That’s not the kind of evidence I’m basing my opinions on. I’m reading historians who tell us what it’s like because they have looked at the evidence. What there is of it. For ancient times, this is pretty sparse.

For example, read the series on peasants that I linked to an acoup.blog. It’s largely a demographic model because peasants don’t write to us and the elites were not very interested in them. But it’s based on things like child mortality rates and I don’t think there is anyone claiming that there were any societies with modern child mortality rates in ancient times?

Also, exploitation by the elites is part of the model.