Villages quickly became the seats of local governments. At first, village chiefs provided a redistribution service that benefited all concerned. Their representatives collected surpluses from successful farmers, dispensing village-manufactured goods in return. The chiefs transferred goods from those with more to those with less, and provided for the common good by storing food for lean times or village celebrations. In addition, chiefs organized the common defense of the village and its associated farms.

This initially equitable arrangement between the villagers and the farmers openly invited exploitation. It is a simple fact that surpluses have always attract clever exploiters—this is biological evolution's M.O. We shouldn't be surprised, should in fact expect, that as surplus food accumulated in centralized villages, some clever humans would latch onto it in a less-than-equitable manner.

Perhaps the top-down control by the chiefs was initially benign, but crafty minds soon saw the golden opportunities surplus production created. Increased top-level control was soon applied. It led to more work for the masses and to larger surpluses for the few. Once this runaway positive-feedback process began, it continued until it generated the maximum possible control (and hence the greatest possible surpluses) for the leaders. As the fist of government control tightened, transfers increasingly ran from the poor to the already wealthy. As American anthropologist George Cowgill put it, "A degree of exploitation considered criminal by one generation was tolerated by the next and was soon hallowed by elite-inspired ideology as built into the structure of the cosmos."

This, then, is how easy-going, egalitarian, chimpanzee-like humans were transformed into industrious, hard-working, ant-like cogs in civilized superorganisms. Although we lacked the self-sacrificing spirit of ants, near top-down control brought out the human animal's full potential—such as it was—to produce surplus food. A few humans at the top could convince (or force) the bulk of the other humans to work from sunup to sundown doing repetitious but productive labor while consuming a diet of cheaply produced grain. The ticket to human happiness and health was, of course, to be among the elite in charge, and stay in charge down through the generations. The first systems that evolved to achieve such all-encompassing control were the human superorganisms we call city-states. Reminiscent of colonies of ants, these regimented entities captured humanity.