From egalitarianism to kleptocracy

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. fb2. ). Edit

Jared Diamond Chapter 14.

In 1979, while flying with a group of familiar missionaries over a remote swampy area of New Guinea, I noticed several isolated huts scattered miles apart. The pilot began to tell me that recently, somewhere in the vast wetlands, a group of Indonesian crocodile hunters had encountered a wandering group of New Guineans. The unexpected meeting triggered mutual panic, resulting in the Indonesians shooting several of the natives.

My missionary friends suggested that it could have been the Fayu—a group of nomads with whom contact had not been established, known only through the accounts of their frightened neighbors, the Kirikiri, who were also former nomads that had recently agreed to settle down and establish a mission. The first contacts between outsiders and the indigenous groups of New Guinea are always fraught with complications, but this time the beginning was particularly ominous. In any case, one of my friends, Doug, soon flew to the Fayu by helicopter in hopes of establishing friendly relations with them. When he returned, alive but shaken, we heard the following instructive story.

It turned out that the Fayu mostly live in separate families scattered throughout the swamp, coming together once or twice a year to arrange bride exchanges. Dag’s visit coincided with such a gathering, which brought together several dozen Fayu. While thirty to forty people might not seem like a large gathering to us—rather, it’s quite ordinary—for the Fayu, it was an exceptional event, fraught with danger: murderers suddenly found themselves face to face with the relatives of their victims. For instance, in the situation described, one Fayu spotted another who had killed his father. The enraged son, brandishing an axe, rushed at the murderer, but his own companions grabbed him and, working together, pinned him to the ground; when the murderer approached the restrained son, still wielding the axe, they treated him the same way. Both men were held until it was clear that their attempts to break free and their furious cries had completely exhausted them, and they could be released. Other men, trembling with anger and impatience, periodically shouted insults at each other and struck the ground menacingly with their axes. For the few remaining days of the gathering, the tension did not ease, and Dag could only pray that his visit would not end in bloodshed.

The Fayu number around 400 hunter-gatherers, divided into four clans and roaming over an area of several hundred square miles. According to their own accounts, there were once about 2,000 Fayu, but this number has significantly decreased due to intertribal conflicts. They lacked political and social mechanisms for peacefully resolving serious disputes—mechanisms that we take for granted. After a visit from Doug, one group of Fayu invited a brave missionary couple to settle nearby, and over the course of more than a decade, they have gradually managed to persuade their charges to abandon violence. The Fayu have finally become another part of the modern world, and now, no one knows what future awaits them in this world.

Many other tribes, which had previously had no contact with the outside world, particularly in New Guinea or the Amazon basin, were similarly incorporated into modern society thanks to missionaries. Following the missionaries came other emissaries from the outside world: teachers and doctors, officials and military personnel. The expansion of the state and the spread of religion have been closely linked throughout known history, regardless of whether they occurred peacefully (as was the case with the Fayu) or violently. In the latter case, when it came to conquest, it was most often initiated by state authorities, while religion served to provide justification and legitimacy. And although nomadic and non-nomadic tribes occasionally triumphed over organized governments and religions, the trend established over the last thirteen thousand years has been relentless: in the vast majority of their encounters, the former ended in defeat and the latter in triumph.

At the end of the last Ice Age, a significant portion of the world’s population lived in societies similar to the modern Fayu society, and there was no qualitatively more complex social structure on the planet. Even relatively recently, in 1500 AD, less than 20% of the Earth’s land area was marked by borders and divided among states governed by officials, with life regulated by laws. Today, such divisions extend across all land except Antarctica. The descendants of the societies that first reached the stage of centralized governance and organized religion now hold a dominant position in the world. Thus, alongside microbes, writing, and technology, the tandem of government and religion acted as another—fourth—key factor responsible for shaping the broadest context of history. What was the origin of this pair?

Wandering communities of the Fayu and modern states occupy two extremes on the scale of social organization. The difference between today’s USA and the Fayu is defined by the presence or absence of things like a professional police force, cities, money, social stratification between the rich and the poor, and many other political, economic, and social institutions. How did all these institutions arise—did they emerge together, or did some precede others? To answer this question, we will compare modern societies of varying degrees of organization, analyze written and archaeological data about past societies, and observe the transformation of social institutions throughout history.

Cultural anthropologists, who strive to describe the vast diversity of human societies, typically have at least half a dozen categories for classification. It should be noted that any attempt to clearly delineate stages of any continuous evolution—whether it be musical styles, phases of human life, or social formations—is inherently doomed to be imperfect, and this is true in two respects. First, since each new stage emerges from the previous one, the boundaries between them are inevitably arbitrary. (For instance, where should we classify 19-year-olds—under late adolescence or early adulthood?) Second, the order of development is not always the same, so under one category in a classification, there will always be heterogeneous examples. (Brahms and Liszt would be turning in their graves if they knew that their descendants had grouped them together in the category of Romantic composers.) Nevertheless, these arbitrarily defined stages represent a convention that is convenient to use when discussing both the diversity of musical genres and types of social organization—just as long as we keep the aforementioned caveats in mind. With this consideration in mind, in our attempt to understand the characteristics of human societies, we will rely on a simple classification consisting of just four categories: band, tribe, chiefdom, and state (see Table 14.1).

Tribal communities are the smallest societies, typically consisting of 5 to 80 people, all or almost all of whom are connected by blood or marriage ties. Essentially, a community represents either one extended family or a group of several such families with common roots. Nowadays, isolated tribal communities are found almost nowhere except in the most remote areas of New Guinea and the Amazon. However, as recently as the early modern era, such communities existed in many other places, and only recently have they either come under state control, been assimilated, or completely exterminated. This fate has befallen most African pygmies, South African hunter-gatherers known as the San (also referred to as Bushmen), Australian Aboriginals, Eskimos (Inuit), as well as Native Americans from resource-scarce areas of both Americas, such as Tierra del Fuego in the south or the Arctic forests in the north. All these communities led or still lead a nomadic life as hunter-gatherers, rather than a settled life as food producers. As far as we can tell, at least 40,000 years ago, all humans lived in communal-tribal structures — and even 11,000 years ago, this was still true for the vast majority of the planet’s population.

Table 14.1. Types of Societies

The horizontal arrow indicates that the attribute is present to a greater or lesser extent depending on the level of complexity within this type of society.

Tribal communities lack many institutions that are taken for granted in modern society. They do not have a single permanent place of residence. They collectively use their land, which is not divided among subgroups or individual members. There is no established economic specialization within the community, aside from that which is related to age and gender: all healthy members are involved in food gathering. There are also no institutions for conflict resolution at the intra- or inter-community level, such as laws, police forces, or formal agreements. The social structure of a tribal community is often described as “egalitarian”: there is no formal stratification into upper and lower classes, no formal or hereditary leadership, and no formal monopoly on information and decision-making. However, the term “egalitarian” should not be understood to mean that all members of the community have equal status or participate equally in decision-making. Rather, it implies that any leadership within the community is established informally and is based on personal qualities such as strength, intelligence, and military prowess.

