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A Theory of the Origin of the State: Traditional theories of state origins are considered and rejected in favor of a new ecological hypothesis.
Abstract
In summary, then, the circumscription theory in its elaborated form goes far toward accounting for the origin of the state. It explains why states arose where they did, and why they failed to arise elsewhere. It shows the state to be a predictable response to certain specific cultural, demographic, and ecological conditions. Thus, it helps to elucidate what was undoubtedly the most important single step ever taken in the political evolution of mankind.
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Cited by
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Chagnon, N. A. (1988) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.239.4843.985 · Cited by 1,159
The cultural evolution of prosocial religions
Norenzayan, A., Shariff, A. F., Gervais, W. M., Willard, A. K., McNamara, R. A., Slingerland, E., & Henrich, J. (2016) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x14001356 · Cited by 934
Bauer, M., Blattman, C., Chytilová, J., Henrich, J., Miguel, E., & Mitts, T. (2016) · Journal of Economic Perspectives · doi:10.1257/jep.30.3.249 · Cited by 747
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Metadata
- Authors
- Carneiro, R. L.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 1970-08-21
- Volume
- 169
- Issue
- 3947
- Pages
- 733-738
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2043483056
- Cited by
- 1,531
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 280.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: A Theory of the Origin of the State: Traditional theories of state origins are considered and rejected in favor of a new ecological hypothesis. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.169.3947.733
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- Carneiro, R. L. (1970). A Theory of the Origin of the State: Traditional theories of state origins are considered and rejected in favor of a new ecological hypothesis. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.169.3947.733
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
