10.

1177/1069397102238924
Cross-Cultural
Bondarenko, Korotayev
Research/ /CLAESSEN’S
February 2003
DATABASE ARTICLE

“Early State” in
Cross-Cultural Perspective:
A Statistical Reanalysis of
Henri J. M. Claessen’s Database

Dmitri M. Bondarenko
Russian Academy of Sciences
Andrey V. Korotayev
Russian State University for the Humanities

The authors reanalyze Claessen’s data set on the “Early States.”

Though Claessen’s Early State typology is largely justified, we sug-
gest some corrections and amendments to his typologization and
his model of Early State evolution. We show that the development of
personal ownership of land correlates rather weakly with the politi-
cal development of the Early State, and that political development
might be accompanied by the strengthening of communal owner-
ship. We also examine the correlation between Early State political
development and ruler sacralization. Though this correlation is in-
significant for the whole sample, its insignificance is accounted for
by two distinct evolutionary patterns. The pattern observed in the
“axial age” zone is characterized by a strong negative correlation be-
tween political development and ruler sacralization, while the pat-
tern observed throughout the rest of the world is characterized by a
strong positive correlation between the two variables. The authors
discuss possible causes of this difference.

Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 37 No. 1, February 2003 105-132

DOI: 10.1177/1069397102238924
© 2003 Sage Publications

105
106 Cross-Cultural Research / February 2003

Keywords: Early State; land ownership; ruler sacralization

To many colleagues, the name of Hans Claessen has become almost

synonymous with the Early State. Over the past decades, he suc-
ceeded in making this topic into a major theme in anthropological
and evolutionist discourse. Indeed, due to his inspiration, the topic
attained truly global dimensions: a long series of seminars and con-
ferences in all sorts of contexts, bringing together people from all
parts of the globe; and an equally impressive stream of books, arti-
cles and collections.

—P. Geschiere, 1995, p. 7

The Early State (Claessen & Skalník, 1978) is perhaps the most
influential volume on the evolution of archaic states. The book was
conceived in 1973, when Henri J. M. Claessen and Peter Skalník
met at a conference. By 1978, the project had been joined by more
than 20 scholars from different countries, and The Early State vol-
ume appeared. Since then, about 10 volumes of the series have
been published, almost all edited by Claessen in cooperation with
different colleagues (on the history of The Early State project, see
Kradin, 1998; Kochakova, 1996, 1999; Oosten & van de Velde,
1994). The Early State concept originated within the framework of
neostructuralism. Its founding fathers, Claessen and Skalník,
were attempting to overcome the atemporality of classical
structuralism by combining structuralism with elements of
neoevolutionism. This intent, of course, departs from the essen-
tially structuralist orientation still evident in the first volume of
The Early State series (1978, pp. 533-596). As a historiographer of
the concept and one of its most active supporters, Kochakova
(1999) observed that the first volume of the series represented a
static comparison of The Early States whereas the next three were
devoted to their dynamic consideration (p. 6).
In its evolutionary dimension, however, The Early State concept
has unilinearity and directionality (see Bondarenko, 1998, pp. 18-

Authors’ Note: We are most grateful to Henri Johannes Maria Claessen for
his friendship and support of our studies. This article could not have been
written without the materials he has been supplying us with for many
years. The study was supported by grants from the Russian Foundation for
the Humanities (RGNF no. 01-03-00332a) and from the Russian Founda-
tion for Basic Research (RFBR/RFFI no. 01-06-80142).
 Bondarenko, Korotayev / CLAESSEN’S DATABASE 107

22; Carneiro, 1987, p. 757; Kradin, 1998, pp. 10-12). Consider the
prevalent typology of The Early States. The inchoate, typical, and
transitional Early States are distinguished by differing levels of
development (Claessen & Skalník, 1978, pp. 22, 589, 641). The
multilinearity and nondirectionality within the concept are
replaced by the possibility of movement along the staircase of
social evolution (Claessen & Skalník, 1981). Yet despite The Early
State proponents’ sympathetic view of Marxism and, more gener-
ally, the leftist nature of this anthropological trend (see
Bondarenko, 1998; Kubbel’, 1988, pp. 15-16; Webb, 1984), its adher-
ents still represent The Mature State1 as an exception to the gen-
eral rule. The general rule is represented by The Early State
(Claessen & Oosten, 1996, p. 9; Claessen & van de Velde, 1987, p. 20).
In this article, we concentrate on the first volume of The Early
State project (Claessen & Skalník, 1978) for the following reasons.
The whole project is definitely and consistently cross-cultural.
However, the research is mainly qualitative rather than quantita-
tive, though the editors of The Early State managed to obtain data
on more than 200 variables for quite a representative worldwide
sample of Early States. They also achieved a high level of data for-
malization, allowing Claessen to conduct some preliminary statis-
tical analyses. We believe that further statistical analysis of
Claessen’s data set is possible. This article is only the beginning of
that analysis.2
We decided to start with a reanalysis of Claessen’s developmen-
tal typology of Early States. He divided them into the following
three groups: “inchoate,” “typical,” and “transitional” according to
their closeness to the Mature State and remoteness from the
prestate forms of sociopolitical organization. His division of the
Early States was based on the following 10 criteria:

