How do complex societies emerge and disappear?

Comparative table of discoveries of the main complex societies

Three major turning points in this chronology

This table reveals three pivotal moments. The first, around 10,700 to 8,000 BCE, corresponds to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic in the Near East: sedentary hunter-gatherers built sanctuaries, towers and enclosures without agriculture or pottery. The second, between 5000 and 4000 BCE, saw the emergence of metallurgy, princely elites and the first proto-urban towns. The third, from 3600 BCE onwards, marks the entry into the Bronze Age, with writing, the state and great metropolises.

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic: builders before agriculture

Körtik Tepe, Tell Qaramel and Tell Mureybet

The oldest sites in the table belong to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, a pivotal period when humanity became sedentary without yet domesticating plants. Körtik Tepe, in southeastern Anatolia, was occupied from 10,700 BCE and shows a remarkable continuity between the Epipalaeolithic and the Neolithic. Tell Qaramel, in Syria, has yielded the oldest known circular stone towers, dated between 10,650 and 9,650 BCE. Tell Mureybet, on the Syrian Euphrates, was occupied for more than two millennia, with a characteristic circular architecture.

These sites show that sedentarization, monumental architecture and collective ritual practices preceded agriculture. This sequence, long considered impossible, is now firmly established.

Göbekli Tepe: the temple before all else

On a hill in southeastern Turkey, about fifteen kilometres from the city of Şanlıurfa, the site of Göbekli Tepe was identified in 1963, then truly revealed from 1994 onwards by the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt (1953-2014). It is now considered the oldest known temple in the world.

Its monumental structures, composed of T-shaped megalithic pillars weighing up to 20 tonnes, are decorated with animal representations: foxes, snakes, scorpions, vultures. They date from around 10,000 BCE, nearly 7,000 years before Stonehenge. The site was deliberately buried around 8000 BCE, which contributed to its exceptional preservation.

Göbekli Tepe overturned a dogma: that agriculture had preceded and made possible the construction of monuments. Here, it was hunter-gatherers, without pottery or metallurgy, who built a major ceremonial centre. The site suggests that the construction of monuments and the organization of complex rituals may have preceded, or even stimulated, the adoption of agriculture. This hypothesis, defended by Klaus Schmidt, remains debated, but it has profoundly renewed prehistoric archaeology.

Jericho, Çatalhöyük and the invention of urban life

Jericho: the oldest known fortification

Identified in 1868, the site of Jericho, in the West Bank, was occupied from 8,000 BCE. It features a tower and an enclosure wall considered the oldest known fortification in the world. This discovery indicates that a collective organization capable of mobilizing a significant workforce already existed in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.

Çatalhöyük: a city without streets

Discovered in 1958, the site of Çatalhöyük, in central Turkey, was occupied from 7400 to 5200 BCE. It appears as a dense settlement, without streets, where houses are adjoining and access is via the roofs. Its wall paintings, figurines and burials beneath the floors attest to a rich symbolic life and a complex social organization.

Choirokoitia and Dispilio: the eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans

Choirokoitia, in Cyprus, discovered in 1934 and occupied from 7000 to 6000 BCE, is a remarkably well-preserved circular village. Dispilio, in Greece, discovered in 1932 and occupied from 5470 to 4850 BCE, is a lakeside village that yielded the famous Dispilio tablet, one of the oldest traces of writing in Europe. These two sites show that social complexity was not limited to the Near East.

The Chalcolithic revolution: gold, copper and inequalities

Varna: gold before the pharaohs

In 1972, construction work near the city of Varna, on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, brought to light an exceptional necropolis. Dated between 4600 and 4300 BCE, it precedes the first Egyptian dynasties by more than a thousand years. The excavations, led in particular by the archaeologist Mikhail Lazarov (1934-2020), revealed more than 300 tombs and nearly 3,000 gold artefacts, for a total weight exceeding 6 kilograms.

The richest tomb, that of a man in his sixties, contained necklaces, bracelets, a sceptre and a gold phallic sheath. This accumulation of precious goods in a single burial indicates a marked social stratification, with an elite holding symbolic and probably ritual power.

Goseck and ceremonial circles

Discovered in 1991, the Goseck circle, in Germany, is dated to around 4900 BCE. Nicknamed the "German Stonehenge", it is a ceremonial circle with astronomical alignments, which attests to early celestial knowledge and collective ritual organization in Central Europe.

Atbai: elite tombs of the desert

The first stone circle of the Atbai desert, between Egypt and Sudan, was identified in 2010. Research has since revealed nearly 300 monumental structures, some measuring more than 60 metres in diameter. These are tombs intended for "elite nomads", belonging to a cattle-herding culture, whose construction spans from around 5000 to 2000 BCE. This discovery shows that mobile societies, without cities or writing, could produce monumental funerary architecture.

Towards the Bronze Age: cities, writing and states

Tell Brak and Uruk: the birth of cities

Tell Brak, in Syria, discovered in 1937 and occupied from 4000 BCE, is a proto-urban city of northern Mesopotamia, with organized districts. Uruk, in Iraq, identified in 1849, became around 3600 BCE the first great Mesopotamian metropolis and the place where writing was invented. These two sites mark the threshold of the Bronze Age and the emergence of the state.

Mehrgarh and Mohenjo-Daro: the Indus

Mehrgarh, in Pakistan, discovered in 1974 and occupied from 7000 to 2500 BCE, is one of the oldest agricultural sites in South Asia. It precedes the emergence of the Indus civilization. Mohenjo-Daro, discovered in 1922 and occupied from 2600 to 1900 BCE, is its great city, with its grid plan and sewer system. These sites show that social complexity emerged largely independently in several regions of the world.

