Disentangling the Evolutionary Drivers of Social Complexity in Human History: a Comprehensive Test of Hypotheses

During the Holocene the scale and complexity of human societies increased dramatically. Generations of scholars have proposed different theories explaining this expansion, which range from functionalist explanations, focusing on the provision of public goods, to conflict theories, emphasizing the role of class struggle or warfare. To quantitatively test these theories, we develop a general dynamical model, based on the theoretical framework of cultural macroevolution. Using this model and Seshat: Global History Databank we test 17 potential predictor variables proxying mechanisms suggested by major theories of sociopolitical complexity (and >100,000 combinations of these predictors). The best-fitting model indicates a strong causal role played by a combination of increasing agricultural productivity and invention/adoption of military technologies (most notably, iron weapons and cavalry in the first millennium BCE).

An Analysis of the Potential for the Formation of ‘Nodes of Persisting Complexity’

Human civilisation has undergone a continuous trajectory of rising sociopolitical complexity since its inception; a trend which has undergone a dramatic recent acceleration. This phenomenon has resulted in increasingly severe perturbation of the Earth System, manifesting recently as global-scale effects such as climate change. These effects create an increased risk of a global ‘de-complexification’ (collapse) event in which complexity could undergo widespread reversal. ‘Nodes of persisting complexity’ are geographical locations which may experience lesser effects from ‘de-complexification’ due to having ‘favourable starting conditions’ that may allow the retention of a degree of complexity. A shortlist of nations (New Zealand, Iceland, the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland) were identified and qualitatively analysed in detail to ascertain their potential to form ‘nodes of persisting complexity’ (New Zealand is identified as having the greatest potential). The analysis outputs are applied to identify insights for enhancing resilience to ‘de-complexification’.

GATHERING AND SOWING ACROSS THE CENTRAL MAYA LOWLANDS: A REVIEW OF PLANT USE BY PRECERAMIC PEOPLES AND THE EARLY TO MIDDLE PRECLASSIC MAYA

The recovery of macro- and microbotanicals, along with the study of chemical residues, allows us to shed light on a number of anthropological issues concerning ancient populations. This article reviews the data available to date on the plants used by preceramic peoples during the Archaic period and by the Early to Middle Preclassic Maya across the central Maya lowlands. Archaeobotanical data suggest that early preceramic populations took advantage of their ecologically rich natural environment by gathering a range of wild foods and by cultivating domesticates such as maize, manioc, and chili peppers, a pattern that seemingly continued into the Early to Middle Preclassic, as the Maya settled into village life and left more visible traces of modifications to their natural environment in the form of canals and terraces. This region is of particular interest with regard to the development of sociopolitical complexity, as mobile hunter-gatherers used domesticates during the millennia that preceded the onset of sedentary life. These early populations set the stage for patterns of plant use that endured through time, but also across space in the Maya region.

Military Networks at the Extremes of Empire: The Che of Chile and the Puebloans of the United States

At the northern and southern ends of the Spanish “Empire,” two cultures of similar sociopolitical complexity violently removed Spanish invaders from their ancestral territory. The Che of southern Chile militarily engaged the Spanish in the mid-sixteenth century and eventually forced the Spanish to abandon their colonization attempts. The Puebloans of the southwestern United States also forced the Spanish to flee from Puebloan territory in 1680, but by 1696, Puebloan territories returned to Spanish hegemony. This article compares some of the reasons why the Che maintained independence for more than 350 years while Puebloan independence lasted 16, examining the military power networks of the Che and Puebloans and the timing of resistance to Spanish incursion. These comparisons highlight some of the diverse reactions of foreign groups and how connections between peoples affect how individuals and communities react to outside influences.

Economic Interactions and the Rise of Sociopolitical Complexity in the Maya Lowlands

The development of economic systems in Mesoamerica has been a crucial link in the understanding of social, economic, and political structure of later polities. The evolution of Preclassic Maya states from the perspective of the Mirador-Calakmul Basin in Guatemala and southern Campeche, Mexico has been under scrutiny with large scale, multi-disciplinary excavations and mapping in 51 sites of varying sizes. The addition of LiDAR technology has confirmed the extraordinary settlement structure, which, when combined with chronological data, allows diachronic and synchronic evaluations of economic and political structure. The geographic and economic similarities in organization with respect to dendritic spatial formations originally proposed by Santley for Aztec Tenochtitlan compare favourably to the Mirador Basin sites, suggesting that dendritic economic, social, and political systems in Mesoamerica have great antiquity.

Ancient West Mexicos

Ancient west Mexico has often been viewed as an isolated mishmash of cultures, separated from Mesoamerica “proper,” a region that lacked “civilization.” This volume argues against this vision by highlighting current archaeological research on the diverse and complex pre-Hispanic societies that developed in this area. Through the presentation of original data and interpretations, contributions provoke debate and advance understanding of regional complexity, chronology, and diversity, as well as the role of the west in broader, pan-Mesoamerican sociocultural processes. The volume illustrates the ways in which research and areal data from western Mesoamerica can meaningfully contribute to the construction of theoretical models applicable in multiple contexts and capable of enhancing archaeological descriptions and explanations of the dynamic diversity characteristic of all Mesoamerican societies. The volume also presents intriguing case studies from western Mesoamerica that illuminate alternative pathways to sociopolitical complexity in pre-Hispanic societies. In doing so, the volume seeks to contribute to contemporary anthropological and archaeological debates regarding the ways in which archaeologists describe and explain the material configurations that they encounter in the archaeological record, and how these configurations may explain, relate to, and enhance our understanding of the ancient lifeways of the diverse societies that inhabited the region.

Scaling major transitions in human sociopolitical complexity

The human species is diverse in the size, structure and complexity of our social organizations. Today, human sociopolitical complexity ranges from stateless small-scale societies to complex states that integrate millions of individuals over vast geographic areas. Here, we explore major transitions across this range of complexity. In particular, we examine the statistical structure of these transitions using Horton-Strahler branching, generalized Horton Laws, and allometric spatial mixed-effect models. We show that all major transitions in sociopolitical complexity follow an invariant fractal-like growth process; with each transition there is an additional level of jurisdictional hierarchy, a four-fold increase in population size, a two-fold increase in population area, and therefore a doubling of population density. These statistics fully describe all transitions from the least to the most complex societies. However, these transitions are probabilistic, not deterministic in nature. This fact explains the asymmetry of human sociopolitical evolution: while more complex societies were necessarily once less complex, less complex societies do not necessarily become more complex.