Permanent economic inequality is unknown among mobile hunter-gatherers, but hereditary class distinctions between elites and commoners exist in some sedentary foraging societies. With the spread of agriculture, such stratification tends to become more pronounced. We develop a model to explain the associations among productivity, population density, and inequality. We show that regional productivity growth leads to enclosure of the best sites first, creating inequality between insiders and outsiders. This is followed by the emergence of elites and commoners at the best sites. As this process unfolds, elites and commoners have increasingly unequal food consumption. In some cases, the elite specializes in guarding land while relying entirely on the food produced by commoners. Our analysis is consistent with archaeological evidence from southern California, the northwest coast of North America, southwest Asia, and Polynesia. Acknowledgement. The authors are grateful for comments at the Workshop on the Emergence of Hierarchy and Inequality organized by Sam Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute in February 2009. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada provided financial support but is not responsible for any opinions expressed.

The duel of honor was a highly ritualized violent activity practiced (mostly) by aristocrats from about 1500 to 1900. The duel of honor was held in private, was attended by seconds and other members of society, was illegal, and often resulted from trivial incidents. Duels were fought according to strict codes, their lethality fell over time, and certain members of society were not allowed to duel. We argue dueling functioned as a screen for unobservable investments in social capital.Social capital was used during this period to support political transactions in an age when high civil service appointments were made through patronage. The screening hypothesis explains the puzzling features of the duel of honor, its rise and fall over time and locations, and the differences between European and American duels.In a state of highly polished society, an affront is held to be a serious injury. It must, therefore, be resented, or rather a duel must be fought upon it; as men have agreed to banish from their society one who puts up with an affront without fighting a duel.

Abstract. Until about 13,000 years ago all humans obtained their food through hunting and gathering, but thereafter people in some parts of the world began a transition to agriculture. Recent data strongly implicate climate change as the driving force behind the transition in southwest Asia. We propose a model of this process in which population and technology respond endogenously to climate. After a period of favorable environmental conditions during which regional population grew, an abrupt climate reversal forced people to take refuge at a few favored sites. The resulting spike in local population density reduced the marginal product of labor in foraging and made cultivation attractive. Once cultivation began, technological progress, including artificial selection, eventually led to domesticated plants. Farming became a permanent part of the regional economy when productivity growth was combined with climate recovery. The available data on cases of transition and non-transition are consistent with this model but often inconsistent with rival explanations. 1 Acknowledgment.

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