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I would argue that both are often preceded by philosophy. Why do we believe that equality is even a social good, or that the common man should ever have a voice? For tens of thousands of years prior to the enlightenment, the very idea was mocked. You were born into a social position and there you stayed. It was simply expected that if you were the child of a king that alone gave you legitimacy as the ruler of your people. If you were the child of a peasant farmer, it was a waste to teach you to read because you were destined to be a farmer on some lord’s land. Nobody ever thought about it or if they did, they came to the conclusion that this simply should be.
Likewise we understand the universe in a rational empirical way. For most of human history, it wasn’t so. The universe was run by some kind of spirits and that’s why things are as they are. That tower fell? God caused it.
And later on politics tries to enact things that philosophy has taught. We believe in equality, so we better do something because it’s not happening on its own.
I believe social mobility by and large hasn't changed much, or at all between the middle ages and now.
I suspect you've been psyopped by 'the Enlightenment', the age responsible for many myths such as 'medieval Europeans thought the Earth was flat', 'people didn't wash in the middle ages' etc.
Did Aristotle think so? I don't believe that to be true. So it's unlikely that such was a common belief among educated people in Europe in the past 2000 years.
Hunter gatherers and such were and are very egalitarian.
It was the increase in population density and states that created any inequality in status. So, at most there may have been ~6000 years of people living in agricultural societies, most of which weren't really that unequal being really primitive.
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