The Hindu caste system has been around for at least 3000 years and it was accepted in India as the only way for society to be. Created from the belief that society was born from the Hindu god of creation Brahma, this caste system was both hierarchical and absolutely rigid as it did not allow people from castes to either interact with each other or move. The castes were believed to derive from a person´s karma (work) and dharma (duty) and they were as follows: brahmins or intellectuals, kshatriyas, or warriors and rulers, the vaishyas, or merchants, the Shudras or laborers and finally the Dalits, or outcasts.
In contrast, we have the systems of Mesoamerica and the Andes, Mayas, Aztecs and Incas, among others, whose social structures during the periods 600 B.C.E and 1450 C.E were also composed by scaffolds, but unlike the Hindu´s these scaffolds were not rigid and immovable and they did not derive from a god, but rather, the importance for society of a person´s activities. Thus, their social strata was conformed mostly by the rulers, given their right to rule by the gods, the warriors, crafspeople, who sometimes could be as important as warriors, and finally, slaves, captured from invaded peoples.
In the case of medieval Europe, we had a society that had disbanded from the earlier Roman Empire and thus much smaller kingdoms and especially earldoms were created. In medieval european society, the top strata was formed by the nobilities and the only way to be a part of this society was through birth, exactly as it happened in Hindu society. Also, there was no mobility between the strata. After the nobility, there was the intellectuals and people whose lifestyle depended on a craft, then peasants and finally the outcasts.
In all these societies we can see a similarity; the heads of these societies are people born to the nobility of the nations and their posts cannot be earned but must be inherited. Also, they were all stratified, meaning that it was almost impossible for people to move from one strata to the other and finally, in all three there was a connection between the divinities and the way that society conformed itself.
But there are differences as well. The main one would be the level of rigidity in movement within societies and the repercussions when movement was generated. In Hindu society, social movement was, until recently, unheard of, whereas in medieval european society and the Mesoamerican and Andean societies, this was not as impossible.