1. The presence of markets and professional traders.

2. The succession of general state functionaries through appointment
rather than in a hereditary way.
3. Special state functionaries through appointment rather than in a
hereditary way.
4. State functionaries through appointment rather than in a heredi-
tary way.
5. The presence of salaried functionaries.
6. Codified law.
7. Formal judges.
8. Codified punishment.
108 Cross-Cultural Research / February 2003

9. Personal property of land among aristocracy.

10. Personal property of land among commoners.

The inchoate Early State has none of these characteristics (at least
explicitly); the transitional Early State has all of them. The typical
Early State is somewhere in between.
The respective data set Claessen used for his typologization
(recoded by us for a further statistic reanalysis) is presented in the
appendix. Claessen classified 21 states of his sample as shown in
Table 1.
We decided to start by checking the validity of this classification
using principal components factor analysis (and the study of the
correlation matrix for Claessen’s typologization variables). The
results are shown in Tables 2 and 3.
The statistical analysis suggests that most of the Early State
development indicators are indeed positively, significantly, and
rather strongly correlated with one another. The factor loadings of
all the variables for Factor 1 (with eigenvalue as high as 5.6,
accounting for 56.1% of variance) are positive and generally rather
high. Hence, it seems reasonable to consider factor scores for Fac-
tor 1 as a sort of Early State Development Index—a measure of
each state’s closeness to the Mature State. Let us consider how the
early states are arranged along this axis (see Figure 1).
Thus, in general, Claessen’s typologization of early states is sup-
ported by our factor analysis. All the inchoate early states have
lower Factor 1 scores than both typical and transitional ones,
whereas most transitional early states have higher scores than the
typical ones.
But there are still a few problems here. The most evident prob-
lem is constituted by three cases—Yoruba, Inca, and China. The
Inca score is so close to China’s that they should belong to one sub-
type of the early state. In addition, the Yoruba state has a higher
score than China, which suggests that either China should be
regarded as a typical rather than a transitional early state, or
Yoruba should be regarded as a transitional rather than typical
early state.
Note also that Norway, Volta, and Zande are much closer to the
typical Early States than to their fellow inchoate states—Hawaii,
Tahiti, and Ankole. The impression is that these societies were
characterized by a different type of sociopolitical organization than
the rest of the sample societies. Thus, the conventional classifica-
tion of Hawaii, Tahiti, and Ankole as “complex chiefdoms” (e.g.,
 TABLE 1
Claessen’s Classification of Early States

Inchoate States Typical States Transitional States

Ankole (17th-19th centuries) Angkor (9th-13th centuries) Aztecs (15th-16th centuries)

Hawaii (18th-early 19th centuries)
Norway (10th-11th centuries)
Tahiti (18th century)
Volta (15th-19th centuries)
Zande (18th-19th centuries)
109
Axum (1st-6th centuries)
Egypt (first half of 1st millennium B.C.)
Iberia (6th century B.C.-1st A.D.)
Incas (15th-16th centuries)
Kachari (17th-18th centuries)
Mongolia (13th-14th centuries)
Scythia (6th-3rd centuries B.C.)
Yoruba (19th century)
China (late 2nd-early 1st millennium B.C.)
France (10th-11th centuries)
Jimma (19th-20th centuries [until 1932])
Kuba (19th century)
Maurya (4th-2nd centuries B.C.)
110

TABLE 2
Correlation Matrix for Claessen’s Early States Development Indicators

Mode of Mode of Personal Personal

Succession Succession Property Property
of General of Special Salaried Codified Formal Codified of Land of of Land of
Markets Trade Functionaries Functionaries Functionaries Law Judges Punishment Aristocracy Commoners

Markets .781 .609 .666 .728 .621 .518 .794 .261 .273
(.000) (.006) (.005) (.002) (.003) (.012) (.000) (.148) (.137)
Trade .781 .550 .500 .577 .458 .481 .730 .218 .284
(.000) (.009) (.029) (.015) (.021) (.014) (.002) (.185) (.119)
Mode of succession of .609 .550 .653 .731 .398 .563 .742 .412 .599
general functionaries (.006) (.009) (.004) (.002) (.051) (.008) (.002) (.056) (.007)
Mode of succession of .666 .500 .653 .767 .338 .558 .693 .354 .336
special functionaries (.005) (.029) (.004) (.002) (.109) (.015) (.006) (.107) (.131)
Salaried functionaries .728 .577 .731 .767 .714 .866 .837 .415 .415
(.002) (.015) (.002) (.002) (.002) (.000) (.000) (.079) (.079)
Codified law .621 .458 .398 .338 .714 .792 .720 .553 .433
(.003) (.021) (.051) (.109) (.002) (.000) (.003) (.009) (.036)
Formal judges .518 .481 .563 .558 .866 .792 .730 .263 .150
(.012) (.014) (.008) (.015) (.000) (.000) (.002) (.139) (.271)
Codified punishment .794 .730 .742 .693 .837 .720 .730 .141 .283
(.000) (.002) (.002) (.006) (.000) (.003) (.002) (.323) (.175)
Personal property of .261 .218 .412 .354 .415 .553 .263 .141 .645
land of aristocracy (.148) (.185) (.056) (.107) (.079) (.009) (.139) (.323) (.002)
Personal property of .273 .284 .599 .336 .415 .433 .150 .283 .645
land of commoners (.137) (.119) (.007) (.131) (.079) (.036) (.271) (.175) (.002)