My personal observations of the life of tribal communities pertain to the very swampy lowlands of New Guinea where the Fayu live, known as the Lake Plains. There, I still encounter families consisting of several adults, as well as children and elderly dependents, who sleep in crude temporary shelters scattered along rivers and streams, and travel across their territory by canoe or on foot. Why do the people of the Lake Plains continue to live in nomadic tribal communities, while most other New Guineans and nearly all other peoples in the world today live in settled, larger groups? This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that the Lake Plains lack resource concentration points capable of supporting a large number of people living together, as well as the absence of indigenous plants that could be cultivated for subsistence until the arrival of missionaries who introduced the locals to agricultural crops. The main food source for local communities is sago, a starchy pulp obtained from the core of mature sago palm trunks. Consequently, their nomadic lifestyle is dictated by the need to move every time all the sago trees in the area have been cut down. The population of these communities remains low due to diseases (especially malaria), a shortage of suitable natural materials (they even have to trade with neighbors for stones to make tools), and the limited amount of wild food that the swamp can provide. A similar lack of resources that people could utilize at their level of technological development characterizes other regions of the planet that, in the recent past, served as habitats for tribal communities.

Our closest animal relatives, African gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos, also have a communal organization. As far as we can tell, this was also characteristic of all our ancestors until advancements in food procurement technology allowed hunter-gatherers in some resource-rich regions to begin living a settled lifestyle. The clan community is a type of political, economic, and social structure that is a legacy of millions of years of our evolutionary history. All attempts by humans to move beyond this framework have occurred only in the last few tens of thousands of years.

The first of the stages of social organization that follows the primitive community is called a tribe. It differs from the previous stage in size (usually consisting of hundreds rather than just dozens of people) and is typically characterized by a settled lifestyle in one place. On the other hand, some tribes and even chiefdoms consist of seasonal nomadic herders.

An example of tribal organization can be found in the population of the New Guinea Highlands, where, before the onset of colonial rule, the political unit was either the village or a cohesive group of villages. The term “tribe,” in a political sense, is often much smaller than the grouping referred to by this term in linguistics and cultural anthropology, which denotes a group of people sharing a common language and culture. For instance, in 1964, I began working with the highland inhabitants collectively known as the Fore. By linguistic and cultural standards, the Fore population at that time numbered up to 12,000 people—they spoke two mutually intelligible dialects and lived in 65 villages, each with several hundred inhabitants. However, among the villages of the same linguistic group, there was nothing even remotely resembling political unity. Each settlement was constantly either at war or at peace with all neighboring settlements, regardless of whether those neighbors spoke Fore or another language.

Tribes that were once autonomous and are now varying degrees of subordinate to state authorities still make up a significant portion of the population in New Guinea, Melanesia, and the Amazon basin. We can establish the existence of societies with a similar structure in the past based on archaeological data about settlements that, on one hand, were not temporary camps, and on the other, did not reveal the characteristic archaeological attributes of chiefdoms (I will elaborate on these attributes later). According to archaeological evidence, tribal organization began to take shape approximately 13,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and later in some other regions. A necessary prerequisite for life in settlements is either practiced food production or an exceptional concentration of natural resources that allows for constant hunting and gathering of wild plants over a small area. This is why the rapid growth of regular settlements—and presumably tribes—on the territory of the Fertile Crescent began at a time when a combination of climate change and technological development first created conditions for abundant harvests of wild cereal grains.

In addition to a settled lifestyle and larger size, a tribe differs from a clan community in that it consists not of one, but of several formally distinct kinship groups—clans—that exchange marriage partners. Land is now allocated not to the entire tribe, but to each clan separately. However, the tribe’s population is still relatively small, so each member knows all the others by name and degree of kinship.

It seems that the “several hundred” rule—the upper limit of a community size where everyone knows everyone—applies to all types of human groups in general. For example, in societies like ours, a school principal is likely to know all of their students if there are a few hundred, but not if there are several thousand. One reason why the management structure in societies that exceed a few hundred members almost always shifts from a tribal type to a chieftaincy is that as the population grows, the challenging task of resolving conflicts between strangers becomes increasingly urgent. In a tribe, potential tension is alleviated by the fact that each member is connected to most others either by blood, marriage, or both. Kinship as a basis for social unity makes institutions like police, law, and other arbitration mechanisms found in larger societies unnecessary, since any two quarreling villagers will have enough mutual relatives to exert pressure on them and prevent the dispute from escalating to violence. When two strangers in traditional New Guinea happen to meet far from their home villages, they often engage in a detailed conversation about their relatives—aiming to find some connection between them that could serve as a reason not to kill each other.

Despite all these differences between a clan and a tribe, they share many similarities. Tribes maintain an informal, “egalitarian” system of governance; both information and decision-making are communal. In the mountains of New Guinea, I have often observed village meetings where all the adults of the village sat on the ground: individuals took turns speaking, and there was no impression whatsoever that anyone was “chairing” the meeting. On the other hand, many mountain tribes have what is known as a “big man”—the most respected male in the village. However, this position is not a formal role that someone must occupy, and the influence of the big man is very limited. He does not have separate decision-making powers, he does not possess diplomatic secrets, and at most, he can try to sway the collective opinion of his fellow tribesmen in one direction or another. Big men achieve their status solely through personal qualities; there is no hereditary transfer in this case.

* The term comes from “big man” (English). — Translator’s note.

A common feature of tribes and clan communities is their “egalitarian” social structure, characterized by the absence of hereditary ranks or classes. Not only is there no inheritance of status in a traditional tribe or nomadic community, but no member can elevate their economic position through their own efforts, as everyone has obligations to many others. An outsider observing the adult men of the tribe would not be able to guess who the big man is: the most influential member of society lives in the same hut, wears the same clothing and adornments—or is just as lacking in clothing as everyone else.

Like communities, tribes have no officials, no police, and no taxes. Their economy is based on mutual exchange between people or families, rather than on redistribution, where those in power receive tribute from other members. Economic specialization is minimal: there are no full-time specialists, and every healthy adult (including the big man) participates in fieldwork, gathering wild plants, or other food procurement activities. In this regard, I recall an incident. While I was in the Solomon Islands, I passed by someone’s garden and saw a man digging who gestured for me to come over. To my astonishment, it was my good friend Faleto, an exceptionally talented artist who was the most famous woodcarver in the archipelago—but even this did not exempt him from the need to grow his own sweet potatoes. As we can see, since tribes lack economic specialization, there is no place for slaves either—there are no specific “dirty” jobs for them to be assigned to.

Just as composers of the classical period, from C.P.E. Bach to Schubert, are spread across the spectrum from baroque to romantic music, the range of tribal organization subtly grows from clan communities on one end to chiefdoms on the other. In particular, the role of the tribal big man in the distribution of meat from pigs slaughtered for celebrations serves as a prototype for the leader’s role in the collection and redistribution of food and other material goods (understood at this level as tribute). Another example concerns social structures: although they are considered a distinguishing feature that separates chiefdoms from tribes, large villages in New Guinea often have cult buildings (such as the so-called “haus tamburan” on the Sepik River), which are prototypes for the temples that emerge en masse in chiefdoms.

