Abstract

Explaining the rise of large, sedentary populations during the last 12,000 years, with attendant expansions of socio-political hierarchy and labor specialization (collectively referred to as “societal complexity”), is a central problem for social scientists and historians. Adoption of agriculture has often been invoked to explain the rise of complex societies, but archaeological and ethnographic records contradict simple “agri-centric” models. Rather than a unitary phenomenon, “complexity” may be better understood as a network of interacting features, which in turn have causal relationships with subsistence. Here we use novel comparative methods to disentangle the contributions of subsistence and shared population history (phylogeny) in shaping complexity in a globally-representative sample of 186 societies. We also introduce a phylogenetic method for causal inference that generalizes beyond two binary traits, lifting a major constraint on comparative research. We found that, rather than agriculture alone, a suite of resource intensification variables leads to broad increases in techno-political complexity. Our study provides worldwide evidence that resource intensification is a leader, not a follower, in the rise of complex societies.

Reference

Erik Ringen (Emory University), “Novel phylogenetic methods reveal that resource-use intensification drove the evolution of “complex” societies”, IAST Lunch Seminar, Toulouse: IAST, June 23, 2020, 14:00–15:00, room Zoom Meeting.