I guess it's interesting that they impute political values into their findings. To suggest that social stratification resulted in the dissolution of an idyllic/utopian society without considering other possible triggers seems weak. For instance, climate change, new technology or disease transmission could have been equal if not primary causes themselves. The article demonstrates the novel use of the Gini coefficient to describe social relations in prehistoric cultures without applying this measure to other sites among other cultures in different parts of the world. As a trained economist I find it difficult to accept the premise that any prehistoric society was inherently egalitarian based upon romantic notions of hunter-gatherer societies. Resources have always been limited and scarcity only changes with technology improvements - at least from what we know throughout the historical record.?
Leake Little