While small tribal communities and tribes still exist today in remote and resource-poor areas where the reach of the state does not extend, fully independent chiefdoms had already disappeared by the early 20th century, as they primarily occupied fertile lands that the state has always sought to control. Nevertheless, in 1492, chiefdoms were still widespread: across much of the eastern United States, in areas of South and Central America not conquered by indigenous states, in sub-Saharan Africa, and on all the islands of Polynesia. According to archaeological data, which will be discussed below, chiefdoms first emerged around 5500 B.C. in the Fertile Crescent and around 1000 B.C. in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Now, we will examine the characteristic features of this social organization that distinguish it from both modern states in Europe and America and from tribal communities and simple societies of a tribal type.

In terms of size, chiefdoms significantly surpassed tribes, which numbered from a few thousand to several tens of thousands of people. This population scale created fertile ground for internal conflicts, as the overwhelming majority of society’s members were not related to each other and did not know each other by name. With the emergence of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn for the first time in their history how to communicate regularly with strangers without resorting to mutual bloodshed.

Part of the solution to the problem was to grant one person, the leader, the exclusive right to use force. Unlike the tribal big man, the leader had a widely recognized formal status that was passed down to his descendants. Village gatherings with their dispersed anarchy gave way to a singular centralized authority that made all important decisions and possessed a monopoly on important information (for example, about the threats made by a neighboring chief in a private conversation or what harvest the gods supposedly promised to send this year). Chiefs differed from big men in that they could be easily recognized from a distance by certain external features, such as the large fan worn on the back, which was common on Rennell Island in the southwestern Pacific. A community member who encountered a chief was expected to show ritual signs of respect, such as (as in Hawaii) falling prostrate. The chief’s orders could be communicated to subjects through one or two layers of administrators, many of whom were also chiefs of lower rank. However, unlike state bureaucracy with its division of labor, the functions of officials in a chieftaincy were not specialized. While in state-type societies tax offices, water supply agencies, and conscription commissions exist separately, in Hawaii each of the Polynesian bureaucrats (known as konohiki) handled everything at once: collecting tribute, overseeing irrigation work, and recruiting people for corvée labor for the chief.

The population growth within a limited territory required a sufficient food supply—most often provided by agriculture and animal husbandry. However, in some particularly resource-rich regions, the economy of the tribes was based on hunting and gathering. For example, the Native Americans of the northwestern Pacific coast (such as the Kwakiutl, Nuu-chah-nulth, Tlingit, and others), who lived a settled life under the leadership of chiefs, managed without agriculture and domesticated animals because the rivers and ocean provided them with ample salmon and halibut. The surplus food produced by people, who became ordinary community members under the chief’s organization, was used to support the chiefs, their families, their officials, and specialists in various crafts, such as canoe making, carving paddles, or creating spittoons, as well as in bird catching or tattooing.

Luxury items, specifically the fruits of the labor of skilled artisans and rare objects obtained through distant travels, were a privilege of the chiefs. For example, Hawaiian chiefs had special feather cloaks, which sometimes consisted of tens of thousands of feathers and were made over several generations (of course, by the hands of ordinary community members). This concentration of luxury items often allows archaeologists to establish the existence of a chieftaincy organization— the presence of much more expensive items in certain graves (those of chiefs) compared to others (those of common people) represents a departure from the egalitarian burial practices of earlier times. Some complex chieftaincies of the past can also be distinguished from tribal villages by the remains of public buildings (such as temples) and the geographical hierarchy of settlements. The latter is evidenced by the obviously larger size of one of the villages (the residence of the supreme chief) and the concentration of administrative buildings and artifacts within its territory.

Like tribes, chiefdoms consisted of many clans living together. However, while clans in tribal villages were equal, in a chiefdom, the chief’s clan held hereditary privileges. Essentially, society was divided into a hereditary chief class and a class of commoners. In Hawaii, the chief class was further divided into eight hierarchically structured clans that maintained their purity and sought to avoid inter-clan marriages. Since chiefs required not only skilled craftsmen but also servants, chiefdoms differed from tribes in having numerous labor positions that could be filled by slaves—typically prisoners captured during raids on neighboring groups.

The most distinctive feature of the economy of chiefdoms was that people stopped relying solely on the mutual exchanges typical of tribal communities. Mutual exchange implied that A, by gifting something to B, expected that B would, at some uncertain point in the future, reciprocate with something of comparable value. We, the inhabitants of modern states, allow ourselves such behavior during holidays and birthdays; however, the main flow of goods and services among us operates differently—through buying and selling for money according to the laws of supply and demand. While continuing the practice of mutual exchange and lacking a system of monetary trade, chiefdoms simultaneously introduced another system of exchange known as redistributive economy. A simple example: during harvest time, the chief receives wheat from each farmer in the chiefdom and then organizes a feast for everyone, or alternatively, keeps the wheat and gradually distributes it back over the months from one harvest to the next. When a significant portion of the material goods collected from the community members for redistribution began to be retained and consumed by the chief’s relatives and skilled artisans, redistribution transformed into tribute—the precursor to taxation, which, as we see, first appears in the stage of chiefdoms. Chiefs demanded not only material offerings from ordinary community members but also labor for the construction of public buildings and structures, which could again benefit the community (if, for example, it was an irrigation system that helped everyone sustain themselves) or might not (if it was a lavish tomb for the chief).

We talked about chiefdoms “in general,” as if they were all the same. In reality, they could differ quite significantly from one another. Generally, the larger the chiefdom, the more power its leader had, the more ranks existed among the chiefdom’s clans, and the greater the status differences between the elite and the common people. The chief retained a larger portion of the tribute, and more layers of bureaucracy transmitted his commands, while the public architecture was more elaborate. For example, the peoples of small Polynesian islands were not far removed from tribes with their big men. Although the supreme position was hereditary, the chief’s hut looked just like the others, there were no administrators or public works, and the food received from the community members was almost entirely redistributed by the chief, while land was managed collectively. In contrast, on the largest Polynesian islands, particularly Hawaii, Tahiti, or Tonga, the chief could always be recognized from afar by his lavish adornments. Large numbers of people worked on collective construction projects, and chiefs kept a larger share of the tribute for themselves, managing the land individually. Societies with a system of clan hierarchy were also ranked on another scale—this ranged from political units the size of an autonomous village to local associations of settlements, where the village of the supreme chief dominated smaller villages with lower-ranking chiefs.

