[soledades]

> "attract subjects"

that's an interesting little phraseology/unsubstantiated theory of state, especially coming from a science publication. typically, you "subject" subjects, hence the word.

alternatively, if the redundancy bothers you, you can subject populaces instead.

[crooked-v]

The article is specifically about the leadership in question willingly attracting people to rule over rather than forcibly subjecting them to rulership.

[soledades]

yes, that is the premise, but the article specifically does not present any evidence of that being the case, just a bunch of weasel words.

"...aerial laser maps reported by Estrada-Belli and colleagues have revealed large, interconnected Maya cities now obscured by forests in other parts of northern Guatemala (SN: 9/27/18). The next step, Estrada-Belli says, is to assemble an aerial laser map of at least 100 square kilometers around Tamarindito to see if it was built in relative isolation."

if they don't even know whether it was built in isolation, how could they possibly be in a position to make these kind of conclusions about how it came about?

hence, "theory."

[shadowofneptune]

Terms which were coined in Norman feudalism will need some stretching to adapt to different cultures and political systems. The judges in the Book of Judges aren't anything like a judge in our sense, for example.

[soledades]

It's a pretty universal fact of history that civilizations come about through violence and subjugation, not by "the law of attraction," or whatever this article is proposing.

[jerry1979]

> typically, you "subject" subjects, hence the word.

That seems like an appeal to linguistic authority.

I have a hard time imagining building a hierarchy without an attraction phase. There are many real world examples: Jim Jones, Uber, the French Revolution, etc.

[soledades]

failure of imagination is not an argument either FWIW

[lazide]

So you never heard of a population being conquered?