Abstract
Author(s): Levitt, Malcolm Stanley | Abstract: Despite recent and past research into the collapse of ancient states and into ancient inequality, the possible role of inequality in collapse has been ignored. Inequality as a potential explanatory factor in civil war and collapse in modern states has been the subject of around 150 flawed regression analyses, from which no consensus has emerged. Data for ancient states is insufficient to enable such quantitative modelling. But case studies of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, the Western Roman Empire and the Classic Maya suggest some role for inequality, although the data is sparse and contentious. Paucity of data probably reflects lack of interest and a recent study (Kohler and Ellyson 2018) shows what can be achieved.
Highlights
In the course of my investigation of explanations for the collapse of ancient states it seemed important to consider the role of inequality (Levitt 2019, forthcoming)
A method of weighting different deposited items is needed but different weights give different measures of inequality. When it comes to measuring income inequality, the difficulties are multiplied; wages of workers recorded in ancient texts follow no consistent accounting system over time or between different places and may take no account of whether wages include income in kind, the need to reconcile data referring to wage per hour or day, how many of either are worked in a year, and how representative they are of the class of workers in question as a whole
The existence of massive architectural constructions, such as palaces and pyramids, indicates huge inequality between royalty and the commoners. Another marker of economic inequality besides Gini coefficients based on house sizes is provided by Boix and Rosenbluth (2014), who suggest height as a proxy for historical economic inequality: for ancient Egypt, the average height of male mummies dating to c. 1500 BCE was 166.2 cm but that of
Summary
Despite recent and past research into the collapse of ancient states and into ancient inequality, the possible role of inequality in collapse has been ignored. Inequality as a potential explanatory factor in civil war and collapse in modern states has been the subject of around 150 flawed regression analyses, from which no consensus has emerged. Data for ancient states is insufficient to enable such quantitative modelling. Case studies of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, the Western Roman Empire and the Classic Maya suggest some role for inequality, the data is sparse and contentious. Paucity of data probably reflects lack of interest and a recent study (Kohler and Ellyson 2018) shows what can be achieved
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