By this point, it should have become clear that under leadership, a fundamental dilemma has emerged for all centrally managed, non-egalitarian societies. At best, such societies do a good deed by providing expensive services that individuals simply cannot organize for themselves. At worst — function as kleptocracies …shamelessly redistributing the collective wealth of society in favor of the upper classes. These two functions, noble and selfish, are inextricably linked, although one is often expressed more strongly than the other. The difference between a kleptocrat and a wise ruler, between a robber baron and a public benefactor, is merely quantitative—it is a matter of what share of the tribute collected from producers the elite retains and whether the people are satisfied with how the remainder is allocated for public needs. We consider the Zairean president Mobutu a kleptocrat because he keeps too large a portion of the tribute (billions of dollars in monetary terms) and redistributes too little (there is virtually no telephone system in Zaire). We regard George Washington as a statesman in the best sense of the word because he spent tax revenues on programs that earned the recognition of society as a whole and did not enrich himself personally during his presidency. However, it should not be forgotten that Washington was born into a wealthy family in a country where wealth was distributed much less evenly than in the villages of New Guinea.

Thus, in relation to any hierarchical society, whether it be a chieftaincy or a state, one must ask the question: why do most of its members tolerate the redistribution of the fruits of their hard work in favor of kleptocrats? This question, raised by political thinkers from Plato to Marx, becomes relevant every time people go to vote in modern elections. Kleptocracies, lacking mass support, risk losing power—either as a result of a rebellion by the oppressed common people or through the actions of new potential kleptocrats who gain support by promising a better balance of services provided and fruits of labor seized. For instance, Hawaiian history is marked by numerous uprisings against oppressive chiefs, often led by the younger brothers of the chiefs themselves under the banner of alleviating oppression. As a piece of Hawaiian folklore, this may seem amusing, but only until we remember all the suffering that such internal political conflicts continue to bring to the modern world.

What does the elite need to do to maintain popular support while not giving up a lifestyle that is more comfortable than that of the people? Throughout the centuries, kleptocrats have relied on a combination of the following four strategies:

1. Disarm the masses and arm the elite. In our time of high-tech weapons, produced exclusively in industrial enterprises and easily monopolized by the elite, this is much simpler than in ancient times when anyone could easily make their own spears and clubs.
2. Make the masses happy by redistributing a large portion of the collected tribute to popular needs. For Hawaiian chiefs, this principle was just as effective as it is for today’s American politicians.
3. The use of the monopoly on the legitimate use of force for the common good, specifically for maintaining public order and curbing violence, represents a significant and often underestimated advantage of centralized societies over decentralized ones. Previously, anthropologists idealized tribal communities and clans, emphasizing their peaceful and non-violent way of life—because, for instance, during three years in a community of 25 people, an anthropologist never encountered a murder. Of course, they didn’t encounter one: as is easy to calculate, a group of a dozen adults and a dozen children, whose members would inevitably drop out for many ordinary reasons besides violent death, simply wouldn’t survive if one of the dozen adults killed another adult once every three years. Much larger and long-term observations of nomadic communities and settled tribes show that murder is indeed the leading cause of mortality among them.

   Once, I had the opportunity to visit the Iau tribe in New Guinea just as a female anthropologist was recording the life stories of Iau women. As if following a script, each of them, when asked about her husband’s name, listed several successive husbands, all of whom had died violent deaths. A typical response looked like this: “My first husband was killed by the Elopi during a raid. My second husband was killed by a man who wanted to marry me and who became my third husband. This husband was killed by the brother of my second husband, who wanted to take revenge.” Such biographies, as we now know, are quite common in supposedly peaceful primitive tribes, and they partly explain why, as tribal societies grew, the centralization of power did not provoke active resistance.

4. The remaining way for kleptocrats to gain public support is to create ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy. Tribal communities and clans already had a belief in supernatural forces, which, in one form or another, has persisted in most modern religions. However, belief in the supernatural within a community or tribe did not serve as a justification for central authority, unequal redistribution of wealth, or the maintenance of peace among people who were not related by blood. It was only when belief in the supernatural was endowed with these functions and became a social institution that it transformed into what we call religion. Hawaiian chiefs, who insisted on their divine essence, divine origin, or at least on having a direct line of communication with a heavenly patron, acted in accordance with the customs of chiefs around the world. The chief claimed that by interceding with the gods and reciting the ritual incantations necessary for obtaining rain, a good harvest, or a catch, he was providing a service to his subjects.

The presence of ideology — a precursor to institutionalized religion and a support for central authority — was a characteristic feature of chiefdoms. A chief could either combine the roles of political leader and high priest in one person or maintain a separate group of kleptocrats (that is, priests), whose function was to provide ideological justification for the actions of the chiefs. This is why chiefdoms spent such a large portion of the collected tribute on the construction of temples and other public buildings, which served as centers of official religion and visible symbols of the chief’s power.

In addition to justifying the redistribution of wealth in favor of kleptocrats, institutionalized religion provided centralized societies with two other important advantages. First, through a shared ideology or religion, it became easier for people who were not related by blood to learn to live together without resorting to violence—now they were connected by bonds of a different, non-blood nature Secondly, thanks to her, people had another reason for self-sacrifice for the sake of others, in addition to genetic interest. By sacrificing a few members on the battlefield, society significantly strengthened its ability to conquer other societies and repel their attacks.

The political, economic, and social institutions that we are most familiar with are the institutions of states that today occupy all the land on Earth except for Antarctica. Many ancient states were characterized by the presence of an educated elite, and in modern states, where the upper classes are universally literate, literacy is often widespread among the general population as well. Disappeared states typically left behind clear archaeological evidence: the ruins of temples with standard designs, remnants of settlements that can be categorized into at least four levels based on size, uniform pottery scattered over tens of thousands of square miles, and so on. Thanks to this evidence, we know that states emerged around 3700 BC in Mesopotamia, around 300 BC in Mesoamerica, more than 2,000 years ago in the Andes, China, and Southeast Asia, and over a thousand years ago in West Africa. In the modern era, the transformation of chiefdoms into states has been documented multiple times. Thus, we have a much greater volume of information about past states and their formation than about past chiefdoms, tribes, and clan communities.

Proto-states continue many trends that emerged within chiefdoms characterized by a hierarchy of settlements. In terms of size, they represent the next step in the progression from “clan communities — tribes — chiefdoms.” While the population of the latter varied from thousands to tens of thousands, the population of most modern states exceeds one million, with China surpassing one billion. The residence of the supreme chief could very well become the capital of the state. Peripheral population centers of states often develop into true cities, which was not the case under chiefdoms. Cities differ from villages through monumental public buildings, the palaces of rulers, a concentration of capital obtained as tribute or taxes, and a concentration of people not engaged in food production.

The first states had hereditary leaders with a status equivalent to royal, known as “supreme” chiefs, who held an even broader monopoly on information, decision-making, and the use of force. We know that even in modern democracies, critically important information is accessible only to a small group of people who control the information that reaches the rest of the government and, consequently, manage decision-making. For instance, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963, President Kennedy initially entrusted the discussion of information that affected the lives of half a billion people to only ten members of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, whom he appointed himself; the final decision-making was even more restricted, involving just a group of four people, including the president and three cabinet ministers.

