ABSTRACT
Archaeologists rarely discuss past human characteristics in their models of past cultures, and they practically never consider the variability of psychological characteristics within populations or the importance of certain personality traits. I would like to make a case for the key role that sociopathic personalities (and less severe expressions of “aggrandizers”) may have played in promoting changes in sociopolitical and economic organizations in the past. The key characteristics that can account for cultural changes are: (1) sociopathic personalities’ pursuit of self-interest irrespective of consequences to others; (2) their attraction to power and control; (3) their unrelenting pursuit of these goals; (4) their ability to deceive and manipulate people and social situations to achieve their ends; and (5) their ingenuity in devising strategies to achieve goals. It seems likely that sociopathic personalities have always been present in limited numbers within all human populations. I suggest that sociopathic and similar personalities provide a key element in understanding why fundamental changes took place prehistorically from egalitarian foraging bands to groups of transegalitarian hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists. The key linchpin in this transition was a change in economic production that allowed surpluses to be created, owned, and used.
