-The bureaucracy typical of a developed, modern, nation-state was first implemented in 300 BCE in China?
-It has been demonstrated that a form of morality evolves spontaneously alongside endeavors based on teamwork, motivated solely by the self-interest of the parties involved?
-Humans, and other animals, are biologically wired to demonstrate altruism towards genetic kind as well as reciprocal altruism?
-Tribal organization did not arise until the development of argriculture?
-Prior to tribes, hunter-gatherer societies are organized into bands or family groups?
-Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest developed tribal organizations without developing agriculture due to the abundance of natural resources?
-Band organizations have no private property or defined leadership?
-"Depending on climatic conditions, hunter-gatherer societies have a population density of 0.1 to 1 persons per square kilometer, while the invention of agriculture permits densities to rise to 40-60 persons per square kilometer"?
-Agnation is the social form of patrilineal descent that traces lineage exclusively through the male line, and in which women move in with the male side of the line?
-"In the agnatic systems of China and India, this involved severing her ties with her birth family almost completely. Marriages were thus often a moment of sadness for the wife's parents, compensated only by the pride price they were paid for their daughter. The woman had no status in her husband's family until she gave birth to a male offspring, at which point she became fully integrated into the husband's lineage, praying and offering sacrifices at her husband's ancestral tomb and protecting her son's future inheritance"?
-"Matriliny simply means that it is the husband who leaves his descent group upon marriage and joins that of his wife. Power and resources are still largely controlled by men"?
-Matrilinies are "typically found under one specific set of environmental conditions, such as rainfall horticulture where gardening is done primarily by women"?
-The success of tribal organizations, and specifically large tribal organizations of thousands of people spread over a large area, is predicated by segmentary development (each subsection of the tribe is a self-sufficient segment that typically unites with other segments to wage war, but otherwise is relatively autonomous) and the development of ancestor worship?
Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.
Legitimately, this book should probably be required reading at some level of education, inasmuch as it covers a large span of history using history, IR theory, biology, archaelogy, anthropology, and philosophy to describe the development of political organizations into the modern nation-state, most specifically in an attempt to explain the prevalence of democracy as the dominant paradigm of governance, and the difficulties involved in developing a democratic (or even functional) state. It also seems to avoid eurocentrism fairly successfully.
