How did the first rich people get rich?
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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.
By controlling a big amount of land. That gave them ability to produce a lot of food, which is something everyone needs to survive.