Between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago, agriculture and animal husbandry were independently pioneered in west and east Asia, Central America, the Andes, and a few other minor centers. From there farming spread out to cover most of the world’s surface that was suitable for it. Its impact was profound. Both tribe and ethnos were deeply affected. Furthermore, within a few millennia, states emerged where agricultural society had taken root, building on, and then transforming, existing kin–culture populations. States eroded and supplanted tribal structures. At the same time, ethnic bonds of affinity, identity, and solidarity remained central to state existence and politics throughout history. In what follows we shall trace the increase in the size of tribes and the formation of large-scale ethne due to the spread of agriculture and animal husbandry. We shall then trace the transformation of kin–culture bonds as they lost their tribal form and became intertwined with the politics of evolving states.

Tribal growth and ethnic expansion

Agriculture’s far greater productivity in comparison with foraging meant that human population, and hence demographic density, increased by leaps and bounds. World population, estimated at somewhere between 5 and 15 million before the advent of agriculture, grew by a factor of 100 by the eve of industrialization. This was a gradual process, of course, but from the start it meant that agricultural tribes were larger than the hunter-gatherer regional/tribal group. Wider kin circles now lived closer together. Still, agricultural tribes remained relatively small-scale societies, normally consisting of anywhere between two thousand to a few tens of thousands of people.