[[n-allen2015]] [[s-zimmer2009]] > Participation in long-distance trade, gift exchange, and a new set of cults requiring public sacrifices and feasting became the foundation for a new kind of social power. Stockbreeding is by nature a volatile economy. Herders who lose animals always borrow from those who still have them. The social obligations associated with these loans are institutionalized among the world's pastoralists as the basis for a fluid system of status distinctions. Those who loaned animals acquired power over those who borrowed them, and those who sponsored feasts obligated their guests. Early Proto-Indo-European included a vocabulary about verbal contracts bound by oaths (`*h₁óitos-`), used in later religious rituals to specify the obligations between the weak (humans) and the strong (gods). Reflexes of this root were preserved in Celtic, Germanic, Greek, and Tocharian. The model of political relations it references probably began in the Eneolithic. Only a few Eneolithic steppe people wore the elaborate costumes of tusks, plaques, beads, and rings or carried the stone maces that symbolized power, but children were included in this exceptional group, suggesting that the rich animal loaners at least tried to see that their children inherited their status. Status competition between regional leaders (`*weik-potis` or `*reǵ-`) in later Proto-Indo-European resulted in a surprisingly widespread set of shared status symbols.