, organization of large numbers of individuals for the intensive exploitation of natural resources and habitats seems to go hand in hand with the appearance of rich, powerful individuals and families. Perhaps the same held true elsewhere. The "roots" of social stratification were in place before someone noticed that some of last year's gathering of millet had popped up in the front yard!
What these two strategies (intensive exploitation of natural resources and agriculture per se) have in common is their ability to generate surpluses. The adaptive benefit of these surpluses seems obvious - to tide you over during the winter or when one resource failed to produce as expected. However, it probably didn't take long before some individuals within these surplus-generating societies recognized that those who controlled access to the surplus controlled those who needed access to the surplus. Power is born.
Where these nouveau riche individuals came from and how they wielded power is where Anthony's comment comes in. Most gatherer/hunter societies, judging from the art they left behind and ethnographies gathered over the last century, lived in a world circumscribed by taboos. Every facet of behaviour had spiritual implications and limitations. Those who held the corporate knowledge about what these taboos were (what behaviour was required, allowed or encouraged) were in a unique position to manipulate the behaviour of others. Call them shamans or priests or witches, whatever. It seems plausable that access to the surpluses was, at least initially, controlled by these kinds of individuals. As we see time and again in biological evolution, one organ (the shaman) assumed a new function when technology began generating food surpluses - the function of political as well as spiritual leader. Continuing overlap between the two realms (the spiritual and the secular) is obvious throughout history. From god-kings in Egypt to the Divine Right of Kings in early modern Europe (and doesn't Congress open each daily session with a prayer? Hmmm, the more we change, the more we stay the same).</HTML>
