How did the first rich people get rich?
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By controlling a big amount of land. That gave them ability to produce a lot of food, which is something everyone needs to survive.
Wealth first became possible with the development of farming. This allowed the production of surplus resources and freed up time to do things other than just hunt and gather.
The richest people at that time would be the ones who first started organizing military power. If you command the loyalty of a bunch of guys with weapons, you can offer to protect the farmers and townsfolk from outside threats. In exchange you were paid some of their surplus production. If you get lucky, there aren’t that many outside threats to deal with, and you accumulate resources for basically nothing. If you’re unscrupulous, you can start to use your military power on the people you purportedly protect, extracting even more resources out of them.
Alternative routes to riches at this time would be commerce or religion. Merchants and traders could accumulate significant wealth by getting goods to people who couldn’t otherwise access them, then making advantageous trades. Religious authorities often commanded a lot of reverence from the general public and could direct donations and “sacrifices” towards their own personal wealth.
The subject of Economics teaches concepts like this. At its most basic form, getting more benefit out of something than the cost put into it will create new value. Done enough times over enough different things creates vast wealth that can put back into the system and snowball.
Also, there are lots of natural resources that can be used (and abused) to suck value from the earth and used for human purposes.
I’m sorry but this is a very vague question. What exactly are you trying to ask? Cause if I take it as a literal question, I would have to say, I have no idea. I don’t even know who the first person to get rich is. We can guess all day but unless someone thousands of years ago wrote, “These are the diaries of the first rich person” we don’t know.
about 50,000 – 10,000 years ago
when our ancestors(homo sapien/neanderthals) began to exhibit advanced cognitive and cultural behaviors, laying the foundation for the development of more complex societies and eventually the modern concept of wealth.
Some in the thread are positing that farming was the beginning of wealth and stratification but that’s not true though it does dominate pop-history discussions of pre-history. The period before which we have written records. Archeological evidence however shows that it was more commonly “Hunter Gatherer’s” who engaged in monumentalism that early farmers, that the earliest towns and cities even those that were did not engage in intensive agriculture as we generally understand but relied on year-round or seasonal superabundance and whose residents managed the landscape and engaged in horticulture in addition to more traditional hunting and gathering (as opposed to intensive farming). And that these early prehistory societies from what we can tell from what remains in the archaeological records and from records of the societies most similar to them closer to the modern day such as Native Americans demonstrate a level of depth and scale that is not reflected in discussions of pop-history. Early intensive farming closest to what we understand it today thus initially seems to have popped up in less desirable areas where superabundance could not be relied upon because with good land and land management super abundance without agriculture was very possible.
But as to your question about wealth:
*“It’s worth mentioning here that settlers in different parts of North America referred to a whole variety of things as ‘Indian money’. Often these were shell beads or actual shells. But in almost every case, the term is largely a projection of European categories on to objects that look like money, but really aren’t. Probably the most famous of these, wampum, did eventually come to be used as a trade currency in transactions between settlers and indigenous peoples of the Northeast, and was even accepted as currency in several American states for transactions between settlers (in Massachusetts and New York, for instance, wampum was legal tender in shops). In dealings between indigenous people, however, it was almost never used to buy or sell anything. Rather, it was employed to pay fines, and as a way of forming and remembering compacts and agreements. This was true in California as well. But in California, unusually, money also seems to have been used in more or less the way we expect money to have been used: for purchases, rentals and loans. In California in general, and its northwest corner in particular, the central role of money in indigenous societies was combined with with a cultural emphasis on thrift and simplicity, a disapproval of wasteful pleasures, and a glorification of work that – according to Goldschmidt[…]”*
*Excerpt From David Graeber & David Wengrow. “The Dawn of Everything.” Chapter 4*
The simple answer thus seems to be it would have varied.
The vast majority of prehistory is lost to use due to a lack of written records but by studying temporally closer groups to hunter gatherers such as Native Americans and by peering into the past as much as we can with archeology we can fill in some gaps. In Chapter 4 of their book Graeber and Wengrow discuss, how geographically and climatically proximate regions with similar access to resources and climate thanks to the coast could produce such different societies. One highly stratified and slave holding, that did not collect wealth, and the other that rejected slavery but saw wealth as the highest thing one could aspire too.These are radically differently configured societies of ‘hunter-gatherers’ with diametrically opposed outlooks on wealth and appropriate means for labor in close proximity to one another.
So again the answer is it varies on society.
Exactly the same way to get rich today
Exploit other people’s labor
Take over land and make people pay to use it
My esteemed great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather Cornelius Ogg the first was enterprising homo erectus with a shrewd business acumen. You see at the time fire was hard to come by because it only showed up when the sky man became angry and cried fiery tiers so a lot of families couldn’t afford a fire. He pioneered a way to mass produce fire by banging black rock together and soon in defiance of sky man there was a fire in every cave. Ogg traded many black rocks for many berries, and the black rock became the legal tender of the day. Which is where the phrase tinderbox comes from.
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Religion has been used as a form of government in many societies throughout history. In ancient times, religious leaders often held significant political power and were responsible for governing their communities. For example, in ancient Egypt, the pharaoh was considered a god-king and was responsible for both religious and political affairs. Similarly, in ancient Greece, the Oracle at Delphi was consulted on important political decisions.
Religion has also been used to create wealth in many ways throughout history. One of the most common ways is through tithing, which is the practice of giving a portion of one’s income to the church. This practice has been around for centuries and has been used by many religions to accumulate wealth. Another way religion has been used to create wealth is through the sale of religious artifacts and relics. These items were often sold to pilgrims who believed that they would bring them good fortune or cure their ailments
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