In states, compared to chiefdoms, centralization becomes more comprehensive, and economic redistribution in the form of tribute (renamed as tax) takes on larger scales. Economic specialization deepens as well—now it has reached a level where even farmers are unable to feed themselves alone. It is not surprising that when state governance collapses—as happened in Britain between 404 and 411 AD with the withdrawal of Roman armies, the recall of administrators, and the cessation of Roman coin circulation—the effect on society is catastrophic. Historically, centralized control over the economy emerged in the ancient states of Mesopotamia. Food in these states was produced by four groups of specialists (farmers growing cereal grains, herders, fishermen, and horticulturists) — the state extracted the corresponding products from each group and supplied them with necessary materials, tools, and food (in addition to what was produced by that group). The state provided seeds and draft animals to farmers, collected wool from herders, exchanged wool for metals and other basic raw materials with neighboring countries, and allocated food rations to workers who maintained the irrigation systems on which farmers depended.

In many, if not all, ancient states, slave labor was exploited on a much larger scale than was typical for chiefdoms. This was not because chiefdoms were more lenient towards defeated enemies, but because the deepening economic specialization, along with the more extensive nature of production and the increase in public works, expanded the scope of such labor. Additionally, the larger military campaigns conducted by the state made more prisoners available.

The one- or two-tier administrative structure typical of chiefdoms expands to enormous proportions within the context of a state—this is well known to anyone who has seen the organizational chart of any modern government. Alongside the multiplication of vertical levels bureaucracy Horizontal specialization is also taking place. Instead of officials known as konohiki, who were responsible for every aspect of governance in their assigned areas in Hawaii, the state is acquiring several separate departments, each with its own hierarchy and field of activity: distribution of water resources, tax collection, military conscription, etc. Even small states have a more complex bureaucratic apparatus than large chiefdoms. For example, in the West African state of Maradi, the central administration had over 130 specialized positions.

The resolution of internal conflicts in states is formalized within specific institutions: law, judicial processes, and police. Law is often codified in writing, as many states (with notable exceptions like the Inca Empire) already have a literate elite—both in Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, writing emerged roughly at the same time as the formation of the first states. Conversely, in no ancient chieftaincy that is not on the brink of statehood does writing emerge.

The first states had a state religion and temples of standard design. Many supreme rulers of antiquity were considered deities, and in numerous situations, they had to be addressed in a very specific manner. For example, both the Aztecs and the Incas transported their emperors on litters, and in front of the Great Inca’s litter, servants would clear the way; in the Japanese language, there are still forms of the second-person pronoun that are used only when addressing the emperor. The heads of ancient states were either the supreme figures of the state religion themselves or had separate high priests. For instance, Mesopotamian temples were not only places of worship but also centers of economic redistribution, literacy, and craft technologies.

All these features of the state deepen the developmental trends that emerged during the transition from tribes to chiefdoms. At the same time, in several respects, states begin to qualitatively differ from chiefdoms. The most fundamental of these differences is the organization of states based on political and territorial principles, rather than on kinship, which defines the life of clan communities, tribes, and simple chiefdoms. Moreover, while communities and tribes are always, and chiefdoms usually consist of members of a single ethnic and linguistic group, states—especially the so-called empires, which are formed as a result of the merging or conquest of states—are often multinational and multilingual. Unlike chiefdoms, where bureaucratic positions are mainly held by the noble class, in a state, bureaucrats are professionals, selected at least partially based on their qualifications and abilities. In later states, including most of the current ones, the highest office often ceases to be hereditary, and many, definitively breaking with the chiefdom tradition, abolish the formal system of hereditary classes altogether.

The prevailing trend over the last thirteen thousand years of human societal development has been the replacement of smaller, simpler formations with larger, more complex ones. Clearly, this is just an averaged long-term vector, which does not negate the countless deviations from it in any possible direction: 1,000 mergers for every 999 divisions. As we know from the news, large political entities (such as the former USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia) are still capable of breaking apart into their constituent parts, just as happened with Alexander the Great’s empire over 2,000 years ago. More complex entities do not necessarily triumph over more primitive ones, and vice versa; they can fall under their pressure, as seen with the Roman and Chinese empires, which were conquered by “barbarian” and Mongol chieftains, respectively. Nevertheless, the long-term trend has been towards consolidation and complexity, culminating in the establishment of the state system.

It is evident that victories in confrontations with more primitive political entities are largely due to two advantages: first, superiority in armament and other technologies, and second, a significant numerical advantage. However, states (and chiefdoms) also possess two other potential advantages. First, having a monopoly on decision-making allows for more effective mobilization of troops and resources. Second, through the institution of official religion and the patriotic enthusiasm cultivated in many states, the state gains warriors who are willing to take suicidal risks.

In us, citizens of modern states, this readiness is so ingrained by schools, churches, and governments that we forget what a radical shift in history it represents. Every country has its own slogan urging citizens to embrace death if necessary for the good of the state: “For the King and Country” among the British, “For God and Spain” among the Spanish, and so on. Something similar inspired Aztec warriors in the 16th century: “There is nothing better than death in battle, nothing better than death in bloom, so precious to Him who gives life [the Aztec deity Huitzilopochtli]: for I see it from afar and my heart yearns for it!”

Such feelings are unimaginable for people living in communities and tribes. In none of the stories shared by my New Guinean acquaintances about the wars they participated in was there even a hint of tribal patriotism; there were no suicidal raids or any other combat actions taken with a conscious risk of death. Their attacks either began with an ambush or were carried out by clearly superior forces—the possibility of someone dying for their village was minimized at all costs. However, this tribal mindset significantly limited their military-strategic potential compared to state-type societies. Naturally, patriotic and religious fanatics are formidable opponents not because of the fact of their own death, but because of their willingness to sacrifice part of their people to destroy or suppress their non-believing adversaries. The kind of warrior fanaticism we read about in the chronicles of Christian and Islamic conquests likely did not exist 6,000 years ago and first emerged with the rise of chiefdoms and especially states.

How do large, centralized societies emerge from small, decentralized communities based on kinship, where most members are not connected by blood or marriage? Having examined all stages of social transformation from tribal communities to states, we now need to ask what guides societies along this path of transformation. History provides numerous examples of states that arose independently—or, as it is termed in cultural anthropology, “primitively,” meaning in the absence of any existing similar formations nearby. Pristine origins of states, at least once and possibly multiple times, can be found in the history of all continents except Australia and North America. Prehistoric states existed in Mesopotamia, northern China, the Nile and Indus valleys, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and West Africa. Over the past three centuries, states have repeatedly formed based on indigenous chiefdoms that have interacted with Europeans, particularly in Madagascar, Hawaii, Tahiti, and many parts of Africa. The primitive emergence of chiefdoms occurred even more frequently—in the same regions, as well as in the southeast and along the Pacific coast of the northwestern United States, in the Amazon basin, on the islands of Polynesia, and in sub-Saharan Africa. The histories of the emergence of all these complex societies provide us with a rich dataset for analyzing their development.