NOTE: Numbers in bold indicate correlation is significant at the < .01 level (one-tailed). Numbers in italics indicate correlation is significant at the < .05 and > .01
level (one-tailed). Numbers not in bold or in italics indicate correlation is not significant at the < .05 level (one-tailed). Numbers in parentheses are p values.
 Bondarenko, Korotayev / CLAESSEN’S DATABASE 111

TABLE 3
Factor Analysis of Claessen’s
Early States Development Data Set
a
Factor Loadings
Variable Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3

Salaried functionaries .86 –.10

Professional traders .84 –.23 .17
Codified punishment .84 –.32
Markets .82 –.27 .15
Mode of succession of general functionaries .78 .14 .33
Codified law .76 .17 –.56
Formal judges .76 –.17 –.50
Mode of succession of special functionaries .73 –.12 .31
Personal property of land of aristocracy .50 .74 –.11
Personal property of land of commoners .50 .74 .24
Eigenvalue 5.6 1.4 .9
% of variance explained 56.1 14.3 9.1
a. Cutoff point = .1.

Earle, 1978, 1997, pp. 33-46, pp. 200-203, 2000) is perhaps more
reasonable than Claessen’s grouping them together with Early
States. These are minor problems, however. The main problem is
as follows.
The academic community understands the state in two distinct
ways. On one hand, the state is often understood as a certain type
of society (e.g., Fried, 1967, who considered the state as the most
recent type of society preceded by stratified, ranked, and egalitar-
ian societies; see also, e.g., Carneiro, 2000, p. 186; Haas, 1982;
Pugach’jov & Solov’jov, 2000, pp. 251-252), but it is just as often
understood as a type of political organization. As a political organi-
zation, the state is merely a subsystem within the social system: It
is not identical with the society as a whole (Belkov, 1993, pp. 32-38,
1995, pp. 171-175; Claessen, 1996, p. 1255; Godiner, 1991, p. 51;
Grinin, 1997, p. 20; Jakobson, 1997, p. 6; Pugach’jov & Solov’jov,
2000, pp. 251-252).
Now, as a general rule, scholars can use whatever definitions
they choose, provided that these definitions remain consistent
throughout a single piece of research. The writers of The Early
State did not follow this rule (Claessen & Skalník, 1978). On one
hand, Claessen and Skalník (1978) proposed the following defini-
tion of the Early State:
112 Cross-Cultural Research / February 2003

1.5 Aztecs (1.45); Jimma (1.45) Transitional

Maurya (1.22) Early
1.0 France (1.04); Kuba (1.05) States
Yoruba (.78) ??????????
.5 Inca (.52); China (.57) ??????????
Angkor (.15)
.0 Kachari (.02); Iberia (.03) Typical
Egypt (–.07) Early
Axum (–.21) States
Scythia (–.36); Mongolia (–.32)
–.5 Norway (–.55)
Volta (–.70)
Zande (–.82) Inchoate
–1.0 Early
–1.5 States
Hawaii (–1.59)
Ankole (–1.71)
Tahiti (–1.93)
–2.0

Figure 1: Ranking of Early States along the Axis of Early State Develop-
ment Index (factor scores for Factor 1)

The Early State is a centralized socio-political organization for the

regulation of social relations in a complex, stratified society divided
into at least two basic strata, or emergent social classes—viz. the
rulers and the ruled—whose relations are characterized by political
dominance of the former and tributary obligations of the latter, legit-
imized by a common ideology of which reciprocity is the basic princi-
ple. (p. 640)

Thus, Claessen claimed that he understood the state not as a

certain type of society but as “a centralized socio-political organi-
zation for the regulation of social relations in a complex, stratified
society.” However, in his list of the diagnostic characteristics of, say,
the transitional Early State, he includes the presence of markets,
professional traders, and personal land ownership by both aristoc-
racy and commoners (Claessen & Skalník, 1978). These are char-
acteristics of a society regulated by a “centralized sociopolitical
 Bondarenko, Korotayev / CLAESSEN’S DATABASE 113

organization.” Hence, one wonders what exactly is being

typologized. If we are discussing the political organization of soci-
ety, why should we consider characteristics of society as a whole?
And if we are discussing the whole social system, why should we
consider six characteristics of political organization and just four
characteristics of other societal subsystems?
Claessen’s typologization paints a unilineal picture of early
states, proposing that they can be arranged along one line even if
we consider not only the indexes of political development but also
other characteristics of social and economic development.
As mentioned above, most variables used by Claessen for his
Early State typologization are characterized by strong and signifi-
cant correlations between one another. But not all of them are so
correlated. Note that neither characteristic of personal property
development shows any significant correlation with the political
development variables.
Let us now consider more attentively Claessen’s hypothesis that
political development in the direction of the Mature State is
strongly correlated with the transition from communal to private/
personal land ownership (Claessen & Skalník, 1978). First, we
must single out the dimension of purely political development. To
do this, we will include in the analysis only the characteristics of
political development: succession of general and special state func-
tionaries through appointment versus a hereditary way, presence
of salaried functionaries, codified law, formal judges, and codified
punishment. Factor 1 scores for principal components factor analy-
sis can in this case be considered as an index of political develop-
ment (in the direction of Mature State).
The results are shown in Table 3.
Note that the factor analysis already suggests an interesting
alternative to the political development of the Early State, which
can be seen in the scattergram in Figure 2.
The political development of the Early State could be accompa-
nied by the elaboration of the system of appointed (and not heredi-
tary) functionaries in the absence of codified law and formal judges
(which in our sample is most clearly represented by Egypt, Iberia,
and Yoruba). But it can also be accompanied by the legal formaliza-
tion without a full transition to the functionaries’ succession by
appointment (which in our sample is most clearly represented by
Inca and Angkor).
Now let us see how the political development of the Early State
correlates with the development of personal ownership of land.
114 Cross-Cultural Research / February 2003

