Journal ArticleDOI
The Cultural Evolution of Civilizations
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A set of standards that the human ecosystem's most dramatic events are judged and the need for regulation evaluated, and the model used by the "cultural ecologists," for whom such opera tions as crop production make up the "core" of culture, while rituals and ancestral spirits are mere epiphenomena.Abstract:
set of standards that the human ecosystem's most dramatic events are judged and the need for regulation evaluated. This is almost diametrically opposed to the model used by the "cultural ecologists," for whom such opera tions as crop production make up the "core" of culture, while rituals and ancestral spirits are mere epiphenomena (Steward 54). It also implies that such "epiphenomena"-whose study has fallen largely to the humanist-lie at the heart of society's environmental and interpersonal regulation, and as such cannot be omitted from any comprehensive ecological analysis, as has so often been done in the past. Normally, higher-order controls regulate only the output of lower-orderread more
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Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence
TL;DR: The authors presented a model of social change that predicts how the value systems play a crucial role in the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions, and that modernisation brings coherent cultural changes that are conducive to democratisation.
Book
The sources of social power
TL;DR: The sources of social power trace their interrelations throughout human history as discussed by the authors, from neolithic times, through ancient Near Eastern civilizations, the classical Mediterranean age and medieval Europe up to just before the Industrial Revolution in England.
Journal ArticleDOI
A History of Archaeological Thought
Stuart Piggott,Bruce G. Trigger +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the relevance of archaeological history is discussed, including the origins of scientific archaeology, the imperial synthesis, and the development of modern archaeology in the 20th century.
Journal ArticleDOI
Connectivity and complexity: the relationship between neuroanatomy and brain dynamics
TL;DR: It is found that specific neuroanatomical motifs are uniquely associated with high levels of complexity and that they are embedded in the pattern of long-range cortico-cortical pathways linking segregated areas of the mammalian cerebral cortex.
MonographDOI
Understanding early civilizations : a comparative study
TL;DR: A detailed comparative study of the seven best-documented early civilizations is presented in this paper, where equal attention is paid to similarities and differences in their sociopolitical organization, economic systems, religion, and culture.
References
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The conditions of agricultural growth
TL;DR: In this paper, Boserup argues that changes and improvements occur from within agricultural communities, and that improvements are governed not simply by external interference, but by those communities themselves using extensive analyses of the costs and productivity of the main systems of traditional agriculture.
Book
Central Places in Southern Germany
TL;DR: In this article, the central places in Southern Germany were studied and the authors presented a map of the central regions of Germany with respect to the Central Places of Central Places in South Germany.
Journal ArticleDOI
A Theory of the Origin of the State: Traditional theories of state origins are considered and rejected in favor of a new ecological hypothesis
TL;DR: The circumscription theory in its elaborated form explains why states arose where they did, and why they failed to arise elsewhere, and shows the state to be a predictable response to certain specific cultural, demographic, and ecological conditions.