One might then argue that ‘states’ first emerged when the two forms of governance (bureaucratic and heroic) merged together. A case could be made. But equally we might ask if this is really such a significant issue in the first place? If it is possible to have monarchs, aristocracies, slavery and extreme forms of patriarchal domination, even without a state (as it evidently was); and if it’s equally possible to maintain complex irrigation systems, or develop science and abstract philosophy without a state (as it also appears to be), then what do we actually learn about human history by
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