Caral: the oldest city in the Americas

Caral, in Peru, discovered in 1905 and occupied from 3000 to 1800 BCE, is the oldest known city in the Americas. Its stepped pyramids, circular plazas and urban organization attest to a complex society, without pottery or writing, contemporary with the first Egyptian dynasties.

The Maltese temples and Stonehenge

The Maltese temples, including the Tarxien site discovered in 1913, are dated from 3600 to 2500 BCE. They constitute the oldest free-standing monumental structures in the world. Stonehenge, first mentioned in writing in 1130, was built between 3000 and 1600 BCE. These two monumental ensembles illustrate the diversity of European trajectories towards social complexity.

Disappearance of complex societies: probable causes and datings

Multiple and non-simultaneous collapses, where war is a possible but rarely unique factor

None of these societies disappeared all at once, nor for a single cause. Their decline spans several centuries, sometimes several millennia, and most often results from the conjunction of environmental, economic, social and, in some cases, warlike factors. War, understood as organized armed conflict, raids, sieges, invasions or violent competition for resources, is rarely identified as the main cause for these sites, because the archaeological evidence is often ambiguous. It intervenes rather as an aggravating factor, especially when societies are already weakened by drought, soil degradation or the breakdown of exchanges.

Summary table of dates of abandonment or main decline of complex societies

Environmental causes: climate, erosion and water

The most frequently identified cause is climate change. Göbekli Tepe was abandoned around 8000 BCE after suffering landslides and severe erosion linked to heavy winter rains[reference:0]. At Çatalhöyük, the abrupt cooling of 8200 cal BP increased pressure on resources and caused the fission of the village around 5200 BCE[reference:1].

In the Atbai desert, the progressive aridification of the Sahara, between 3000 and 2000 BCE, made pastures impossible and forced herding populations to abandon their monumental tombs. At Caral, the 4.2 ka event, a period of severe droughts around 2200 BCE, led to the crisis and collapse of the civilization, with famines and population displacements towards the coast[reference:2].

For the Indus civilization, recent studies have shown that successive droughts, each lasting more than 85 years, played a key role in the collapse of Mohenjo-Daro and the other great Harappan cities[reference:3]. The change in the course of the Indus also deprived the cities of their access to water and navigation routes.

Social causes: rigidity, inequalities and institutional collapse

Environmental factors do not explain everything. The Varna culture, both highly hierarchical and highly rigid, was unable to adapt to a crisis, whether earthquakes, poor harvests or political tensions. Its collapse, around 4300 BCE, illustrates the vulnerability of highly inegalitarian societies[reference:4].

At Çatalhöyük, demographic pressure and competition for resources generated social and biological stress that the community system could no longer absorb. The village split and the eastern mound was deserted[reference:5]. These examples show that social complexity can become a weakness when accompanied by excessive institutional rigidity.

The collapse of the Bronze Age: a systemic phenomenon

Between 1200 and 1150 BCE, a large-scale collapse struck the entire eastern Mediterranean. The Hittite empire disappeared around 1198 BCE, the Mycenaean civilization collapsed, and Egypt entered decline. The causes are multiple: severe droughts attested by tree rings between 1198 and 1196 BCE, invasions of the "Sea Peoples", economic bankruptcies, earthquakes and interruptions of trade routes[reference:6][reference:7].

This collapse is not that of an isolated society, but of an interconnected system of kingdoms and cities that depended on one another for trade, raw materials and political stability. The fall of one led to the fall of the others, in a chain reaction.

N.B.:
The dates of disappearance are often estimates, and the identified causes are hypotheses based on available archaeological and palaeoclimatic data. Research continues to refine these scenarios.

What these discoveries teach us

Complexity precedes writing

None of these oldest societies left any text. Yet all display an elaborate organization: planning of worksites, specialization of tasks, social hierarchy, symbolic production. Social complexity was therefore not born with writing, nor with the city, nor even with agriculture.

A diversity of paths towards civilization

Each site illustrates an original trajectory. Göbekli Tepe experiments with the monument before domestication. Varna develops a princely elite. Caral invents the city without pottery. Uruk invents writing and the state. Mohenjo-Daro plans its city on a grid. There is no single path towards civilization, but a plurality of routes.

Symbolically rich societies

Gold, decorated pillars, astronomical circles, monumental tombs: everywhere, the symbolic occupies a central place. These societies do not merely survive, they produce meaning, organize rituals and inscribe their vision of the world in the landscape. The symbolic is not a late luxury: it is an early driver of social organization.

N.B.:
The datings of these sites are regularly revised as new radiometric and stratigraphic analyses are published. The values indicated here correspond to the consensus published in 2026.

Perspectives: what tomorrow's archaeology could reveal

LiDAR and satellite imagery

LiDAR has already transformed our knowledge of the Amazon, Cambodia and Mexico. Its extension to other regions, such as Central Africa, Southeast Asia or the Congo Basin, could reveal dozens of still unknown sites, profoundly modifying the maps of prehistory.

Biomolecular analyses

Advances in palaeogenetics and the analysis of organic residues make it possible to reconstruct diets, migrations and exchanges. These techniques, applied to the sites of Varna or Atbai, could clarify the origin of elites and the nature of exchange networks.

A global, non-linear history

Recent archaeology is drawing a global history of human societies that is much more teeming than the classic evolutionist model. Far from a single path leading from the horde to the state, it reveals a multiplicity of social experiments, each adapted to its environment and its beliefs.