Among the many theories addressing the problem of the origin of the state, the simplest one is the one that outright denies the existence of any problem and the need to solve it. Aristotle believed that the state was a natural condition of human society that required no explanation. His misconception is understandable, as all the societies he was familiar with—Greek societies of the 4th century BC—were states. As we now know, in 1492, a vast part of the world, contrary to Aristotle’s view, consisted of chiefdoms, tribes, or clan communities. Thus, the origin of the state structure does indeed require explanation.

We are most familiar with another theory. According to the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the state was formed as a result of a social contract—a decision made through rational deliberation by individuals who considered their personal interests and agreed that the state would provide them with more favorable conditions than a primitive society, thus voluntarily abandoning their primitive communities. However, in the reports of contemporary observers or in historical records, we find no instance of a state being formed in a calm atmosphere of impartiality and foresight. Smaller entities cherish their sovereignty and do not merge into larger ones voluntarily. This occurs either through conquest or under the pressure of external forces.

The third theory, which has not lost its popularity among some historians and economists, is based on the indisputable fact that in Mesopotamia, Northern China, and Mexico, the construction of large-scale irrigation systems dates back to roughly the same time as the emergence of states. This theory emphasizes that neither the construction nor the maintenance of a large and complex irrigation or water management system can be accomplished without a centralized bureaucracy. Following this, a causal relationship is postulated based on a reliably known but approximate correlation in time. It suggests that the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Northern China, and Mexico foresaw the advantages that a large-scale irrigation system would bring them—since they could not have learned about these benefits from existing systems anywhere within thousands of miles (or indeed anywhere else on Earth) at that time. In other words, these far-sighted peoples decided to unite their inefficient small chiefdoms into a larger state capable of creating the marvel of large-scale irrigation.

Regardless, the “hydraulic” theory of state formation faces the same objections that have been raised against social contract theories in general. Its main flaw is that it only addresses the final stage of the evolution of complex societies. It does not explain what stimulated the transformation of tribal communities into tribes and tribes into chiefdoms over the millennia before the prospect of large-scale irrigation appeared on humanity’s horizon. Moreover, a detailed analysis of historical and archaeological data does not support the hypothesis of irrigation as the foundation of state formation. In Mesopotamia, Northern China, Mexico, and Madagascar, small irrigation systems existed even in the pre-state period. The construction of large-scale systems in these regions did not coincide directly with the emergence of states and began with a significant delay. In most states that formed in the Mayan region of Mesoamerica and the Andes, the scale of irrigation systems never exceeded what local communities could build and maintain on their own. Thus, even in regions where complex systems of water resource management were indeed established, they were a secondary consequence of state formation, which must have had some other underlying cause.

I believe that one undeniable fact points to a fundamentally correct understanding of the causes of state formation, and its scope is much broader than the correlation between the construction of irrigation systems and the emergence of certain states. I am referring to the fact that the population size of a territory is the best indicator of the complexity of social organization. We remember that clan communities consist of dozens of members, tribes have hundreds, chiefdoms range from thousands to tens of thousands, and states typically have populations exceeding 50,000. In addition to this rough correlation between regional population and type of society (communal, tribal, etc.), there is also a more detailed correlation within each type, between the size of the society and the comparative complexity of its organization. For example, chiefdoms with the largest number of subjects also tend to exhibit the highest concentration of power, stratification, and complexity in their governance systems.

These correlations clearly indicate that the size of the regional population, population density, or population pressure are somehow related to the formation of complex societies. However, they do not tell us exactly how demographic factors behave in the causal chain that results in a complex society. To uncover this chain, let’s remind ourselves of the factors that provoke the very growth of population density. After that, we will analyze why large but simple societies are not capable of sustained self-reproduction. Armed with this knowledge, we will finally be able to return to the question of how societies become more complex as the regional population grows.

We already know that large or densely populated communities arise only in conditions of practiced food production or, at the very least, in environments with exceptional productivity for hunting and gathering. Some hunter-gatherer societies in resource-rich regions have reached an organizational level of chiefdoms; however, none have achieved the level of states: citizens of all states are fed through food production. These facts, along with the aforementioned correlation between regional population sizes and the complexity of social organization, form the basis of the long-standing debates about the chicken and the egg, that is, the direction of causal relationships between food production, demographic indicators, and societal complexity. Is the intensification of agriculture the cause that triggers population growth and somehow leads to increased organizational complexity? Or are the causes the enlargement of populations and the complexity of organization, under which agriculture begins to develop more intensively?

The way the question is framed as “either-or” misses the main point. The intensification of food production and the complexity of social organization stimulate each other within a single autocatalytic process. In other words, population growth leads to social complexity (the mechanisms of this influence will be discussed later), and social complexity, in turn, leads to the intensification of food production, which further contributes to population growth. Complex centralized societies are distinguished by their ability to organize public works (including the construction of irrigation systems), facilitate trade and exchange over long distances (including the import of metals to improve agricultural tools), and support various groups of economic specialization (in particular, providing bread for herders from farmers and transferring animals raised by herders to farmers for use in the fields). Throughout history, these capabilities of centralized societies have become a condition for further intensification of food production and, consequently, population growth.

The influence of agriculture on the formation of the characteristics of complex societies had at least three additional aspects. First, food production involves seasonal fluctuations in the labor force. When the harvest is stored, the labor of farmers becomes available for tasks assigned by central political authority—such as building public structures that glorify the power of the state (like the Egyptian pyramids), or constructing public works that enable the feeding of more mouths (such as Hawaiian irrigation systems and fishponds), or for waging conquest wars that lead to the formation of larger political units.

Secondly, food production, when properly organized, allows for the accumulation of surpluses, which creates conditions for economic specialization and social stratification. These reserves can feed all layers of a complex society: leaders, bureaucrats, and other members of the elite; scribes, craftsmen, and other non-agricultural specialists; and finally, the farmers themselves when they are engaged in public works.

Thirdly, food production makes it possible (or necessary) to transition to a sedentary lifestyle, which is a prerequisite for the accumulation of property, the development of complex technologies and crafts, as well as the construction of public facilities. The importance of a fixed place of residence for a complex society can be understood through the example of the first contacts with previously inaccessible nomadic tribes or communities in modern New Guinea and the Amazon. In each of these encounters, missionaries and government agents invariably set two goals: the first is, of course, to “pacify” the nomads—convincing them not to kill missionaries, officials, and each other; the second is to encourage them to settle down, which should make it easier for missionaries and administrators to locate them, provide services (particularly medical and educational), as well as convert them to their faith and maintain control over them.

Thus, agriculture, which contributes to population growth, also makes it possible for various elements of complex societies to emerge. However, this does not prove that agriculture and demographic growth make the complexity of social organization inevitable. How can we explain the empirically observed fact that communal or tribal organization proves to be simply non-functional for societies with hundreds of thousands of members, and that all existing large societies have complex and centralized organization? I can name at least four obvious reasons.

