In their target article, Stibbard Hawkes and von Rueden (SHVR) propose to redefine egalitarian societies as “…those where socio-ecological circumstances enable most individuals to successfully secure their own resource access, status, and autonomy.” This is perhaps unnecessary when the above nearly identical definition appears in a leading textbook (Kelly, Reference Kelly2013) in the field of human behavioral ecology and hunter-gatherer studies. Nonetheless, SHVR have provided a useful contribution by synthesizing disparate lines of evidence regarding both process and outcomes related to the development of hierarchy and inequality in human societies. However, we believe that SHVR’s framework is incomplete without attention to the potential group-level functions of egalitarianism. Specifically, we argue that egalitarianism is not just an outcome of individual strategies – it is an adaptation that enhances group-level coordination and decision-making.

In Peninsular Malaysia, where we have conducted ethnographic fieldwork for 13 years among hunter-gatherers (Batek) and hunter-horticulturalists (Semai and Temiar), we hear a common refrain: “We are one.” People in remote villages speak of themselves as cohesive units that succeed or fail together. Whether it is sharing food, collectively harvesting cassava or bananas, or blockading ancestral forests against loggers, there is a palpable sense of communitas (Turner, Reference Turner1969). Their social life is also highly egalitarian. This is unlikely to be a coincidence.

SHVR’s account is explicitly individualistic: egalitarian societies are those in which individuals can secure resources, status, and autonomy. This is a useful corrective to overly moralized accounts of egalitarianism, especially those that have recently muddied the waters in the popular sphere (Graeber & Wengrow, Reference Graeber and Wengrow2021), and we should always prioritize evolutionary accounts that are rooted in methodological individualism. But it risks overlooking the possibility that egalitarianism is not merely a byproduct of individual strategies, but a collective achievement with important group-level consequences. Nominally egalitarian societies are not just collections of individuals with conflicting ambitions that cancel out into a state of egalitarianism. They envision and achieve collective goals. If we hope to understand how humans evolved either egalitarian processes or outcomes, we need to understand not only what egalitarian norms tear down but also what they build up.

Boehm (Reference Boehm1993, Reference Boehm1996, Reference Boehm1997) classic argument is that egalitarianism emerges through “reverse dominance hierarchies,” in which groups actively suppress would-be dominants through coalitionary action. While SHVR incorporate levelling mechanisms into their framework, they treat them primarily as extensions of individual self-interest, with little attention to how these processes stabilize groups of individuals with different goals, knowledge, and abilities. In Boehm’s account, egalitarianism is not just about preventing domination – it is about maintaining a social environment in which cooperation and coordination can flourish, and groups can avoid the internal fractures that would otherwise threaten their survival (Boehm 1996).

This emergent property perspective becomes clearer when we consider the role of egalitarian institutions in facilitating collective decision-making. As we have argued elsewhere (Venkataraman & Kraft, Reference Venkataraman and Kraft2025), consensus-based political systems in foraging societies are not simply expressions of autonomy, but adaptive solutions to problems of social coordination and information processing. Egalitarian norms – such as the suppression of domineering individuals, the encouragement of broad participation in decision-making, and the maintenance of open channels of communication – enhance the flow of information within groups and improve the quality of collective decisions. In this sense, egalitarianism can be understood as a form of “political technology” that supports collective intelligence.

While individuals may pursue status, resources, and autonomy, the emergent properties of egalitarian systems – stable cooperation and effective coordination – operate at the level of the group. For example, we have argued that consensus-based decision-making helps forager groups navigate the twin risks of groupthink and fragmentation, both of which can have severe fitness consequences (Venkataraman & Kraft, Reference Venkataraman and Kraft2025). Groups that fail to coordinate effectively or that fracture under internal tensions incur severe costs. It is telling that many successful societies, whether intentional or unintentional in nature, have converged on egalitarian norms under similar ecological circumstances (Venkataraman & Kraft, Reference Venkataraman and Kraft2025).

SHVR also highlight domains in which egalitarian societies are unequal, but they implicitly equate difference with inequality. Not all differences are inequalities, and equating them risks collapsing analytically distinct phenomena (Hoffman et al., Reference Hoffman, Farquharson and Venkataraman2024; Venkataraman et al., Reference Venkataraman, Hoffman, Farquharson, Davis, Hagen, Hames, Hewlett, Glowacki, Jang, Kelly, Kramer, Lew-Levy, Starkweather, Syme and Hawkes2024). Differences in behavior, skills, and knowledge can also potentially be beneficial when considered in the broader social context of cooperation and social learning, which is tantamount to the human socioecological niche (Kaplan, Hooper, & Gurven, Reference Kaplan, Hooper and Gurven2009).

Consider the gendered division of subsistence labor among hunter-gatherers. Males and females target resources with different risk profiles, generating a pattern in which men tend to hunt and women tend to gather (Codding & Bird, Reference Codding, Bird, Koster, Scelza and Shenk2024). Because men and women do different things with their time, this can result in differences in skill, knowledge, and resources. We agree with SHVR that these differences have the potential to lead to inequalities (e.g., via trade-offs in childcare and politicking), but their account remains incomplete without considering potential group-functional benefits. Men and women bring complementary knowledge in collective decision-making processes (Venkataraman & Kraft, Reference Venkataraman and Kraft2025), and their divergent skill sets have the effect of boosting household energy production and providing balanced nutrient profiles (Gurven & Hill, Reference Gurven and Hill2009; Kraft et al., Reference Kraft, Venkataraman, Wallace, Crittenden, Holowka, Stieglitz, Harris, Raichlen, Wood, Gurven and Pontzer2021; Venkataraman et al., Reference Venkataraman, Hagen, Hawkes, Hames, Lew-Levy, Jang, Glowacki, Hoffman, Kramer, Davis, Starkweather, Hewlett, Garfield and Kelly2026). Biesele (Reference Biesele1993) documents how, for the Ju/’hoansi, these gendered differences are baked into the structure of the society’s myths, norms, and rituals. To frame the gendered division of labor as an inequality is superficial, and SHVR’s other domains of inequality deserve similar scrutiny.

Egalitarianism is not only the expression of individual autonomy under particular socioecological conditions but also a set of institutions that help groups function as coherent, adaptive units. This does not require a return to romantic notions of collective virtue in a naive group selectionist framework. Rather, it points to a more integrated view in which individual-level processes and group-level functions are mutually constitutive.