Culture is the primary mechanism of human behavior and adaptation. Cultures are passed on socially from generation to generation. Tools and the ways they are made and used both shape and are shaped by the social organizations of which they are a part. In his classic study, The Science of Culture, Leslie A. White suggested that cultures grow in relation to the degree of efficiency of their tools in liberating energy from their natural environments. A working hypothesis in present day anthropology suggests that, in general, as tools became more efficient and numerous, populations increased in size and density, and new forms of social organization had to develop to cope with these population changes. It would be useful to consider three very general evolutionary stages in the development of our topic: hunting-gathering societies, early agricultural societies, and state agricultural societies.

Hunting-Gathering Societies