Economist Walter Scheidel calculates that 3,500 years ago, such large-scale states controlled only 1 percent of the Earth’s habitable landmass but represented at least half the human population. By virtually any metric, that’s a successful society. “For thousands of years, most of humanity lived in the shadow of these behemoths,” Scheidel writes. “This is the environment that created the ‘original one percent,’ made up of competing but often closely intertwined elite groups.”