One of the reasons is the problem of neutralizing potential conflicts between people who are not related by blood. As the size of societies increases, the complexity of these interactions grows geometrically. For example, in a tribal community of 20 people, there are only 190 possible two-way interactions (20 people multiplied by 19 and divided by 2), but in a community of 2000 people, there would be 1,999,000 such pairs. Each of these pairwise interactions has the potential to be a ticking time bomb, capable of exploding and leading to violent confrontations. In tribal or clan societies, any murder typically leads to an attempt at retaliatory, compensatory killing, triggering an endless cycle of mutual vengeance that destabilizes the community.

In a kinship community, where everyone is related to everyone else, relatives from both opposing sides act as mediators in disputes. In a tribe where each person is still connected by kinship to many others and at least knows the names of all the rest, common relatives and friends also become mediators. However, once the population exceeds a few hundred people, below which everyone knows everyone, the increase in the number of potential bilateral interactions turns into an increase in the number of strangers. When strangers clash with one another, few of those present are friends or relatives of both participants in the conflict, with personal interests in stopping it. On the contrary, many spectators will be friends or relatives of only one participant and will take their side, thereby turning a fight between two individuals into a collective quarrel. Therefore, a large society that leaves conflict resolution to the discretion of its members is bound to explode at some point. This single factor is enough to explain why societies with several thousand members can only exist if they have a centralized authority, to which the monopoly on arbitration and the use of force is delegated.

The second reason is the increasing impracticality of collective procedures. decision-making with the increase in population size. Decision-making involving all adults is still possible in the village communities of New Guinea, which are small enough for news and information to spread quickly to everyone, allowing each person to… to hear everyone out In larger communities, all these basic conditions for collective decision-making become unattainable. Even today, in the age of microphones and sound amplifiers, we all know that a general assembly is not an effective means of problem-solving for a group of several thousand people. Therefore, for a large society that must address its issues, structuring and centralization are an inevitable step.

The third reason concerns economic matters. Any society needs a means of transferring material goods among its members. One person may have a greater quantity of a certain basic consumer item on one day and less on another. Additionally, since different people have different talents, one individual may systematically have a surplus of one type of good and a shortage of others. In small societies, where the number of interaction pairs is limited, the transfer of material goods, necessary for the reasons I mentioned, can be organized directly at the level of individual or family mutual exchange. However, the same arithmetic that makes direct resolution of bilateral conflicts inefficient in large societies also makes direct bilateral exchanges inefficient. Large societies can only function economically if, in addition to a system of mutual exchanges, they have a system of redistribution. Material goods that exceed an individual’s needs must be transferred from that person to a centralized authority, which will then redistribute them to those who are lacking.

The last factor that determines the complex organization of large societies is related to population density. Large agricultural societies differ from hunter-gatherer communities not only in their greater numbers but also in their higher density. Any nomadic hunting community consisting of several dozen people occupies a vast territory, within which it can obtain almost everything it needs. Anything lacking can be traded with neighboring communities during intervals between military confrontations. As population density increases, the territory of this small group shrinks to a tiny area, leading to a growing reliance on external assistance to meet its essential needs.

For example, imagine taking 16,000 square miles of Holland with its 16 million inhabitants and dividing it into 800,000 separate territories of 13 acres each, each inhabited by autonomous communities of 20 people. Further, imagine that each of these communities had to be almost entirely self-sufficient on its 13 acres and could only occasionally engage in truces to meet at the borders of their plots with neighboring communities to trade goods and brides. The absurdity of such spatial congestion leads us to a single conclusion: a complex social structure is the fate of any densely populated region.

Thus, large societies tend toward centralization due to the very nature of the problems they face, such as conflict resolution, decision-making, and economic and spatial organization. However, by producing new individuals—those who hold power, are privy to information, make decisions, and redistribute resources—centralization of power inevitably paves the way for the exploitation of established opportunities for the benefit of themselves and their relatives. This is evident to anyone who has had the chance to observe the dynamics within any modern group. Groups of the past were no different: throughout the evolution of societies, those who seized central power gradually solidified their position and became the elite. Typically, the founder of such a group was one of several once-equal village clans that, over time, managed to become “more equal” than the others.

These are the reasons why large societies are unable to function within a communal structure and therefore are complexly organized kleptocracies. However, we still have not answered the question of how small primitive societies actually developed or merged into larger and more complex societies. After all, neither the consolidation nor the centralization of arbitration, decision-making, and economic redistribution, nor the institutionalization of kleptocratic religion happens on its own, nor does it arise, despite what Rousseau might say, as a result of a social contract. What drives the merging of smaller societies into larger ones?

Part of the answer to this question is suggested by evolutionary logic. As I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, there is no complete similarity among societies that fall into the same category, because people and groups of people are infinitely diverse. For example, among communities and tribes, the big men in some will undoubtedly be more charismatic, stronger, and more skilled at reaching decisions than the big men in others. Those larger tribes where the big man wields more influence, and thus where there is stronger centralization, will have an advantage over those where centralization is weaker. Tribes that resolve internal conflicts as ineffectively as the Fayu did tend to break apart into separate communities, while poorly governed chiefdoms tend to split into smaller chiefdoms or tribes. However, if a society has a functioning arbitration institution, a reliable decision-making system, and balanced economic redistribution, it is capable of developing more advanced technologies, concentrating military power, seizing larger and more fertile territories, and systematically dealing with smaller rivals.

Thus, competition among societies of the same level of complexity often leads, under favorable conditions, to the formation of societies at the next level of complexity. Tribes, through the conquest of other tribes or by uniting with them, grow to the size of chiefdoms, which, through the conquest of other chiefdoms or by merging with them, become states. States, in turn, through the conquest of other states or by uniting with them, transform into empires. In general terms, a large political entity has a potential advantage over a smaller one—this is a very important caveat—if the larger entity is able to effectively manage the challenges associated with its size, namely, the constant threat of power struggles within the elite, dissatisfaction with kleptocracy among ordinary citizens, the increasing complexity of economic integration tasks, and so on.

Both historical documents and archaeological evidence indicate that in the past, the transition from smaller units to larger ones through merging occurred repeatedly. However, contrary to Rousseau, this never happened as a result of a process in which firmly established small societies voluntarily decided to merge for the good of all their citizens. Leaders of both large and small societies equally value their independence and authority. Therefore, in reality, the consolidation of political units occurs in one of two ways: either as a unification in the face of an external threat or as an actual conquest. We have countless historical examples of both.

