While the original ideas are Maslow’s, the pyramid is not. Someone, somewhere along the way, adapted his original work into the pyramid graphic. The pyramid is someone else’s interpretation of Maslow’s original work; and it has become an iconic representation of his ideas.
https://drsaraheaton.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs/
What Maslow does say about the hierarchy of needs is, “if I may assign arbitrary figures for the sake of illustration, it is as if the average citizen is satisfied perhaps 85% in his physiological needs, 70% in his safety needs, 50% in his love needs, 40% in his self-esteem needs and 10% in his self-actualization needs” (Maslow, 1943, pp. 388-389). So if we were to draw a diagram to represent Maslow’s hierarchy, the physiological needs would need to represent a much bigger piece of the pyramid.
To debunk Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs one only needs to point at the cave paintings of Lascaux etc: seeing creativity only as a form of self-actualization is a very limited perspective all human societies
/John Coberco, A Barber' s Head