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Is Political Evolution Over? An Anthropological Analysis Of The Twentieth Century, Robert Bates Graber Ph.D.

Journal of International and Global Studies

Why did human societies grow from small bands and villages into highly populous nations and empires? This process, termed political evolution, is explained by one major strand of anthropological theorizing as having resulted from population pressure, warfare, and conquest. War is seen as having been essential because polities do not willingly surrender autonomy. The 20th century apparently brought both an increase in population pressure (the ratio of humans to the available resource base) and a considerable amount of war, but only a modest increase in political evolution as measured by the average population of nations. One interpretation of this is …