Peasants as a class predominated numerically in most agricultural societies from the time when the Neolithic agricultural revolution took hold until early-modern times. But rulers, movers and shakers tended to come from different classes, and historiography and social analysis became the preserve of a largely non-peasant social intelligentsia. "Official" attitudes to peasants sometimes scorn them and dismiss their importance as the basis of pre-modern civilisations. Hence the cliché of "the peasant mentality, with its inherent conservatism and apathy towards change".