People often assume that hunter-gatherers only lived in nomadic, egalitarian bands. But throughout history, HGs built societies as complex & stratified as those of many agriculturalists. My new favorite example are the Calusa, who built a kingdom & state in SW Florida. [thread]

When the Spanish chronicled them in the 1550s, the Calusa consisted of 50-60 politically consolidated villages overseen by a king (a hereditary sovereign who held authority for life). Their capital was on the island of Mound Key & had a structure said to fit at least 2000 people.

The Calusa collected tribute/taxes from polities across southern Florida, including mats, animal hides, feathers, breads made of roots, and captives from Spanish shipwrecks (one of those captives recorded his 17-year stay among them, which is partly how we know so much today).

Calusa infrastructure was incredible. They built a 4-km-long canal on Pine Island, probably for transportation, fishing, exchange, & tribute payment. The construction project was a grand, collaborative project, involving the movement of at least 30,000 cubic meters of earth.

They dug another canal through the island of Mound Key and, at its mouth, built “watercourts”—inundated rectangular structures, each thousands of square meters in area. These probably served to catch & store fish: crosses b/w aquariums & enormous living refrigerators.

Why were the Calusa capable of building such societies? A big part of the answer seems to their environment: The Calusa lived in a coastal environment overflowing with aquatic resources (fish, shellfish, etc.). This allowed them to settle, intensify, & accumulate.

Anthropologists, especially evolutionary ones, focus on hunter-gatherers that lived in harsh, marginal habitats. But complex, sedentary HGs were common in the past—probably deep into the Pleistocene. Recognizing this, I'm convinced, has big implications for how we narrate history