No, it is "natural" rise. If earth system itself contributes to carbon emmisions, we need to subtracted that from anthropogenic emmisions!
This is great news! Our efforts are actually paying off! Soon we will cut human emmisions to zero!
Also we should substract emmisions produced by other species like cows, dogs, cats.. And I have great business idea, where orangutan owns and operates coal plant, that is natural and should be substracted as well!!!
A lot has changed. Foreigners no longer have this "superiority".
> telling a class in even the safest parts of the United States
It is just histeria, look at recent trend of "men vs bear in forest" . Many parts of US are totally safe, the worst part are dogs, car accidents and voluntary drug ingestion!
> be evidence of periodic burning of villages because that's what warlords do to peaceful settlements
Not really. Look at "pax Romana" or Aztecs. Warlords bring peace!
If villages are part of the same empire, they are at peace. Without central force there is constant local bickering and fight. Warlords take their tributes (including soldiers) and wage war far away. Or they punish population by killing one man in family. There is no need to burn entire village, it hurts profit.
People at that time were able to build huge megalithic structures. It is safe to assume they could organise small army of a few thousands (enough to dominate 20k settlements).
> The use of house size as a proxy for the economic status and social power of households in a society is based on broad cross-cultural evidence from ethno-archaeological studies and archival sources as it has been found that household wealth and house size are correlated in many societies
Basic premise of this study is wrong, based on recorded history from the same region. Nomadic herding warriors do not live in houses, and do not leave the same mark in archaeology records.
Early agriculture can support a huge number of people, but they will be malnourished, and always be dominated by meat fed elites!
Are we sure elites actually lived on those sites? Eastern Europe always had "warlords", that traveled with their army around their empire (Rus, Avars, Mongols...). Transportation of food and goods was not practical over large areas, so the elites moved instead.
Group can walk to the site. Butchering and preserving something like horse, buffalo or elephant with stone tools, is hard work, and takes a lot of work from everyone. Hunting is just a first step!
It was not like today, when "rest of the groups" sits at home all day, and expects everything on silver platter!