Pre-literate peoples left no written records of how they lived, so we have no direct evidence what social formations they arranged themselves in or what they thought about them. It's tempting to posit a composite, catch-all "ancient society" and project stuff onto that from our own ideological biases, but I suspect that there were in fact various societies, spread across vast geographic distances, in "ancient times" -- and that each had particular social arrangements or modes of governance they preferred. Unfortunately, a lot of this is lost to history. Some isn't. It'd be foolhardy to draw broad conclusions from unwritten records, and only artifcacts, excavated at particular, isolated archaeological spots, and furthermore to say that what was revealed applied to how all people once were. A rough analog are the more
[WS:] I fully agree. The myths of idyllic bucolic societies of the past are just that - myths. AFIK, the indirect archaeological evidence suggests the contrary: harsh, brutal and miserable living conditions, disease, short life span, infanticide, inequality. It is possible to infer the existence of inequality from the analysis of the bone structure, which in turn reflects dietary intake. If some people ate better than other, that strongly suggest social stratification - and that is still true today!
In my view, the "noble savage" mythology glorifying primitive societies is a misguided effort to counter the triumphalist ethnocentrism and jingoism found in abundance in modern states (and ancient ones too) by simply reversing the "moral sign:" what is positive in ethnocentric jingoism becomes negative in noble savagery myths, and vice versa. At the end of the day, however, both attempts are simply two competing ideologies that selectively pick facts to support their positions, and rejecting those facts that do not fit the narrative.
I find such "moral stories" extremely annoying, because they are constructed in such a way that give the audience no choice but to accept them on their face value on the pain of being labeled not only a fool at odds with the "facts," but also morally suspect by being unduly influenced by questionable ideologies. This is precisely the way the right wing commentators and pundits tell their stories. There is no room for any debate here, you are either with them or against them, and if the latter, you either walk away or - if they are really on your case - put 9mm of lead right between their eyes (cf. _The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Honor_of_Katharina_Blum )
Wojtek