a century later, the number had grown to at least fifty-five. The history of France traces the evolution of hierarchical complexity as complex large-scale societies came about through warfare. Early modern France was a five-level hierarchy where the largest level of organization was divided in provinces, gouvernements, which was then in turn subdivided into smaller units called bailliages. This theory makes sense as a society can engage in warfare to grow and increase in size, resources and diversity. Alternative theories In a 2009 paper Turchin and Gavrilets argue that the emergence of complex societies is a response to the existential threat of violent warfare. They build upon the work of Karl Jaspers' conception of the Axial Age, whereby in the era 800 - 200 BC human societies undergo a revolutionary shift. The central mechanism which pushes societies into a complex stage is the intensity of the warfare. When war takes place across a metaethnic frontier, such as between agricultural and nomadic peoples, is when warfare is sufficiently intense to shift the society into a different state. Within the Axial Age, an increase in warfare intensity between the steppe peoples and the Persian and Chinese peoples forged the Achaemenid Persian empire and the Han Chinese empire, both complex societies. This theory has also been extended to explain the rise of complex states in Africa and Asia. The colonization of these places by European powers functioned as a metaethnic frontier in which warfare met the necessary level of intensity to forge the complex society. Another theory deals with the social evolution of altruism versus selfishness in the context of conflicting forces. D.S. Wilson and E.O. Wilson state that selfishness beats altruism within a group but groups that are altruistic beat out groups that are selfish as there is a higher level of cooperation and coordination within an altruistic group. Whether or not a group will be altruistic and cohesive is dependent on both individual efforts as well as exterior forces. The success of a group in competition with other groups is dependent upon cooperation within. The Collapse of Complex Societies Joseph Tainter (the author of The Collapse of Complex Societies) argued that as complex societies try to deal with the problems that they face, they tend to become more and more complex. This complexity exists under the purview of mechanisms that coordinate numerous differentiated and specialized social and economic roles by which