Challenging Long-Held Assumptions on Democracy's Birthplace

The narrative that democracy sprang solely from ancient Greece and Republican Rome has dominated historical discourse for centuries. School textbooks and popular accounts often pinpoint Athens around the 5th century BCE as the cradle of democratic governance, where citizens gathered in assemblies to vote on laws and leaders. Yet, a groundbreaking study published in Science Advances on March 18, 2026, upends this Eurocentric view by demonstrating that collective forms of governance—characterized by distributed power and broad citizen participation—emerged independently across the globe in ancient societies spanning Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Led by Gary M. Feinman, MacArthur Curator of Mesoamerican and Central American Anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, the research team meticulously analyzed 40 cases from 31 distinct polities over thousands of years. This global, deep-time comparative analysis reveals that inclusive governance was not an anomaly but a persistent feature in human societies, challenging neoevolutionary models that posit autocracy as the inevitable byproduct of societal complexity, population growth, or agricultural surplus.

Unpacking the Methodology: Building an Autocracy Index

To bridge the gap between sparse textual records and abundant archaeological evidence, the researchers developed a novel quantitative framework. They defined governance along a collective-autocratic axis using two core dimensions: the concentration of power (how decision-making authority is distributed) and citizen inclusiveness (the extent to which ordinary people could access and influence governance).

The autocracy index aggregates scores from 27 proxies across six 'bridging arguments,' drawing on tangible evidence like urban layouts, architecture, art depictions, administrative infrastructure, ritual practices, and wealth inequality metrics such as the Gini coefficient derived from grave goods, house sizes, and rare artifact distributions. For instance, open plazas and accessible public buildings scored low on autocracy (favoring collective rule), while massive palaces dominating cityscapes or roads converging on rulers' residences indicated high power concentration.

Proxies were binary (e.g., presence of dynastic ruler depictions in art = 1 for autocratic) or scaled (e.g., palace-to-common-residence size ratio >5:1 = high concentration). This scalable tool allowed consistent evaluation even for non-literate societies, with statistical correlations validating its robustness (e.g., power concentration and inclusiveness correlated at R²=0.514, p=2×10⁻⁷).

Democratic Polities Across Regions: A Global Tapestry

The dataset spans from the Indus Valley Civilization to post-Classic Mesoamerica, revealing no regional monopoly on democracy. In Europe, familiar cases like Classical Athens (with its bouleuterion assembly halls) and early Republican Rome scored toward the collective end, but so did non-Western examples.

In Asia, the Indus Valley city of Mohenjo-daro (circa 2500 BCE) exemplified distributed power through standardized urban planning without palaces or kingly monuments, suggesting council-based rule. Further east, certain phases of Angkor in Cambodia showed shifts, but collective traits persisted in some slices.

The Americas provide compelling counterexamples to autocratic stereotypes. Teotihuacan, a metropolis of over 100,000 inhabitants from 100-550 CE, featured vast open plazas like the Street of the Dead, facilitating public discourse without centralized palaces or oversized ruler images—hallmarks of collective governance sustained for centuries. Similarly, Monte Albán in Oaxaca, Mexico (500 BCE-800 CE), and Tlaxcallan (enemy of the Aztecs) displayed meritocratic elements and low inequality. North American Indigenous groups, such as the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy, post-1100 CE) and Protohistoric Zuni, operated via consensus councils.

• Teotihuacan (Mesoamerica): Open avenues and absence of royal tombs indicate shared rule.
• Haudenosaunee (North America): Great Law of Peace emphasized clan mothers' veto power and council deliberation.
• Mohenjo-daro (South Asia): No palaces, equal-sized homes, public baths for communal use.

Autocratic Contrasts: From Maya Kings to Asian Empires

Conversely, autocracies abounded where power concentrated. Classic Maya sites like Tikal and Copán (250-900 CE) featured acropolises with multiple throne rooms, stelae glorifying divine kings, and radial roads to rulers' compounds. In China, Anyang (Shang Dynasty, 1200 BCE) showed similar traits with oracle bones recording royal decrees and monumental tombs.

These cases highlight a spectrum: no polity was purely one type, but patterns emerged consistently across scales—from small settlements to empires.

Photo by Megan Watson on Unsplash

Decoding the Drivers: Finance, Bureaucracy, and Inequality

What separated collective from autocratic rule? The strongest predictor was fiscal financing: societies dependent on external revenue streams—like tribute from conquest, slave labor, long-distance trade monopolies, or resource extraction (e.g., mines)—tilted autocratic (R²=0.537). Leaders controlling these flows amassed unchecked power.

In contrast, internal mechanisms such as broad-based taxes, community corvée labor, or market levies fostered accountability, as citizens could withhold support. Meritocratic bureaucracies (vs. patrimonial loyalty-based ones, R²=0.533) and participatory rituals (vs. ruler-centric spectacles, R²=0.585) reinforced inclusivity. Economic equality was markedly higher in collective systems, with lower Gini coefficients from archaeological proxies.

• External finance: Trade routes, plunder → Ruler monopoly → Autocracy
• Internal finance: Household taxes, communal labor → Citizen leverage → Collective rule
• Low hierarchy levels or population size: No correlation (R²=0.112 for pop.)

Population and hierarchical complexity showed weak links, debunking scale-driven autocracy myths.

Modern Implications: Lessons from Deep Time

This research reframes democracy not as a Western invention but a recurrent human adaptation. By identifying autocratic precursors—like wealth concentration and external dependencies—policymakers gain tools to safeguard inclusivity. Feinman notes, "History shows that people across the world have created inclusive political systems—even under difficult conditions."

In higher education, the study underscores interdisciplinary archaeology's role in political science, urging curricula to incorporate global perspectives. For researchers, the autocracy index offers a replicable method for expanding the dataset.Read the full open-access paper here.

Expert Reactions and Ongoing Debates

Archaeologists praise the methodological innovation. Keith Kintigh (Arizona State University) highlights how it reveals governance diversity beyond evolutionary schemas. David Stasavage (NYU) emphasizes its relevance to contemporary geopolitics, noting lower inequality in ancient democracies contrasts modern trends.

While no major criticisms surfaced immediately, some experts caution that proxies, though robust, rely on interpretive bridging and may undervalue textual nuances in literate societies. Future work could integrate genetics or climate data for holistic views.

Pathways for Future Archaeological Inquiry

The supplementary materials provide capsule summaries for all 40 cases, archived at Zenodo, inviting global scholars to contribute. Expanding to Africa or Oceania could test universality. In academia, this bolsters fields like anthropology and political theory, highlighting university-museum collaborations' impact.Field Museum press release details more examples.

For aspiring researchers, this exemplifies how rigorous proxy-based analysis unlocks prehistory's political secrets, paving ways for research positions in archaeology.

Photo by Arturo Añez on Unsplash

Why This Matters for Higher Education and Beyond

In universities worldwide, this study inspires revised syllabi in ancient history and governance courses, fostering decolonized narratives. It also informs career paths in academia, where interdisciplinary teams drive discoveries. As Feinman asserts, archaeology offers "patterns that contain potential lessons for the world today."