Includes bibliographical references.

Alternatives of social evolution / Dmitri M. Bondarenko, Leonid E. Grinin and Andrey V. Korotayev -- Was the chiefdom a congelation of ideas? / Robert L. Carneiro -- Beyond states and empires : chiefdoms and informal politics / Patrick Chabal, Gary Feinman and Peter Skalni{u00A4}_k -- Alternative models of middle range society. 'Individualistic' Asia vs. 'collectivistic' America? / Yuri E. Berezkin -- Was the state inevitable? / Henri J.M. Claessen -- The early state and its analogues : a comparative analysis / Leonid E. Grinin -- Early dynastic Egypt : a socio-environmental/anthropological hypothesis of 'unification' / Dmitri B. Proussakov -- The ruler as possessor of power in Sumer / Vladimir V. Emelianov -- Ritual and rationality : religious roots of the bureaucratic state in ancient China / Richard Baum -- Conquest warfare, strategies of resistance, and the rise of the Zapotec early state / Charles S. Spencer and Elsa M. Redmond -- The pristine myth of the pristine state in America / Richard P. Schaedel and David G. Robinson -- The transition to statehood in Central Europe / Ludomir R. Lozny -- Formation and development of states in the Congo Basin / Eleonora S. L'vova -- The chiefdom : precursor of the tribe? (Some trends of political evolution in north-east Yemeni highlands) / Andrey V. Korotayev -- From local communities to megacommunity : Biniland in the 1st millennium B.C.-19th century A.D. / Dmitri M. Bondarenko -- Greece : the stateless polis (11th-4th centuries B.C.) / Moshe Berent -- Rome : socio-political evolution in the 8th-2nd centuries B.C. / Dmitri V. Dozhdev -- Early state and democracy / Leonid E. Grinin --

Cultural capital, livestock raiding, and the military advantage of traditional pastoralists / William Irons -- Nomads of the Eurasian steppes in historical retrospective / Anatoly M. Khazanov -- Nomadic empires in evolutionary perspective / Nikolay N. Kradin -- Mongolian nomadic society of the empire period / Tatyana D. Skrynnikova.