Poverty has always been a lack. Whether it's lack of things to trade for something you need, lack of anything to truly produce what you need to survive, lack of the means to procure things… in a way, in neolithic times, probably you could call the less able ones of the tribe impoverished in a way, lacking the methods to hunt and gather as much as the rest, having to endure more hunger.

It's just different now, but the concept exists as long as the very concepts of "more" and "less" have existed.

straving to death