The theory has been summarized in one sentence by Schacht: “In areas of circumscribed agricultural land, population pressure led to warfare that resulted in the evolution of the state”.
The new state organization strives to alleviate the population pressure by increasing the productive capacity of agricultural land through, for instance, more intensive cultivation using irrigation.
Carneiro's theory has been criticized by the Dutch "early state school" emerging in the 1970s around cultural anthropologist Henri J.M.
Also for example, the formation of some early states in East Africa, Sri Lanka, and Polynesia do not easily fit with Carneiro's model.
He has argued that population concentration can act as a lower level impetus for tribal conflict than geographic circumscription.
[8][9] In the "Foreword" to Ostrovsky's book[10] Carneiro acknowledges that he unjustly "abandoned" the circumscription theory in the Bronze Age.