In academic circles, an odd disjuncture has developed around the use of such schemes. Most cultural anthropologists view this kind of evolutionary thinking as a sort of quaint relic from their discipline's past, which no one today could possibly take seriously; while most archaeologists only employ terms like 'tribe', 'chiefdom' or 'state' for lack of an alternative terminology. Yet almost anyone else will treat such schemes as the self-evident basis for all further discussion. Throughout this book, we have spent a good deal of time demonstrating how deceptive all this is. The reason why these ways of thinking remain in place, no matter how many times people point out their incoherence, is precisely because we find it so difficult to imagine history that isn't teleological – that is, to organise history in a way which does not imply that current arrangements are somehow inevitable.

— The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber, David Wengrow (Page 449)