中文摘要
我们综述考古证据，表明在新石器时代西欧亚大陆（距今11,700至5,300年）的狩猎采集者与农民中，曾出现较高水平的财富不平等，但与过去五千年间实质性的持久不平等相比，这些不平等是短暂且罕见的。为此，我们试图理解的并非不平等的从无到有（“全新创造”），而是实质性财富差异得以长期持续的过程，以及为何这种情况仅出现在新石器时代末期——即农业革命发生至少四千年之后。考古学与人类学证据表明，一种激进的平等主义文化可能阻碍了持久财富不平等的出现，直至新石器时代晚期：彼时新的农业技术提高了物质财富相对于劳动的价值，而早期原始国家中精英权力的集中（以及最终对奴隶劳动的剥削）为财富不平等程度的加剧及其持续提供了政治与经济条件。（JEL D31, D63, N30, N50, Z13）
Abstract
We survey archaeological evidence suggesting that among hunter-gatherers and farmers in Neolithic western Eurasia (11,700 to 5,300 years ago) elevated levels of wealth inequality occurred but were ephemeral and rare compared to the substantial enduring inequalities of the past five millennia. In response, we seek to understand not the de novo “creation of inequality” but instead the processes by which substantial wealth differences could persist over long periods and why this occurred only at the end of the Neolithic, at least four millennia after the agricultural revolution. Archaeological and anthropological evidence suggests that a culture of aggressive egalitarianism may have thwarted the emergence of enduring wealth inequality until the Late Neolithic, when new farming technologies raised the value of material wealth relative to labor and a concentration of elite power in early proto-states (and eventually the exploitation of enslaved labor) provided the political and economic conditions for heightened wealth inequalities to endure. (JEL D31, D63, N30, N50, Z13)