Stanford archaeologist traces the origins of authority to the Andes of Peru

I don't think the headline aligns with the article, at all.

The article is reporting academic work that postulates the elements that moved people from bands to authoritarianism, and how this particular Lima, Peru site highlights this anthropologic theory, rather than identifying a specific location where, pandemic-like, authority began.

I thought this was odd because, after the Agricultural Revolution, what society wasn't authoritarian? It seems to have spontaneously arose everywhere.

It sounds more like this is an example of the rise of authority within a specific society, examined as a window onto social processes at the beginning of the development of authority. There is no way that cultural phenomena from Chavin disseminated worldwide.

This just implies the first known appearance (archaeologically), not necessarily a, erm, common root.

This is called science nowadays.

We had a whole bunch of degenerates who publish papers which prove that so-called proto-Russians wrote Vedas because symbols similar to swastikas has been found on some excavations somewhere in taiga.

Idiots, idiots everywhere.

The formalized process of extraction of knowledge of underlying fundamental principles from surrounding Brahman is what we call scientific inquiry. The goal, emphasised by Buddha, is to see things as they are, without piling up meaningless abstraction and producing himeras and dogmas.

According to the principle of similar environmental conditioning, similar social formations would emerge due to similar selection pressures. The notion of authority goes back to families with dominant individuals and to the collective child care as an effective evolutionary strategy.

"Scientists" who have understood as little as this would never have published such nonsense like a single origin of phenomena which is a natural adaptation and is shared among many animals.

Similarly, segregated societies could arrive at similar symbols and notions independently, by observing and reflecting on the similar (the same) environment, without any connection whatsoever.

Projecting human social structures onto animal interactions almost always results in wrong conclusions about both.

Sometimes I wish HN used these nonsense stories as a gullibility test. Revoke the upvote powers of anyone who upvotes this pure nonsense.

Sort of but not really. I don't think Putin or Xi or Assad gained further authority by attending any of those. I say sort of because it depends on how much you are willing to distort the meaning of "authoritarianism".

More like, the same tools were implemented everywhere about the same time. For example, exploiting water sources as part of your tools to control people is a big part of early empire building efforts in China and Mesopotamia. Without water you really can't grow much food. And without a regular source of food you're easier to kill off without risking soldiers. So, it stands to reason that our civilization went down this path due to the factors of production regarding agriculture. All it would take is a few strong and organized bands of thugs to manhandle the rest of the population. Add religion or some weird myth to back up authenticity of the authority then you got a solid base from which to expand and influence other areas. It's also why areas like Zomia came into being as empires clashed then people got tired of the nonsense and fled quite literally for the foothills of mountain ranges. It seems to me it's odd the anthropologists didn't notice this pattern in the stories, written records, and art of each culture examined. It's a hard pattern to miss. I wonder if we as a civilization have become so indoctrinated in seeing authority as authentic and desirable that we can't see how often it's propped up by fear of reprisal and blind faith.