A theory of the origin of the state

Science

Volumn 169, Issue 3947, 1970, Pages 733-738

  Carneiro, Robert L ^a  

^a DIVISION OF INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0001683669     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.169.3947.733     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. The Evolution of Horticultural Systems in Native South America: Causes and Consequences; A Symposium
2. For example, the early American sociologist Lester F. Ward saw the state as “the result of an extraordinary exercise of the rational … faculty” which seemed to him so exceptional that “it must have been the emanation of a single brain or a few concerting minds….
3. These patterns [of organization and social control-that is, the state] come into being when an experimenting community of farmers or protofarmers finds large sources of moisture in a dry but potentially fertile area. … a number of farmers eager to conquer [agriculturally, not militarily] arid lowlands and plains are forced to invoke the organizational devices which-on the basis of premachine technology-offer the one chance of success; they must work in cooperation with their fellows and subordinate themselves to a directing authority
4. In short, there is nothing to suggest that the rise of dynastic authority in southern Mesopotamia was linked to the administrative requirements of a major canal system
5. For China, the prototypical area for Wittfogel's hydraulic theories, the French Sinologist Jacques Gernet has recently written: “although the establishment of a system of regulation of water courses and irrigation, and the control of this system, may have affected the political constitution of the military states and imperial China, the fact remains that, historically, it was the pre-existing state structures and the large, well-trained labour force provided by the armies that made the great irrigation projects possible
6. Selections from Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology
7. It is possible, therefore, that the Maya were able to develop a high civilization only because they enjoyed an unusually long period of peace; for their settlement pattern would seem to have been too vulnerable to warfare
8. Men and Cultures
9. In early agricultural times (Preceramic Period VI, beginning about 2500 B.C.) human settlement seems to have been denser along the coast than in the river valleys, and subsistence appears to have been based more on fishing than on farming.
10. In my files I find reported instances of village splitting among the following Amazonian tribes: Kuikuru, Amarakaeri, Cubeo, Urubú, Tuparf, Yanomamö, Tucano, Tenetehara, Canela, and Northern Cayapó.
11. The Aboriginal Cultural Geography of the Llanos de Mojos of Bolivia
12. In native North America north of Mexico the highest cultural development attained, Middle-Mississippi, also occurred along a major river (the Mississippi), which, by providing especially fertile soil and riverine food resources, comprised a zone of resource concentration.
13. Ethnology and Archaeology
14. The Ancient Maya