The Neolithic agro-complex was a necessary but not a sufficient basis for state formation; it made state formation possible but not certain. In Weberian terms, we are dealing here with something like “elective affinity” rather than cause and effect. Thus it was possible and not uncommon at the time to have sedentary farming populations on alluvial soils practicing irrigation without any state.4 But there was no such thing as a state that did not rest on an alluvial, grain-farming population.
