Paleolithic and Neolithic

As I read about both the Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures, I couldn't help but compare their strengths and weaknesses. I believe one of the greatest strengths of the Paleolithic people was their complete egalitarianism. In the Paleolithic society there was no hierarchy or sense of one person having power over another. Everyone in their society was on equal footing. Men and women both worked to provide for the group. Though they had separate tasks, men and women were equally important. However, as society grew and developed, it became stratified with women taking a subservient position to men. Even today, there are many societies that treat women as little more than slaves. This was unthinkable in the Paleolithic culture. The weakness of the Paleolithic culture, however, is that they lead such a nomadic life, there is little evidence of their existence. The strength of the Neolithic culture was its ability to grow and store food. With this ability, societies grew and expanded. Because this culture was less nomadic and people stayed in one place, they were able to develop new technologies which expanded their agricultural development and made life easier. However, these societies also began to accumulate wealth and status which lead to the dominance of some groups over others. As permanent societies developed, the hunter gatherer societies disappeared. Though small pockets of these cultures remained well into the Modern Age, I believe the hunter gatherer societies were doomed, not only Because of the end of the ice age and death of large mammals but also because humans seem to have an instinctive need to evolve and to tame the world around them. Certainly this took along time to occur, as evidenced by the length of the Paleolithic era, but once homo sapiens started moving forward with innovations and technology, things moved very quickly. Though we all long for simpler times, with less technology and stress, would we really want to go back to living in caves and hunting our food?