[SteveH]

so...

domestication -> agriculture -> fiefdoms -> wars -> kings/harems-slaves

(-> bronze trade?)

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23631462-700-the-real-roots-of-early-city-states-may-rip-up-the-textbooks/

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Thanks for the link to that fascinating article on The New Scientist. I never really thought about “the state” as an invention of man before and what life was like before the state was invented. The two books cited in the article sound very interesting.

This sentence really struck me: “But the vast majority of people had no contact with states as late as the end of the 15th century – Europe’s middle ages.” Maybe 11,000 to 12,000 years of post stone-age mankind and the state still hadn’t touched many peoples’ lives by 1500 AD, only 600 years ago. Now we cannot escape the strangling, suffocating beast.

Against the Grain: A deep history of the earliest states
James C. Scott
Yale University Press

Affluence without Abundance: The disappearing world of the Bushmen
James Suzman
Bloomsbury
This article appeared in print under the headline “Unearthing power”