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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 October 2021
A key difference between humans and social insects is that human societies are characterized by hereditary social castes. Individual ants and termites do not inherit resources, privileged individual humans do. With the advent of large-scale state societies some 5,000 years ago, the lion’s share of the economic surplus was commandeered by an elite class whose power was enforced by hierarchical religions, the police and military, and belief systems supporting domination and control of the everyday lives of individuals. The reorganization of human society that came with the agricultural revolution still controls and constrains our social evolution today. The human global economy has become a global, unified, interlocking system of resource extraction and surplus production. Integral to this system are institutions and belief systems supporting it.
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