Political cartoon from October 1884, showing wealthy plutocrats feasting at a table while a poor family begs beneath. Image Source: Walt McDougall / Valerian Gribayedoff – Public Domain

Despite the diversity of government and social structures, every country today faces social and political tensions tied to concentrated and unaccountable power in the hands of national elites. The modern sociological concept of elites emerged in the early 20th century, introduced by Vilfredo Pareto, who argued that every society produces a minority that steers decision-making. Other sociologists further refined the idea of elite theory, noting its regularity in organizations, corporations, and institutions.

Robert Michels’s “iron law of oligarchy” argued that even mass socialist organizations in the 20th century inevitably became elitist as power centralized. This can also be seen in modern populist movements, where leaders attack established elites while consolidating and masking their own elite status.

The word ‘elite’ comes from the French élite, meaning “the chosen,” which in turn comes from the Latin eligere, meaning “to choose.” It has a number of different connotations, but each implies a group of people considered superior to others in a particular society. While the modern sociological concept of elites has evolved over the last century, how far back does the presence of an entrenched elite go, and what are the conditions that generate them?

Archaeologist Mehmet Özdoğan has argued that the historical record of elites dates back to some of the earliest farming communities in the Upper Euphrates and Upper Tigris basins between 10,500 and 7300 BC. The Neolithic era would therefore mark not only the dawn of agriculture but also the rise of elites in human society. Understanding how these elite communities formed and sustained themselves provides context for the economic and cultural systems governing us today.

Creating Inequality

Early 20th-century archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe identified plant cultivation and animal domestication as key drivers of the Neolithic Revolution, which resulted in nomadic groups settling in villages. Mobile hunter-gatherers carried few possessions, but permanent settlement allowed accumulation. Agriculture produced storable surpluses that could be lent, redistributed, and used to consolidate power and increase dependence, while ox-drawn plows and other technologies further increased output, freeing some people from subsistence work and creating a labor class and an upper class to manage them.

But throughout the 20th century, growing evidence suggested that people often settled first and only later developed agriculture, with the transition occurring slowly and unevenly over thousands of years.

Similarly, elites did not form overnight. Comparatively egalitarian, sedentary communities such as Çatalhöyük, not far from the Upper Euphrates and Tigris,

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