What does all this really tell us about social inequality in the last Ice Age? Well, first of all it suggests we might have to shelve any premature talk of the emergence of hereditary elites. It seems extremely unlikely that Palaeolithic Europe produced a stratified elite that just happened to consist largely of hunchbacks, giants and dwarfs. Second, we don’t know how much the treatment of such individuals after death had to do with their treatment in life. Another important point here is that we are not dealing with a case of some people being buried with rich grave goods and others being
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