and Maya. One might be tempted to say that states arise, when they do, in ecologically rich areas. This would be a misunderstanding. What is required is wealth in the form of an appropriable, measurable, dominant grain crop and a population growing it that can be easily administered and mobilized. Areas of great but diverse abundance such as wetlands, which offer dozens of subsistence options to a mobile population, because of their very illegibility and fugitive diversity, are not zones of successful state making.
