Social Evolution in the Mirror of a Journal: To the Twentieth Anniversary of the ‘Social Evolution & History’

Abstract

The paper presents a review of articles published in the 'Social Evolution & History' journal since the 2002 until present. Over the past twenty years, 375 articles have been published in the Journal. The subject matter of publications is fairly comprehensive. However, the Journal obviously focuses on the key problems of social evolution in modern science. A considerable part of the Journal's articles are devoted to the origin of the state and the early state (24 per cent of all published articles). The central point is the discussion of Robert Carneiro's concept of the so-called 'circumscription theory'. Considering this discussion, the author comes to the conclusion that Carneiro's theory has completely 'passed the test'. In fact, the opponents' critical remarks may well be integrated into Carneiro's theory and this may only contribute to its improvement and elaboration.