Agriculture and its role in inequality
Going from hunter-gatherer to agrarian societies marked a huge change in humanity's development, but also enabled the two major inequalities we have today.
Hunter-gatherers only had as many possessions as they could carry as they roamed around the countryside, so they tended to be personal items. Food came from what the hunters – mainly men – could find, and what the gatherers – mainly women – could scrounge from the ground. All contributed to the prosperity of the tribe, so there was a fair amount of consultation in decision-making. Skirmishes between tribes could be largely avoided by moving away from conflict. Survival was the main driver, and there was not much to really rank status by other than personal skills. It is low-key lifestyle.
Being nomadic did not mean remaining as small groups, as tribes could network and still do large-scale activities in a proto-civilisation sort of way, such as storing wild produce for lean times and vast get-togethers for meetings or trade. They just still avoided the settling down in one place for years on end.
Deliberately growing plants and livestock significantly added to the food stability of tribes, but also lead to many other dramatic changes to how people organised themselves. While nomadic tribes could carry some simple accommodation materials on horses and camels, settling down in one place allowed building substantive solid-walled structures for both communal and family use. This stability of location with better protection from the elements made it safer for children to grow to adulthood, leading to better family outcomes.
Stable family structures in stable environments led to greater numbers in the tribes, leading to more complex social relationships. As societies became more complex, some changes favoured particular groups, while others were severely downgraded in their status. Over millennia, the divisions led to huge inequalities that are only getting greater today. However, there were also many societies that managed to avoid those inequalities by remaining fairly egalitarian for centuries, or even experimented with various structures, so inequality was not an obligatory outcome of large societies.
Agriculture anchored people to particular lands, and that anchoring is what enabled the ability to gather possessions to excess. So the inequalities were not a result of agriculture per se, but were the result of people making selfish choices as they lived and adapted to life on the same land, often without thinking about the consequences, except in the short-term benefits they might get. Unfortunately, many are still making the same choices and that is affecting how well the planet can support us. The brunt of that is being borne by those who are disadvantaged by those same inequalities.
However, the inequalities cannot be addressed by just making everybody live like the most privileged, but by severely reducing the privilege at the top. We can all have modest lifestyles, but not at the level that a lot of the modern propaganda posits that we should have, as that would mean that the planet would have to cough up so many resources that it would be cooking us very quickly. We have the choice to not lead to our own destruction, but that is not something we have a lot of time to ponder upon as it requires us to make a lot of significant but time-consuming changes for the better.
Wealth inequality△
Having a stable space to store possessions meant they could be accumulated, and in quantities larger than personally essential.
While many peoples built communal structures for habitation and storage for the lean times, being able to have storage for personal possessions set the scene for some to gather more than they really needed for survival. Every society has culture and myths that support their way of life, but that was malleable, and in many societies, those who gathered more possessions status shifted the culture to justify their privilege.
The increase of personal wealth brought the need to protect it from those who wanted it, especially those who did not even have enough to fulfil their needs. This meant having paid armed staff, along with an increasing number of people to manage it all. Wealth created the need for private mini-societies beholden only to their employers. In a way, this is the formation of proto-corporations with their autocratic hierarchical structures.
The eventual result of the gathering of large amounts of personal wealth and property, with private militia to protect them, was the increased control their owners had over those who did not. With enough, they even challenged monarchs. Even when democracy started to become popular, it was restricted to landowners who were generally the most wealthy. Having such wealth with the ability to direct their societies to favour themselves enabled them to accumulate even more wealth.
This is the seed of the vast inequality we have today, and while modern democracies are supposedly more egalitarian, there are still many avenues for the wealthy few to manipulate their societies in their favour to the point where the wealthiest 1% control 50% of the world's wealth. They have used propaganda that justifies their privilege, and create distractions in the form of unnecessary goods as false status items to keep people off their backs, and even implore politicians to create wars or overthrow unfavourable governments to increase their access to resources that increase their wealth.
Gender inequality△
Having many more physical goods and possessions meant having to have stronger people to manage them, and enabled another enduring inequality.
Personal possessions among hunter-gatherers were light, so anybody could carry them. The increase in the numbers of goods to transport meant that strength was needed to move them around. While animals could do the bulk of that, there was still a lot that could only be done by people. Of course, the more that each person could carry meant that less of them were needed. This naturally favoured men because of their higher average muscle-building ability due to testosterone, so men came to become more useful in the bulk of the work in the new goods-based societies.
This lead to men becoming the main breadwinners in families, with women relegated to home duties or less strength-dependent work. This was a severe downgrading of the status of women, to the point of being considered second-class people, or even just possessions. With men being the mainstay of the military, women could mount no defense. A few millennia of such a status imbalance sowed the prejudices early on that have been thoroughly enmeshed in the attitudes to work in societies.
While modern societies are mostly based upon far less strength-based work, the prejudices remain. It is taking heroic measures in education and laws to change the culture around women's places in societies, but that is only really happening where men are willing to let go of their unfair privilege which is often backed up by the threat of violence. Women have a lot more to offer modern societies, with far less occupations restricted to men for purely strength reasons. Enduring prejudices are hampering harnessing women, and our societies are failing as a result.