This chapter challenges the dominant historiography that confines the origins of democracy to classical Athens and the Roman Republic, arguing instead for a deep and global history of egalitarian governance that predates “civilization” as conventionally defined. It contends that state formation and the rise of complex hierarchies—hallmarks of what is celebrated as civilization—are in fact inimical to democracy, replacing communal self-rule with systems of domination. Drawing on anthropological, archaeological, and historical evidence from Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania, the chapter reconstructs forms of direct, participatory governance practiced for hundreds of thousands of years by hunter-gatherer and small-scale agrarian societies. These systems relied on consensus, rotation of leadership, and mechanisms to prevent the consolidation of power. By juxtaposing these traditions with the coercive structures of statehood and representative democracy, the chapter redefines democracy not as a European innovation but as humanity’s most ancient political inheritance—one repeatedly eroded, but never extinguished, by the spread of hierarchical states.