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Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human SocietiesThose farsighted people chose to merge their inefficient little chiefdoms into a larger state capable of blessing them with large-scale irrigation. However, this "hydraulic theory" of state formation is subject to the same objections leveled against social contract theories in general. More specifically, it addresses only the final stage in the evolution of complex societies. It says nothing about what drove the progression from bands to tribes to chiefdoms during all the millennia before the prospect of large-scale irrigation loomed up on the horizon. When historical or archaeological dates are examined in detail, they fail to support the view of irrigation as the driving force for state formation. In Mesopotamia, North China, Mexico, and Madagascar, small-scale irrigation systems already existed e ore tne "se of states. Construction of large-scale irrigation systems did not accompany the emergence of states but came only significantly later in ac of those areas. In most of the states formed over the Maya area of 2. 8 4 'GUNS,GERMS, AND STEEL Mesoamerica and the Andes, irrigation systems always remained small-scale ones that local communities could build and maintain themselves ...» |
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