Hi Umair - speaking as a historical novelist writing about the 16th century, I think you're being unfair to people in pre-modern/medieval times. They were very far from being idiots: they had to work together and look after each other because there was no other option. In the medieval 3 field system, they had to come together in a village council to decide how the fields and coppices would be managed each year. They had to work together in households to make sure there was food in late winter, spring and summer while the crops were growing. An idiot in the Greek sense would have been beaten up a couple of times and then kicked out of the village. Of course then he'd probably go to a town where if he behaved too idiotically, he would probably be hanged. The men had to be ready to fight together for their village (a posse comitatus meant the "power of the country"). The women had to band together to do things like laundry and brewing beer and raising kids. They did not have it easy and nobody got away with continual selfishness.

Of course in the accounts of the very early colonists of America - Jamestown and off the Mayflower - you do find examples of idiocy, but that's because the colonists were not peasants who would probably not have needed so much help from the First Peoples, but gentleman adventurers.

I rest my case.

PS. Can I recommend a marvellous history book to you? Read Ruth Goodman's latest book "Domestic Revolution. It's utterly groundbreaking.