A beautiful illustration of unity in the face of external threats is the formation of the Cherokee Indian Confederacy in the southeastern United States. Initially, the Cherokees were divided into 30 to 40 independent chiefdoms, each representing a village with around 400 inhabitants. Gradually, the expansion of white settlements led to armed conflicts between the whites and the Cherokees. When individual Indians raided or attacked settlers and traders, the whites could not distinguish one Cherokee chiefdom from another, and thus took retaliatory measures—military expeditions or trade boycotts—indiscriminately. As a result, the Cherokees gradually began to realize the necessity of uniting into a single confederation, which took shape in the mid-18th century. It began in 1730 when the larger chiefdoms elected a single leader from among themselves, a chief named Moytoy (the position passed to his son in 1741). The primary task of this leader was to punish those who attacked whites and to conduct affairs with the white government. Around 1758, the Cherokees organized the decision-making process within the confederation and established an annual council modeled after their familiar village councils, held in the same village (Echota), which effectively became their unofficial capital. Over time, the Cherokees developed their own writing system (as we know from Chapter 12) and adopted a written constitution.

Thus, the Cherokee Confederacy was formed not as a result of conquests, but through the merging of small societies that had previously guarded their independence jealously and agreed to unite only under the threat of destruction posed by a powerful external force. In a similar way—if we look at the example of state formation from any American history textbook—the American colonies themselves behaved in much the same manner (one of which, Georgia, provoked the formation of the Cherokee state): they had to establish their own state in opposition to a powerful external force, the British monarchy. Initially, the white colonies clung to their autonomy just as fiercely as the Indian chiefdoms, and the first union under the “Articles of Confederation” (1781), which granted them too much independence, proved unviable. Only the further deterioration of the situation, primarily related to Shays’ Rebellion in 1786 and the looming burden of war debts, broke the extreme stubbornness of the former colonies and pushed them to adopt a strict federal constitution in 1787, which is still in effect today. The unification of the obstinate German principalities in the 19th century also faced significant challenges. The first three attempts (the Frankfurt National Assembly in 1848, the restoration of the German Confederation in 1850, and the formation of the North German Confederation in 1866) did not achieve their goals, and it was only in 1870, with the declaration of war by France, that the German princes were finally compelled to cede a large part of their powers to the central government of the German Empire, established in 1871.

Another way to form complex societies, aside from uniting in the face of external threats, is through conquest. An example of such unification, well-documented in historical records, is the birth of the Zulu state in southeastern Africa. At the time of the first accounts from white colonists about the Zulus, this people was fragmented into dozens of small chiefdoms. By the end of the 18th century, as a result of growing population pressure, conflicts among them became increasingly fierce. Meanwhile, among their leaders was one, Dingiswayo, who particularly excelled in addressing the pressing issue of establishing centralized power structures. After taking the hereditary supreme position in the Mthetwa chiefdom in 1807 and dealing with his rival brother, Dingiswayo managed to superbly organize a centralized military system, calling upon young men from all villages and forming units based not on tribal affiliation but on age. He also succeeded in establishing a centralized political system, refraining from bloodshed after conquering other chiefdoms, preserving the family of the defeated leader, and merely replacing him with a relative willing to cooperate with the victors. He effectively organized a centralized arbitration system, expanding the jurisdiction of courts to resolve disputes. In this way, Dingiswayo created all the conditions for the conquest and initial integration of the remaining 30 Zulu chiefdoms. The nascent state he established was strengthened by his successors, who further expanded the scope of judicial proceedings, law enforcement systems, and state rituals.

Examples of state formation through conquests, similar to that of the Zulu, can be multiplied almost endlessly. Among the indigenous states that emerged from chiefdoms in the 18th and 19th centuries before the eyes of Europeans were the Polynesian state in Hawaii; the Polynesian state in Tahiti; Imerina in Madagascar; Lesotho, Swaziland, and other states in southern Africa besides the Zulu; the Ashanti state in West Africa; and Ankole and Buganda in present-day Uganda. The Aztec and Inca empires were formed during the conquests of the 15th century, before the arrival of Europeans, but we know a great deal about the circumstances of their formation from the oral accounts of the indigenous people, recorded by the first Spanish colonists. The formation of the Roman state and the expansion of the Macedonian Empire under Alexander are well documented by contemporary authors from the classical period.

As the examples provided show, war, or the threat of war, has been a key factor in all or almost all political unions. However, wars, even between primitive communities, have always been an attribute of human history—so why have they, as we can now see, only become a reason for the unification of societies in the last thirteen thousand years? We have already concluded that the formation of complex social structures is somehow related to population pressure, and now we just need to find the connection between population pressure and the outcomes of wars. Why do wars typically provoke the merging of societies in conditions of high population density and not in conditions of low density? Because, depending on the population density, the fate of the defeated peoples can be threefold.

In areas where population density is very low, which is typical for the habitats of hunter-gatherer communities, the surviving members of a defeated group only need to migrate further away from their enemies. This is often the outcome of conflicts between nomadic communities in New Guinea and the Amazon.

In areas where population density is moderate, which is typical for the habitats of agricultural tribes, there are simply no sufficiently large uninhabited territories for the surviving members of a defeated community to flee to. Moreover, tribal societies that do not practice intensive food production cannot provide employment for slaves, and they do not produce enough surplus to be able to pay a large tribute. Consequently, the surviving defeated individuals are of little use to the victors, except perhaps for offering their women as wives. The defeated men are killed, and their territory is taken over by the victors.

In areas with high population density, which is typical for regions occupied by states or chiefdoms, the defeated have nowhere to escape. However, the victors now have two options for exploiting their labor force. Since chiefdoms and states have economic specializations, the defeated can be enslaved, as often happened in biblical times. Alternatively, because intensive food production is commonly practiced in such regions, capable of generating significant surpluses, the victors may allow the defeated to remain on their land but strip them of political autonomy, forcing them to pay regular tribute in food or other goods, and incorporate their society into their state or chiefdom. Throughout history, this has been the typical outcome of military campaigns associated with the establishment of states or empires. For example, from the tax records of the Aztec Empire, which Spanish conquistadors were keenly interested in as they sought to tax the conquered peoples of Mexico, we know that the Aztecs collected 7,000 tons of corn, 4,000 tons of beans, 4,000 tons of amaranth grain, 2 million cotton cloaks, as well as large quantities of cocoa beans, warrior costumes, shields, feather headdresses, and amber from their subjects each year.

Thus, food production, as well as competition and cultural diffusion between societies, were the underlying causes that, through various causal chains related to settled lifestyles, large sizes, and high population densities, gave rise to the immediate tools of conquest: pathogenic microbes, writing, advanced technologies, and centralized political organization. Since these remote causes had different histories on different continents, the immediate factors themselves also evolved in diverse ways. Therefore, despite the tendency for these factors to develop in conjunction with one another, their connection was not unconditional: for example, the Incas had a non-literate empire, while the Aztecs had writing but almost no epidemic diseases. As demonstrated by the Zulu unification under Dingiswayo, each of the factors of conquest influenced the course of history to some extent independently: the leadership of Mthetwa, which had no advantages over other Zulu societies in terms of technology, writing, or pathogenic agents, was still able to conquer them. Its only advantage lay in the realms of governance and ideology — it was precisely because of this that the newly formed Zulu state was able to subjugate such a large territory over nearly a century.