“As for social organization, understanding of these things comes from burial grounds. Symbols of power or a person’s particular skill would be interred with the body, for example a staff for a ruler or a necklace or amulet for a shaman. We look in burial pits for implements of prestige or power, or weapons of war, or some other indelible artifact that separates certain people from the rest. But we have found none from this period. So, we assume that there was little social hierarchy. Probably, the tribes were very horizontally organized, all members with equal or near-equal status, with little to indicate a vertical arrangement of power or authority.
“A horizontally organized society also tells us that there was little in the way of specialization yet. Like the ruler buried with his staff