TABLE 4
Factor Analysis of Claessen’s Early
States Political Development Data Set

Political Development
Index (Equals
Factor 1 scores
for principal
Early State component analysis) Factor 2 Scores

Aztecs 1.42 0.08

Jimma 1.42 0.08
France 1.13 –0.53
Kuba 1.13 –0.53
Maurya 1.10 –0.87
Yoruba 1.00 1.50
Inca 0.81 –1.48
China 0.13 –0.64
Angkor 0.10 –1.68
Iberia –0.06 1.52
Egypt –0.12 1.61
Norway –0.33 0.94
Axum –0.44 0.66
Zande –0.54 0.73
Mongolia –0.61 0.90
Scythia –0.64 0.30
Volta –1.12 0.32
Hawaii –1.32 –0.04
Ankole –1.73 –1.24
Tahiti –1.73 –1.24

Factor Loadings
Variable Factor 1 Factor 2

Formal judges .84 –.376

Codified law .75 –.584
Codified punishment .86
Salaried functionaries .89
Mode of succession of general functionaries .77 .345
Mode of succession of special functionaries .75 .472
Eigenvalue 3.95 .84
% of variance explained 65.9 14.0
NOTE: The cutoff point for factors is .3. The score for Kachari is entirely unrepresentative due to
the absence of data on four out of six variables.

Claessen contrasted personal ownership with collective/commu-

nal ownership (Claessen & Skalník, 1978, pp. 591, 645-646).
Hence, we decided to make a factor analysis of six variables of the
 Bondarenko, Korotayev / CLAESSEN’S DATABASE 115

2,0

Aztecs
Political Development Index (factor 1 score)
Jimma
1,5
France
Maurya Kuba Yoruba
1,0 Inca

,5
Angkor China
Iberia
Egypt
0,0
Norway
Axum
Zande
Mongolia
-,5 Scythia

-1,0 Volta
Hawaii

-1,5 Tahiti
Ankole
-2,0
-2,0 -1,5 -1,0 -,5 0,0 ,5 1,0 1,5 2,0

Legal Formalization vs. Appointed Functionaries (factor 2 score)

Figure 2: Early States Political Development Index × Legal Formalization

Versus Appointed Functionaries (scattergram)

data collected by Claessen and colleagues on these subjects. In

addition to personal ownership of land by aristocracy and personal
ownership of land by commoners, we also analyzed the following
variables: ownership of land by aristocrats through community
membership, personal land ownership by sovereign, land owner-
ship by sovereign through community membership, and land own-
ership by commoners through community membership. We
expected that Factor 1 of the principal component analysis would
have positive loadings for personal property variables and nega-
tive ones for communal property variables and, hence, it would be
possible to use Factor 1 scores as an index of the development of
personal ownership of land/decline of communal ownership. This
expectation was confirmed (see Table 5).
Now let us see how the Personal Ownership of Land Index corre-
lates with the Political Development Index (see Figure 3).
The development of the political system of the Early State corre-
lates rather weakly with the development of personal ownership of
land. As Figure 3 graphically demonstrates, an Early State could
116 Cross-Cultural Research / February 2003

reach a high level of political development without reaching a high

level of personal ownership (and/or preserving strong communal
ownership forms)—Angkor, Inca, and Yoruba. On the other hand, a
relatively high level of personal ownership (and/or disappearance
of strong communal ownership forms) may not be accompanied by
an equally high level of development in the direction of the Mature
State. This is not surprising. Consider, for example, western
Europe at the beginning of the 2nd millennium A.D., when a fast
political development (which finally led to the formation of Mature
States in this region and was accompanied by equally fast and rad-
ical developments in all other—technological, economical, cul-
tural—spheres of social life) occurred together with the develop-
ment and strengthening of the communal ownership of land (e.g.,
Alaev, 1999, pp. 100-101, 2000, p. 171; Bessmertnyj, 1969, pp. 163-
166; Genicot, 1990).
Finally, we decided to consider how the political development of
the Early States correlates with their so-called ideological develop-
ment. The data on these variables (published in The Early State)
were available (without too many missing cases) for parameters
connected with the position of the ruler. Their principal component
factor analysis produced the results shown in Table 6.
We decided to concentrate on Factor 1, which we interpreted as a
Ruler’s Sacralization Index. Note that the negative loading for the
variable Tours by Sovereign (Gafol) (Gafol is defined as inspections
during which the ruler with his retinue traveled around his posses-
sions, collecting assessments, executing judgement, etc.) fits this
interpretation very well—a totally sacralized ruler would hardly
run the defilement risk inherent in any extensive visits to the pro-
fane zones of his realm. Such a negative correlation looks quite nat-
ural because the main means of sacralizing the ruler is imposing
taboos on him. All those taboos are aimed at limiting the ruler’s
opportunities to communicate freely with his subjects (the taboo
that directly prohibits him to appear in their presence except in
very rare ritual occasions is also frequent) (e.g., Bondarenko, 1995,
pp. 203-231; Claessen, 1986, pp. 116-119, pp. 124-125, 1987, pp. 206-
207, pp. 219-220, 234, 2000, pp. 178-186, p. 194; Claessen & Oosten,
1996; Claessen & Skalník, 1978, pp. 511-530, pp. 533-596, 1981, pp.
1-13, pp. 59-86, pp. 239-250; Frazer, 1922; Freud, 1923; Heusch,
1987; Lüdtke, 1991; Tokarev, 1990, pp. 320-330).
Now let us see how the Ruler’s Sacralization Index correlates
with the Political Development Index (see Figure 4).
 Bondarenko, Korotayev / CLAESSEN’S DATABASE 117

