Archaeologists Challenge the Idea That Bigger Societies Must Be Autocratic
New archaeological research shows that population growth and farming did not inevitably produce despotic rule, highlighting diverse governance models across ancient societies.
Archaeologist Gary Feinman argues that the classic narrative linking agriculture, larger populations, and inevitable autocracy is oversimplified. By comparing house size disparities at more than a thousand sites and developing a 27-proxy index of governance, his team showed that population size accounts for only roughly 25% of the differences in power concentration and citizen participation. Evidence from sites such as Teotihuacan, Monte Albán, and eastern Shandong reveals collective decision-making, public plazas, and limited elite burial practices, suggesting more inclusive regimes existed alongside despotic ones.
The researchers distinguish “internal resources” like broad tax bases, which tend to foster democratic structures, from “external resources” such as monopolized trade or slave labor, which enable autocratic rule. Their findings, published in PNAS (2025) and Science Advances (2026), call for a revision of centuries-old social-science models and imply that historical governance diversity offers lessons for modern policy debates.
Why it matters
It shows that ancient societies experimented with inclusive governance, challenging assumptions about the inevitability of autocracy.
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