Traditional rules of kinship were challenged as villages and networks of villages grew larger.12 As early farming villages expanded, built new links with neighbors, and sometimes turned into small towns, traditional rules of kinship and family had to be modified or supplemented with new rules about property, rights, ranking, and power. The traditional social modules of one or two hundred people had to be linked into larger networks that were, inevitably, hierarchical. Everywhere, as farming spread, we begin to see new and more hierarchical structures that overlay village communities organized
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