TABLE 5
Factor Analysis of Claessen’s Land Ownership Variables

Political Development
Index (Equals
Factor 1 scores
for principal
Early State component analysis) Factor 2 Scores

Aztecs 0.26 0.80

Jimma 2.03 1.47
France 0.82 –1.48
Kuba 0.92 2.91
Maurya 1.37 –0.47
Yoruba –0.91 0.34
Inca –0.91 0.34
Kachari –0.91 0.34
China 0.88 0.43
Angkor –1.25 0.05
Iberia 0.80 –1.32
Egypt 0.02 –0.15
Norway –1.25 0.05
Axum –0.31 0.12
Zande 0.45 –1.23
Mongolia –0.91 0.34
Scythia –1.25 0.05
Volta 1.06 –0.91
Hawaii 0.11 –0.64
Ankole 0.23 –1.08
Tahiti –1.25 0.05

Factor Loadings
Variable Factor 1 Factor 2

Communal ownership of land by aristocrats –.85 –.20

Personal ownership of land by commoners .79 –.21
Personal ownership of land by aristocracy .72 .44
Communal ownership of land by commoners –.70 .58
Private ownership of land by sovereign .53 .70
Communal ownership of land by sovereign –.40 –.14
Eigenvalue 2.8 1.13
% of variance explained 46.7 18.9

Of course, the initial impression is that the two variables do not

correlate at all. However, a closer inspection of the scattergram
reveals that this impression is quite misleading. The lack of signifi-
cant correlation is in fact a result of the so-called Galton effect.
118 Cross-Cultural Research / February 2003

2,0

Aztecs
1,5 Jimma
Fr ance
Kuba Maurya
Yoruba
1,0 Inca

,5
Angkor China
Political Development Index

Egypt Iberia
0,0
Norw ay
Axum
Zande
-,5 ScythiaMongolia

-1,0 Volta
Hawaii

-1,5
Tahiti
Ankole
-2,0
-1,5 -1,0 -,5 0,0 ,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5

Private Ownership of Land Index

Figure 3: Early States Political Development Index × Personal Owner-
ship of Land Index (scattergram)
NOTE: ρ = .4, p = .035 (one-tailed).

Those dealing with the Galton problem normally worry about cor-
relations being inflated as a result of diffusion effects. However, as
Carol Ember and Melvin Ember argued, the Galton problem could
well produce the opposite effects: “duplication may weaken results,
because a set of historically related cases may be exceptional to a
cross-cultural generalization rather than consistent with it”
(Ember, 1971; Ember & Ember, 1998, p. 679). We seem to confront
precisely such a case here. In the 1980s, many suggested that we
treat the Galton problem as a network autocorrelation problem
(e.g., Burton & White, 1987, p. 147, 1991; Dow, Burton, & White,
1981, 1982; Dow, Burton, White, & Reitz, 1984; White, Burton, &
Dow, 1981). This suggestion implies that Galton effects may result
from the influence of historical networks. We could not help but
notice that all the cultures in the upper left quarter of the scatter-
gram belonged to one large historical network that emerged in a
more or less full-fledged form during the “Axial Age” (e.g.,
Eisenstadt, 1982, 1986; Gellner, 1988; Jaspers, 1953) but whose
origins seem to go back to a much earlier time (Chase-Dunn & Hall,
 Bondarenko, Korotayev / CLAESSEN’S DATABASE 119

TABLE 6
Factor Analysis of Claessen’s Ruler Sacralization Variables

Early State Factor 1 Scores Factor 2 Scores

Aztecs 1.68 –0.91

Jimma –1.05 –2.46
France –1.41 –0.39
Kuba 1.83 –0.25
Maurya –1.11 –0.32
Yoruba 1.94 –1.28
Inca 0.27 0.34
Kachari –0.37 0.33
China –0.60 0.27
Angkor –0.87 0.05
Iberia 1.13 –0.32
Egypt 1.16 –0.16
Norway –1.39 –0.29
Axum –0.47 0.18
Zande –0.70 –0.20
Mongolia –0.17 0.25
Scythia 0.27 0.34
Volta –0.75 –0.25
Hawaii –0.24 2.45
Ankole 0.21 0.09
Tahiti 0.64 2.52

Factor Loadings
Variable Factor 1 Factor 2

The sovereign or close kinsman is high priest .882

Ruler is high priest .804 –.337
Human sacrifices at rulers’ funerals .701 .431
Acquisition of sacral status .172 .926
Tours by sovereign –.524 .566
Ritual anarchy on ruler’s death .139 .434
Eigenvalue 2.24 1.67
% of variance explained 37.3 27.8
NOTE: The cutoff point for factors is .1.

