The reason things changed was not because of human nature. It was because of increased population and the subsequent invention of agriculture. Those are both social-situational changes, not automatic expression of inborn human aggression. If anything, despite their unfortunate consequences, they are evidence of human inventiveness and mutual care.
Meanwhile, Charles might also have mentioned a second reason to disbelieve the innate hierarchy story -- the human brain. We are vastly different in that area from even chimpanzees. Our instincts, whatever they are, do not automatically manifest themselves.
> > --- Charles
> > http://www.lsa.umich.edu/anthro/faculty_staff/wright.html
> > > ) Humans had been
> > > living in non-hierarchical societies for , oh ,
> > > 200,000 years when the state
> > > arose, according to current paleoanthropolgical
> > > evidence.
> > >
> > > So, there is nothing in our nature that prevents us
> > > from living without
> > > states or . .. It is possible for the
> > > state to whither away,
> > > naturally
>
> Charles, birds have hierarchies, dogs live in hierarchical packs and so do
> most primates. What makes you think that proto-humans did not? Lack of
> evidence (which is understandable since these groups were non-literate) is
> not the evidence to the contrary.
>
> I agree with Justin that we need the state to have all the goods things
> that
> we enjoy, and it is even better if the state is a democratic one. Modern
> statelessness (e.g. in Afghanistan or Ethiopia) will almost certainly
> result
> in warlordism of the worst kind rather than hunting and gathering utopia.
>
> Wojtek