Every species has something unique, something that defines it as different from everything else. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a distinct species, it would be some other species. In a sense, every species is a hypothesis being proven. Evolution is trial and error; every species is working out its hypothesis, to see whether or not it is true. Protosimians were a hypothesis that binocular vision and forward-facing eyes were a good idea. Primates tested the opposable thumb. Our genus, Homo, is testing a hypothesis, too. When we hear it, we may not be able to find any hint of it in the civilized world we inhabit, yet we can intuit its truth right down to our bones. It is the foundation of human nature, and everything that defines who we are. That hypothesis is that small, egalitarian communities of free people work best.

Most social animals live in strict hierarchies. Even our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees, live in very strictly hierarchical troops, with dominance determined in violent combat. Yet humans lack any evidence of hierarchy until the Neolithic–very late in our history, less than 1% of our time on earth. While we can find archaeological evidence of hierarchical societies after the advent of agriculture, we can find nothing before it. No luxury goods, no monumental architecture glorifying kings, not even a larger hut indicating a tribal “Big Man.”

Among those foragers still extant today, hierarchy remains a rarity. Foragers and even horticulturalists have very strong correlations with egalitarian social structures. This idea defies Western thinkers, who insist that hierarchy of some kind is inevitable simply because some people are better than others. Trained as we are in the civilized world to value only one dimension of human existence, this might make some sense, but it is a truly rare individual who’s better than everyone at everything. The best hunter is most likely quite young; the best shaman, most likely quite old. The best toolmaker could be anyone. In a capitalist society, an individual’s value is determined by the amount of capital he or she can generate. In an egalitarian society, there are many dimensions of value–so that the most respected shaman may have less overall influence than another who is not at the peak of any dimension.

If we consider society as a graph (in the mathematical sense), then we have a directed graph with people as nodes, and edges indicating their influence. A hierarchical society resembles a triangle, with very few nodes at the top ultimately influencing everyone. Egalitarian societies lack any such structure, as everyone has roughly the same amount of influence as everyone else.

This is a daring hypothesis in itself, of course, were it not so well supported by so many varying kinds of evidence. The simple fact of the matter is that we simply cannot find any evidence of hierarchical societies prior to the Neolithic. We do find evidence of such behavior in chimpanzees–the same bone fractures and injuries they sustain today in hierarchical combat, for instance. Yet we cannot find any such evidence in our own species. While rare, it is not entirely unprecedented. Bonobo chimpanzees also have a much more egalitarian society than their cousins, preferring to settle disputes with sex, rather than violence.

It is also worth noting the extremely low level of sexual dimorphism in humans–one of the lowest in the entire Kingdom Animalia. Male and female humans do not have the striking morphological differences of other species. We even have andogynous individuals, whose gender cannot be discerned at first glance. Compare this to our hierarchical relatives, the baboons. Natural selection has played a role in their violent struggles for hierarchical dominance, creating huge, fierce males with intimdating teeth and a physical size a full three times that of the female. Where is the analogous evolutionary evidence of hierarchy in humans?

Perhaps the evidence most of us will feel most strongly is the innate, intuitive yearning for freedom that we all share. We all want to belong to something, to be part of a small, close-knit community. Yet we all want to be respected as autonomous human beings. We all want to be free. We do not want to be ordered about by others. We do not want to be subject to another. Children would once run away to the circus and join traveling gypsies for the promise of such a life. We yearn for it still. The call for “democracy” around the globe coopts that basic yearning and answers it with a mimicry of what we want. We can’t explain what’s missing, but we can feel it nonetheless. At some point in our lives, we’ve all felt that knot in our stomach and that feeling that something is wrong, that this isn’t the way things are supposed to be. Hollywood has turned that feeling into commerical success with movies like The Matrix, Fight Club, American Beauty and The Truman Show–this haunting intuition that we’re missing something vital.

Is it so outrageous to suggest that what we’re missing is intrinsic to human nature? That evolution might have bequeathed us a social system that works well for us, and fulfills our needs? Is it so outrageous to suggest that this yearning we feel, this intuition that we’re missing something, is precisely because we are missing something? Could it be that 10,000 years ago, our ancestors betrayed our very human nature to create a hierarchical society antithetical to who we are?

All the evidence seems to point to that conclusion. And if it is true that we have lived for 10,000 years in a way completely opposed to our nature, is it any wonder that our civilization has always been so riddled with problems and crises? How long can we continue living as square pegs in round holes?