1997). In the figure below, this historical network will be called

Axial. The Axial zone roughly corresponds to the “Middle Old
World” region singled out by Burton, Moore, Whiting, and Romney
(1996) on the basis of a correspondence analysis of Murdock’s
Ethnographic Atlas database (1967).
120 Cross-Cultural Research / February 2003

2,0

Aztecs
1,5 Jimma
France
Maurya Kuba
Yoruba
1,0 Inca

,5
C hina
Political Development Index

Angkor
Iberia
0,0 Egypt
Norway
Axum
Zande Mongolia
-,5 Scythia

-1,0 Volta
Hawaii

-1,5 Tahiti
Ankole
-2,0
-2,0 -1,5 -1,0 -,5 0,0 ,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5

Ruler Sacralization Index

Figure 4: Early States Political Development Index × Ruler Sacralization

Index (scattergram with regression line)
NOTE: ρ = .01, p = .48 (one-tailed).

Let us see how the correlation between the Political Develop-

ment Index and the Ruler Sacralization Index looks for the Axial
Historical Network Zone (see Figure 5).
For this zone, the correlation is negative and significant. Now let
us see how this correlation looks for the rest of the world (see Fig-
ure 6).
For the rest of the world, the correlation is positive and margin-
ally significant. The immediate impression is that the Early States
of the Axial Historical Network and the rest of the world followed
rather different patterns of sociopolitical development. The pres-
ence in the overall sample of a roughly similar number of cases
from both subsamples destroyed the correlation, producing a sta-
tistically insignificant result.
What could account for this difference? We believe that what
really needs an explanation is the peculiarity of the sociopolitical
development of the Axial Historical Network societies. It is not sur-
prising that in the rest of the world, the growth of the political
power of the state and its ruler was accompanied by the growth of
 Bondarenko, Korotayev / CLAESSEN’S DATABASE 121

2,0

1,5 Jimma
France
Maurya
1,0
Political Developmen t Index

,5
China
Angkor
0,0 Iberia
Egypt
Norway
Axum
-,5 Mongolia Scythia

-1,0
-2,0 -1,5 -1,0 -,5 0,0 ,5 1,0 1,5

Ruler Sacralization Index

Figure 5: Early States Political Development Index × Ruler Sacralization
Index (scattergram, for the Axial Historical Network only)
NOTE: ρ = –.57, p = .03.

ruler sacralization. But what could account for the opposite pat-
tern found within the Axial Historical Network?
It was not by chance that we called this network Axial: the Axial
Age revolutions are quite relevant here. Eisenstadt (1982), for
example, considered as one of the most important features of the
Axial Age revolutions the development of highly autonomous reli-
gious-intellectual elites (“clerics”) claiming independent sacral-
religious authority. This authority was institutionalized within all
the “world (universal) religions”—Buddhism, Christianity, Islam.
In the premodern world (by, say, the 17th century A.D.), the Axial
Historical Network zone was roughly identical with the Universal
Religions zone.
As we stated above, the roots of the Axial Historical Network
seem to go much deeper than the Axial Age itself. The peculiar
social evolution pattern occurring within the Axial Zone appears to
122 Cross-Cultural Research / February 2003

2,0

Aztecs
1,5
Kuba
Yoruba
1,0 Inca

,5
Political Development Index

0,0

Zande
-,5

-1,0 Volta
Hawaii

-1,5 Tahiti
Ankole
-2,0
-1,0 -,5 0,0 ,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5

Ruler Sacralization Index

Figure 6: Early States Political Development Index × Ruler Sacralization
Index (scattergram, for the rest of the world)
NOTE: ρ = .55, p = .66.

be rooted in the zone’s pre-Axial cultural heritage. Note that three

(Greece, Iran, India) out of the five (Palestine and China are the
others) main Axial revolution centers are associated with the Indo-
Europeans. On the other hand, the basic principles of the social
organization of the proto-Indo-Europeans, as they have been
reconstructed by a wide range of sources (textual [e.g., Rigveda],
linguistic, archaeological, ethnographic, and so forth [Dumézil,
1958; Kullanda, 1995; Wikander, 1938]), must have served as a
sound basis for the Axial sociopolitical development pattern. The
sociopolitical organization of pastoral proto-Indo-Europeans
appears to have been characterized by a developed age-class sys-
tem. Within it, the sacral religious functions were performed by the
age-class of elders. Productive functions (animal husbandry and
agriculture) were performed by the age-class of mature married
 Bondarenko, Korotayev / CLAESSEN’S DATABASE 123

