ABSTRACT
Bighorn sheep butt heads to determine which is the strongest. They meet annually to adjudicate relative strength, with the winners gaining sexual access to the ewes. Each year, which rams come out on top varies with the vagaries of battle, but the nature of these contests remains constant. These animals have engaged in this stereotyped restructuring of comparative rank from time immemorial and will probably be doing so for as long as their species endures. This, however, is not the case with human beings. People have many more ways of asserting hierarchical precedence. Not only do we not knock our heads together, but the forms of strength through which we seek dominance are altered with the social context. As with sheep, which individuals turn out on top varies with the times and circumstances, but so do the means through which supremacy is established. The very nature of human hierarchies is, therefore, mercurial in a way that those of other social species are not. Indeed, so fluid can these be that some observers have thought them utterly plastic. Social status has been considered so malleable that it can even be reshaped into something completely egalitarian.
