Tens of thousands of years old at least, lots of mummies and corpses have burial adornments and items that indicate they were the leader of the pack in the same way rulers later were and are buried with ceremonial offerings and adornments and written descriptions of them being a ruler.
As far back as we have any evidence for.
Aboriginal Australians might be interesting for you to look at as they had a much looser authority structure as nomads and have a societal history of 50,000 plus years old now(keeps getting updated as more sites are found).
“tens of thousands” would be a bold claim for even something like a human civilization as distinct from just naked monkeys in the jungle existing.
Agriculture is only about 6000 years old, before that all evidence are that hunter gather societies were FAR more egalitarian than those that arrived after agriculture. Even claiming that strict human cultural hierarchies existed a single 10,000 years ago is very dubious
Anthropologists and archaeologists are bold people.
Aboriginals reporting they have elders with authority throughout their unbroken oral history is fairly definite, especially considering the practice of elder authority carries into today in most human cultures as far back as written evidence and in identical circumstances before written confirmations of societal authority.
Aurhority is not necessarily hierarchy. Ideally I follow an elders authority based in their experience and from my own free will, not because of coercion or force. Especially when following an elders advice might be a matter of live and death for me and my group.
This is why I suggested aboriginal Australians here as an alternative. Their authority figures definie their social hierarchy, but given the more narrow colloquial label-based understanding of authority and hierarchy, one can freely think of Australian Aboriginal hierarchy as anarchic.
Tens of thousands of years old at least, lots of mummies and corpses have burial adornments and items that indicate they were the leader of the pack in the same way rulers later were and are buried with ceremonial offerings and adornments and written descriptions of them being a ruler.
As far back as we have any evidence for.
Aboriginal Australians might be interesting for you to look at as they had a much looser authority structure as nomads and have a societal history of 50,000 plus years old now(keeps getting updated as more sites are found).
“tens of thousands” would be a bold claim for even something like a human civilization as distinct from just naked monkeys in the jungle existing.
Agriculture is only about 6000 years old, before that all evidence are that hunter gather societies were FAR more egalitarian than those that arrived after agriculture. Even claiming that strict human cultural hierarchies existed a single 10,000 years ago is very dubious
Older than that.
Anthropologists and archaeologists are bold people.
Aboriginals reporting they have elders with authority throughout their unbroken oral history is fairly definite, especially considering the practice of elder authority carries into today in most human cultures as far back as written evidence and in identical circumstances before written confirmations of societal authority.
Aurhority is not necessarily hierarchy. Ideally I follow an elders authority based in their experience and from my own free will, not because of coercion or force. Especially when following an elders advice might be a matter of live and death for me and my group.
This is why I suggested aboriginal Australians here as an alternative. Their authority figures definie their social hierarchy, but given the more narrow colloquial label-based understanding of authority and hierarchy, one can freely think of Australian Aboriginal hierarchy as anarchic.
gonna chime in here. we refer to this as the authority of the boot-maker.