Argues that the struggle over income, wealth, status and privilege-inequality-has been the principal, defining issue in human history and provides a novel framework for understanding inequality today  The Origins and Dynamics of Inequality , Jon D. Wisman claims more: it is the defining issue of all human history. The struggle over inequality has been the underlying force driving human history’s unfolding. Drawing on the dynamics of inequality, Wisman re-interprets economic history and society. Beyond according inequality the central role in history, this book is novel in two other respects: First, transcending the general failure of social scientists and historians to anchor their work in explicit theories of human behaviour, this book grounds the origins and dynamics of inequality in evolutionary psychology, or more specifically, Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. Second, this book accords central importance to ideology in legitimating inequality, a role typically inadequately addressed by social scientists and historians.