men, whereas the military functions (on the basis of which the
political leadership functions were also developed) belonged to the
age-class of initiated youngsters.
With the formation of stratified societies among the Indo-Euro-
peans, the age-class stratification tended to transform into a social
stratification system. Within this process, the age-class of initiated
youngsters transformed into an estate/varna of warriors/political
leaders (Indian kshatryas or, say, the noble estate of medieval west-
ern Europe). The age-class of elders transformed into an estate/
varna of priests—Indian brahmans or the priestly estate of medi-
eval western Europe. The age-class of mature married men trans-
formed into an estate/varna of peasants—Indian vayshyas or the
European third estate. Within this pattern, so-called political and
sacral/religious authorities were rather sharply divided (Claessen
& Oosten, 1996, pp. 272-274, 438). This division, of course, provided
good backgrounds for both the Axial Age transformations and the
Axial Historical Network sociopolitical development pattern.
At first glance, a tight cluster in the upper left of Figure 5, con-
sisting of such apparently diverse cultures as early medieval
France, ancient (Mauryan) India, and the Jimma Abba Jafar state
of the 19th and 20th centuries A.D. in southwest Ethiopia, looks like
a perfect illustration of the postmodernist conviction that stan-
dard statistical procedures can produce extremely wild results and
thus cannot serve as a sound basis for any generalizations. How-
ever, there are better grounds for viewing this cluster as evidence
of the reliability of standard statistical procedures.
All the three states were, first of all, strongly influenced by the
Axial Age world religions—Christianity in the case of France, Bud-
dhism in the case of Mauryan India (at least at the age of Asoka),
and Islam in the case of Jimma.3 France and Mauryan India are
further united by their common Indo-European heritage, with its
original three-function system implying the separation of the
sacral-religious function and the political-military one. The
Jimma, surprisingly, share something in common with them in
this respect: the pastoral backgrounds of the Galla were also char-
acterized by a developed age-class system within which the politi-
cal-military and sacral-religious functions were performed by dif-
ferent age-classes and, hence, rather sharply separated.4
But the pre-Axial influences on the Axial Age sociopolitical
development are not merely Indo-European. As Berezkin (1994,
1995a, 1995b, 1997, 2000) noticed, the sociopolitical evolution
124 Cross-Cultural Research / February 2003

pattern of the most ancient agricultural centers in western Asia

(associated, most likely, with the “Aufrasians”/“Semito-Hamites”
[e.g., Militarjov & Shnirelman, 1984]) seems to have been charac-
terized by the growth of cultural complexity through functional
differentiation rather than social stratification. From the very
beginning, this pattern appears to have differed significantly from
the one observed in the pre-Columbian Americas, tropical Africa,
or Oceania. Although, according to Berezkin, development in the
Near East was interrupted between the 4th (Mesopotamia) and
late 3rd (south Turkmenistan) millennia B.C.,5 its cultural-political
heritage might have contributed to the development of the civil-
temple communities in eastern Mediterrania. Those communities
also seem to have formed a sound basis for the Axial Age transfor-
mations (Diakonoff, Neronova, & Sventsitskaja, 1989).

METHODOLOGICAL CONCLUSION

Our research, we believe, shows that there is no impenetrable

gap between so-called orthodox quantitative, worldwide, cross-cul-
tural research, and qualitative comparative studies. The Early
State project constituted an important step toward bridging the
gap between the two types of cross-cultural research. Claessen’s
data set is extremely valuable, and we think further statistical
analysis of it will bring new and interesting results.
The Early State remains, in many respects, an incomparable vol-
ume. It looks like a miniature copy of the HRAF. It contains loads of
fully formalized data, but you can also find details about the values
of virtually any variable in question (using the subject index,
which serves in this case as an analogue of the Outline of Cultural
Materials [e.g., Murdock et al., 1987]). The recipe for such an
impressive result was very simple. Claessen and Skalník distrib-
uted among The Early State contributors a well-designed question-
naire and insisted on the contributors answering all the questions
clearly and completely. Another important precondition for The
Early State success was, naturally, a very well-designed, truly
worldwide cross-cultural sample.
It is unfortunate that, to our knowledge, The Early State algo-
rithm has not been repeated. There is a pressing need for new
worldwide, cross-cultural projects based on similar algorithms.
 APPENDIX
Data Set Used by Claessen for Typologization of Early States (recoded for a statistic reanalysis)

Mode of Mode of Personal Personal

Succession Succession Property Property
Professional of General of Special Codified Formal Codified of Land by of Land by
Description Markets Traders Functionaries Functionaries Salaries Law Judges Punishment Aristocracy Commoners

Angkor 3present 3present 2intermediate 2intermediate 0absent 1present 1present , 0absent 0absent
Ankole 2limited 1absent 1hereditary 1hereditary 0absent 0absent 0absent 0absent 0absent 0absent
Axum 3present 3present 2intermediate 2intermediate , 0absent 0absent , 0absent 0absent
Aztecs 3present 3present 3appointment 3appointment 1present 1present 1present 1present 1present 1present
China 3present 3present 2intermediate 2intermediate , 1present 0absent 1present 1present 1present
Egypt , , 2intermediate 3appointment , 0absent 0absent , , ,
France 3present 3present 2intermediate 3appointment 1present 1present 1present 1present 0absent 1present
Hawaii 1absent 1absent 1hereditary , 0absent 0absent 0absent 0absent , 0absent
Iberia , , 3appointment , , 0absent 0absent , 0absent 1present
Inca 3present , 2intermediate 2intermediate 1present 1present 1present 1present 0absent 0absent
Jimma 3present 3present 3appointment 3appointment 1present 1present 1present 1present 1present 1present
Kachari 2limited , , , , , 1present 1present 0absent 0absent
Kuba 3present 3present 2intermediate 3appointment 1present 1present 1present 1present 1present 0absent
Maurya 3present 3present 3appointment 2intermediate 1present 1present 1present 1present 1present 1present
Mongolia 3present 3present , , 0absent 0absent 0absent , 0absent 0absent
Norway 2limited 2limited , , , 0absent 0absent , 0absent 0absent
Scythia 3present 3present 1hereditary , , 0absent 0absent , 0absent 0absent
Tahiti 1absent 1absent 1hereditary 1hereditary 0absent 0absent 0absent 0absent 0absent 0absent
Volta 2limited 2limited 2intermediate 2intermediate 0absent 0absent 0absent 0absent 1present 1present
Yoruba 3present 3present 3appointment 3appointment 1present 0absent 1present 1present 0absent 0absent
125

