BTW, I appreciate everything you're saying, thanks for hanging in there with me.

But aren't you ascribing some sort of qualitative value to these descriptions that is entirely unnecessary? I'm simply talking about comparative capabilities of energy sources and material science - e.g. this society was using horses to plow fields, this one used oxen, this one was doing it all by hand. There are implications to the net crop yields in each of these societies. This may in turn afford that society different modes of living, social structure, warfare, etc., but who am I to say one is better than another? Those evaluations are irrelevant to anything I believe I've said and frankly contrary to my stated fascination with and the value of societies in the pre-contact Americas a couple posts ago.

To wit, in your example you talk about living in communes and giving up hierarchical systems as progress, which seems completely out of left field relative to the context in which I have used. Now, in Star Trek's world maybe society has developed capabilities that enable sustainable peaceful communes without hierarchy, I don't know, nor would the context of my point care (it's tough to even puzzle out what it implies). But Star Trek's ability to harness new energy sources and develop new materials (transparent aluminum) certainly is more advanced than where we are today (within the context I described, and have remained faithful to in these posts).

> [inferences from modern hunter-gatherers must be carefully harvested, but they are what we have for analogues]

agreed, was trying to point out the need to be careful with this, while preserving the value of what they can teach us. I'm interested in your statement that modern foragers probably differ a great deal from what foragers must have been like in a pre-agricultural world. That's an interesting statement that would be fun to unpack. First, what do we mean when we say "modern"? It's notable that until very recently, the horse represented the top speed any human could travel at. It was that way for eons.

> unambiguous way to categorize and rank societies is fatally flawed

Again, I can't help but think that you're ascribing a value system where I am not. Comparing societies by material science and energy source capabilities is pretty close to an objective way to talk about (categorize) differences between those societies, and it is a pretty linear progression forward or backward, and measured using things like energy inputs, energy outputs, and materials. There is no need to start saying "this one is better than that one", and I feel you're making an assumption that there is that kind of ranking going on. That is foreign to what I'm discussing, subjective, and I disclaim it. It chafes me to feel that's necessary to explain. Now, one could say that the ability of the Comanche to breed horses and employ them directly in combat made them "better" than the Tonkawas from an survivability or evolutionary standpoint. Or that insulation from the variability of hunting seasons made one society "better" in the same sense, but that's an entirely different discussion, and I'm not sure "better" has a place there either. Better equipped, better prepared, perhaps, but you can see how we're adding a different context in at that point.