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Kinds of Society - Each epoch creates its own taxonomy about kinds of human societies. The Greeks divided societies up into Civilized, Barbaric and Savage. During the Industrial Revolution societies were sorted according the their metallurgy and tools produced - Stone Age, Iron, Bronze Age Societies. Medieval Europe looked out from Christendom to infidel societies, pagan and heathen societies (those that rejected Christianity, and those who hadn't heard yet, and groups too backward to know anything).

There are similarites in the patterns of social life for large groups based on the dominant way that they produce their livelihoods. A 'ways of life' taxonomy might look like this

Foraging or Hunter/Gatherers
Transhumance and Pastoralist
Horticultural
Agricultural
Industrial
Techno/Servile Society

Each has typical population size, settlement patterns, social organization, governance, religion types, learning/education styles, tools, set of gender/family/marriage/inheritance customs.

Each may have limits, scale that is typical to it in terms of population sizes, divisions of labor, stratification/class/caste distinctions, economic relations (market, trade, surplus, property, production and reproduction conditions).

Marx - how societies change
Durkheim how societies maintain stability
Weber - beliefs and values in a society have the power to change society.
Lenski, Gerhard and Jean - societies and social relations change as groups acquire new knowledge and techniques to control, manipulate and manage environment.

Type	Emergence	Tech	Scale	Settlement	Soc Org	E.G.
Foraging	Dawn	stone, bone, wood, ceramic, textile, fire	15-40	mobile, rich foragers settled villages	Band, familial, little specialization, acephalous or presbyters	Kung!, Aborgines, Ituri,
Horticulture	12,000 BP	hand implements, early domestication of beasts	less than 1000, but w trading networks	settled, territorial	Familial, tribal, specialization - shaman, priests, warriors and chiefdoms	Some pacific islanders, Yanomamo and other S. Amer groups, Fore of N. Guinea
Transhumance and pastoral	Dawn, then developing with control of sheep, goats, llama, bovines @ 10,000	as above	100s	mobile in response to animals' requirements	Familial, tribal, chiefdoms commensal w settled horticultural/agrarian	Poss. H. Erectus, Laplanders, Plains Indian (think Dancing w Wolves, Lakota people), Maasai, Early Celtic
Agrarian	8-9,000 years ago	Plow, traction animals, hydraulics, levers, metallurgies, ships, surfaced road,	millions	emergence of cities, emergence of nation states, empires	Complex states, specialization of labor, full-time institutions of law, commerce, artisanal, religion, governance, defense, learning	Think Tigres/Euphrates, Aztec, Inca, Maya, Athens, Pharoahs, Abel rather than Cain,
Industrial	250 years ago	Large machines, explosive weaponry, mastery of steel, jacquard loom, steam power, factory production, global commodity trade, later petrochemical exploitation	100s of millions		Transnational trading corporations, complex state alliances, productivity organized at larger than familial scales, transport/trade, wage slavery, capital owners labor sellers, compulsory education, democratic governances	British Empire, Post Civil War America, 1930's America,
Techno/Data	Now	automobiles, computer, telecommunicating, net, totally- managed environments - lifespaces and styles	6 Billion and rising	crawling all over the earth, no particular place	Global functional interdependence, diminishment of varied cultures, mass mediation, identity becomes alienable (,theft of), multiplex.	Think Yanomamo elder wearing 2nd hand Rolling Stone's concert tee-shirt, on Motorola cell phone with UNESCO lawyer in London, negotiating intellectual property rights to genome of rare rain forest plant w pharmaceutical possibilities..