Editing Government (section)

=== Earliest governments ===
The moment and place that the phenomenon of human government developed is lost in time; however, history does record the formations of early governments. About 5,000 years ago, the first small city-states appeared.{{sfn|Christian|2004|p=245}} By the third to second millenniums BC, some of these had developed into larger governed areas: [[Sumer]], [[ancient Egypt]], the [[Indus Valley civilization]], and the [[List of Neolithic cultures of China|Yellow River civilization]].{{sfn|Christian|2004|p=294}}

One reason that explains the emergence of governments includes agriculture. Since the [[Neolithic Revolution]], agriculture has been an efficient method to create food surplus. This enabled people to specialize in non-agricultural activities. Some of them included being able to rule over others as an external authority. Others included social experimentation with diverse governance models. Both these activities formed the basis of governments.<ref name="Eagly99">{{cite journal |author1=Eagly, Alice H. |author2=Wood, Wendy |date=June 1999 |title=The Origins of Sex Differences in Human Behavior: Evolved Dispositions Versus Social Roles |url=http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/fiske/facets/eagly&wood.htm |url-status=dead |journal=American Psychologist |volume=54 |issue=6 |pages=408–423 |doi=10.1037/0003-066x.54.6.408 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000817071347/http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/fiske/facets/eagly&wood.htm |archive-date=17 August 2000}}</ref> These governments gradually became more complex as agriculture supported larger and denser populations, creating new [[Culture|interactions]] and [[Social issue|social pressures]] that the government needed to control. [[David Christian (historian)|David Christian]] explains

{{blockquote|As farming populations gathered in larger and denser communities, interactions between different groups increased and the social pressure rose until, in a striking parallel with star formation, new structures suddenly appeared, together with a new level of complexity. Like stars, cities and states reorganize and energize the smaller objects within their gravitational field.{{sfn|Christian|2004|p=245}}}}

Another explanation includes the need to properly manage infrastructure projects such as water infrastructure. Historically, this required centralized administration and complex social organisation, as seen in regions like Mesopotamia.<ref name="Fukuyama-2012">{{Cite book |last=Fukuyama |first=Francis |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=i9xRAQAAMAAJ&q=origins+of+political+order+amazon |title=The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution |date=2012-03-27 |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |isbn=978-0-374-53322-9 |pages=70 |language=en}}</ref> However, there is archaeological evidence that shows similar successes with more egalitarian and decentralized complex societies.<ref>{{cite book |author=Roosevelt, Anna C. |title=Cambridge history of the Native peoples of the Americas: South America, Volume 3 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-521-63075-7 |editor=Salomon, Frank |pages=266–267 |chapter=The Maritime, Highland, Forest Dynamic and the Origins of Complex Culture |editor2=Schwartz, Stuart B. |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hxqgDcCrzjkC&pg=PA266 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160624045250/https://books.google.com/books?id=hxqgDcCrzjkC&pg=PA266 |archive-date=24 June 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref>