Why do we follow leaders at all? Today, we kick off a new mini-series on the history of leadership from prehistoric campsites to the rise of kingdoms. As leaders and decision-makers, understanding why humans abandoned egalitarian structures for centralized authority helps us better grasp the hidden forces shaping organizations today.
We’ll explore how early humans lived in remarkably flat social structures, where leadership was temporary and earned through respect, rather than dominance. But everything changed once survival required unity against external threats.
By the end of this series, you’ll understand the evolutionary pressures that led humans to embrace hierarchy, the trade-offs that came with it, and the lessons this holds for modern leaders navigating power, authority, and organizational survival.
In this episode:
- Introduction to the evolution of hierarchy
- Evolving from egalitarian bands to complex hierarchies
- The role of warfare in hierarchy formation
- How early states and empires were established
- Conclusion and next episode preview
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Resources Used in the Episode:
Mengistu, H., Huizinga, J., Mouret, J.-B., & Clune, J. (2016). The Evolutionary Origins of Hierarchy. PLoS Computational Biology, 12(6), e1004829.
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004829
Perret, C., Hart, E., & Powers, S. T. (2020). From disorganized equality to efficient hierarchy: how group size drives the evolution of hierarchy in human societies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 287(1928), 20200693. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.0693
Turchin, P., & Gavrilets, S. (2009). Evolution of Complex Hierarchical Societies. Social Evolution & History, 8(2), 167–198. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266884396_Evolution_of_Complex_Hierarchical_Societies
Van Vugt, M., & Smith, J. E. (2019). A dual model of leadership and hierarchy: evolutionary synthesis. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(11), 952–967. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31629633/
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