From Band to State

In 1962 Elman Service sorted political organization into four types — band, tribe, chiefdom, state — and the scheme has been an anthropology teaching tool ever since, because it makes three things move together. As the number of people rises, leadership hardens from personal influence into permanent office, and inequality shifts from almost none to inherited rank to enforceable class. Drag the slider and watch all three change at once. These are ideal types for comparison, not rungs on a ladder: no society is required to climb them, plenty of societies sit between them, and the peoples named here are living communities with their own histories, not stages of anyone else’s past.