This chapter explores the dynamics of leadership, social stratification, and religious evolution from hunter-gatherer societies to modern times. In egalitarian hunter-gatherer groups, fluid leadership was established based on individual expertise as needed for the situation without formal structure. The egalitarian nature of the groups was maintained through humor, shunning, and consensus. The agricultural revolution saw the rise of centralized leadership, stratification, and religious control, reinforcing social hierarchies. The dominance of centralized power and religious institutions curtailed individual freedoms, including altered states of consciousness and sexuality. These stratifications continue to this day, upheld by systems established to maintain the status quo and the dominant position of various individuals above others based on gender, race, sexuality, disability, and other individual traits. We also explore some of the ways that contemporary research challenges these seemingly inevitable hierarchical social structures and show how people have creatively organized themselves.