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+--- Thread: Research New study shows democracy has deep global roots—not just Greece and Rome (/thread-20002.html)
New study shows democracy has deep global roots—not just Greece and Rome - C C - Mar 18, 2026
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1119863
INTRO: A new study on ancient societies from around the world is rewriting what we thought we knew about democracy. A team of researchers analyzed archaeological and historical evidence from 31 ancient societies across Europe, Asia, and the Americas and found that shared, inclusive governance was far more common than was once believed.
“People often assume that democratic practices started in Greece and Rome,” said Gary Feinman, the study’s lead author and the MacArthur Curator of Mesoamerican and Central American Anthropology at the Field Museum’s Negaunee Integrative Research Center. “But our research shows that many societies around the world developed ways to limit the power of rulers and give ordinary people a voice.”
In an autocracy, just one person or a small group holds all the power; examples of autocracy can include absolute monarchies and dictatorships. In a democracy, decision-making power is shared among the people. Elections often go hand-in-hand with democracy, but not always—many autocrats have been freely elected.
“Elections aren’t exactly the greatest metric for what counts as a democracy, so with this study, we tried to draw on historical examples of human political organization,” says Feinman. “We defined two key dimensions of governance. One of them is the degree to which power is concentrated in just one individual or just one institution. The other is the degree of inclusiveness—how much the bulk of the citizens have access to power and can participate in some aspects of governance.”
Feinman and his colleagues examined 40 cases from 31 different political units across Europe, North America, and Asia, spanning thousands of years. These societies all had different methods of record-keeping, and not all of them left behind written records. So, the team had to find different ways to infer what the governments in these historical contexts were like.
“I think the use of space is very telling,” says Feinman. “When you find urban areas with broad, open spaces, or when you see public buildings that have wide spaces where people can get together and exchange information, those societies tend to be more democratic.”
On the other hand, some architectural and city-planning remnants indicate a society where fewer people concentrated power. “If you see pyramids with a tiny space at the top, or urban plans where all the roads run toward the ruler’s residence, or societies where there’s very little space where people could get together for exchanging information, those are all proxies for more autocratic cases,” says Feinman.
The team examined the 40 cases that had been documented by generations of archaeologists and historians, and systematically analyzed different aspects of the places' architecture, art, and urban planning... (MORE - details, no ads)