Poster

Quantitative History Webinar Series (AGI & FBE)

The conventional theory about the origin of the state is that the adoption of farming led to an increase in productivity, which led to food surplus. Food surplus is held to be a prerequisite for the emergence of hierarchical societies and eventually states. In this Quantitative History Webinar, Luigi and his co-authors challenge this theory and propose that hierarchy arose due to the shift to dependence on appropriable cereal grains.