Zande 2limited 1absent 2intermediate 2intermediate 0absent 0absent 0absent 1present 0absent ,
SOURCE: This appendix used as a basis Claessen and Skalník (1978, p. 592, table XX ).
126 Cross-Cultural Research / February 2003

Notes

1. There is no explicit definition of the Mature State in The Early State

(Claessen & Skalník, 1978). However, the differences between the Early
State and the Mature State are explained in Early State Dynamics
(Claessen & van de Velde, 1987):
The restriction of the definition (of the Early State—D.B., A.K.) to tributary
relations instead of taxation (i.e., haphazard instead of regular contributions
to supply the needs of the government), and to a class division that is only in-
cipient makes it possible to draw a line between the Early State and more
mature types of state (cf. Claessen, 1984; Shifferd, 1987). The level of the Ma-
ture State is reached when a different type of legitimacy and a managerial,
bureaucratic type of organization replace the earlier forms (cf. Bargatzky,
1987); Shifferd (1987) adds to these factors the development of a legal system
that transcends specific office holders, even the ruler, as well as the forma-
tion of a permanent police force. These latter points are similar to Vitkin’s re-
quirements of an “extensive and qualitative broadening of the sphere of con-
trol,” the emergence of a bureaucratic apparatus and the development of a
money economy that “freed the sovereign from the necessity of allotting them
(the office holders) land, together with corresponding economic rights of
dominance” (Vitkin, 1981, p. 450; cf. Smith, 1985, who distinguishes between
Dominion and Bureaucracy). (pp. 4-5)

2. Of course, the data represented in the volume were gathered in the

1970s. Claessen himself recognized “that in places corrections, or addi-
tions might have been possible in the light of the knowledge we have now”
(personal communication, September 13, 2000). On the other hand,
Claessen still believes (in our opinions, with complete justification) that
“the data are based on a series of case studies that are for the greater part
still valuable” (personal communication, September 13, 2000).
3. Of course, both Christianity and Islam formed well after the Axial
Age. However, both of them originated within the Abrahamic religious tra-
dition that acquired its distinctly Axial Age shape during the Axial Age
(including rather sharp separation of sacral religious and mundane politi-
cal authorities [Diakonoff, Neronova, & Sventsitskaja, 1989]), which
makes it possible to treat both these religions as the Axial ones (Jaspers,
1953).
4. Note that the role of the Galla prestate backgrounds in the astonish-
ingly fast development of the Jimma in the direction of a Mature State was
already quite clearly spelled out by Lewis, who contributed his description
of Jimma Abba Jafar to The Early State project (Claessen & Skalník, 1978,
pp. 321-338).
5. However, the polities developing squarely within this pattern appear
to have continued to exist in some parts of south Arabia up to the end of the
1st millennium B.C. (Frantsouzoff, 1995, 1997, 2000).
 Bondarenko, Korotayev / CLAESSEN’S DATABASE 127

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Dmitri M. Bondarenko is a senior research fellow and head of the Sector of

Cultural Anthropology at the Center for Civilizational and Regional
Studies, and senior research fellow of the Institute for African Studies, both
of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a professor at the Center of Social
Anthropology at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Mos-
cow. He received a Ph.D. and a Doctor of Science degree from Institute for
African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of
more than 120 publications, including three monographs (Benin on the
Eve of the First Contacts with Europeans: Person. Society. Authority, 1995,
Civilizations Theory and the Dynamics of Historical Process in
Precolonial Tropical Africa, 1997, and Pre-Imperial Benin: Formation and
Evolution of the Socio-Political Institutions System, 2001) and 16 edited
volumes. He is a member of the Society for Cross-Cultural Research, the Eu-
ropean Association of Social Anthropologists, and World Archaeological
Congress. His spheres of interest include the formation and evolution of
complex societies, the civilizations theory, and cultural anthropology of
tropical Africa.
132 Cross-Cultural Research / February 2003

Andrey V. Korotayev is a professor in and head of the program in Anthro-

pology of the East at the School of History, Political Science and Law at the
Russian State University for the Humanities, and in the sociology faculty
at the State University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He is a se-
nior research fellow of the Oriental Institute and of the Center for
Civilizational and Regional Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences. He re-
ceived a Ph.D. from Manchester University and a doctor of science degree
from the Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has
done field research in Yemen and Libya. He is the author of more than 130
publications, including four monographs (Ancient Yemen, 1995; Factors of
Social Evolution, 1997; Sabaean Studies: Some General Trends and Fac-
tors of Evolution of the Sabaean Civilization, 1997; and Chiefdoms and
Tribes of the Land of Hashid and Bakil, 1998). His research focuses on so-
cial evolution, cross-cultural research, and Arabian anthropology.