This article is published by Technoscience. Here is an excerpt:

It is widely accepted that democracy emerged in the Mediterranean world around 2,500 years ago, before spreading to other parts of the world through cultural contact. But new research suggests that the inhabitants of the Americas may have practiced democratic-style collective governance at least a thousand years before European contact.

According to a new paper published in the journal American Antiquity, artifacts recovered from the Cold Springs site in central Georgia indicate the presence of a “council house” at the site, which according to radiocarbon dating was inhabited about 1,500 years ago.

Assembly houses, still in use today by descendants of these early American communities, were large, circular structures that could accommodate hundreds or even thousands of participants in ritualized gatherings involving collective decision-making.

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