<P> The anthropologist Tim Ingold writes: </P> <P> It is not enough to observe, in a now rather dated anthropological idiom, that hunter gatherers live in' stateless societies', as though their social lives were somehow lacking or unfinished, waiting to be completed by the evolutionary development of a state apparatus . Rather, the principal of their socialty, as Pierre Clastres has put it, is fundamentally against the state . </P> <P> During the Neolithic period, human societies underwent major cultural and economic changes, including the development of agriculture, the formation of sedentary societies and fixed settlements, increasing population densities, and the use of pottery and more complex tools . </P> <P> Sedentary agriculture led to the development of property rights, domestication of plants and animals, and larger family sizes . It also provided the basis for the centralized state form by producing a large surplus of food, which created a more complex division of labor by enabling people to specialize in tasks other than food production . Early states were characterized by highly stratified societies, with a privileged and wealthy ruling class that was subordinate to a monarch . The ruling classes began to differentiate themselves through forms of architecture and other cultural practices that were different from those of the subordinate laboring classes . </P>

The concept of state creation has been associated with various ideologies