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Join the conversation! There are now 10 comments on this chapter's page 83. Prerequisites for State Formation. What are your thoughts?
  1. STM says

    Did you illustrate all of Anubis et al?

    • Heck no. That’s a public-domain photo of an ancient Egyptian mural that gets used a lot in teaching materials. But thanks for even thinking I could have done that!

  2. Jeff says

    Only just realised that there was a new update – you might want to change the thumbnail so it’s distinct from the previous page’s one :)

  3. Anon says

    After the insurgence, Bertov avoided persecution by changing his name and moving to America where he spent the rest of his life with a roommate called Ernie.

  4. SeanR says

    What I get for trusting the current page icon. I also didn’t get an email notification this time. Looks like I am late by…four days.

    • How so? The essay you cite points out that Afghanistan’s geography and isolation make it particularly unsuitable for the requirements of state-level political organization. It also calls Afghanistan “the last place an empire would want to go and the first it would want to give up.” “The graveyard of empires” doesn’t mean it destroyed entire empires, only that great powers of the modern world have buried a lot of men trying to turn the place into something it isn’t. The ancient empires mentioned in the essay weren’t trying to turn the region into a state, but instead conquered or asserted hegemony over it while the population continued to govern themselves as agnatic lineages.

      • Hence ‘misleading’ rather than ‘wrong.’ The phrase “graveyard of empires” could reasonably be interpreted more than one way, and I’ve heard people whose opinions I otherwise respect using it in the sense of “destroyed entire empires” specifically, so I’d rather not let such a footnote pass unexamined. Even a seemingly minor ambiguity can be dangerous when it’s in a position to get tangled up with the sort of policy decisions that lead to five-digit body counts.

        And, if I’m being completely honest, I saw a plausible excuse for a link to something else which fans of your work might also enjoy. Lots of websites talk about history and/or law, but this wonderful combination of rigor and approachability isn’t always easy to find.

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