Political anthropology as a methodology of historical research is increasingly used by domestic researchers. The issues of state formation, factors and trajectories of social evolution have always been very relevant. At the moment, the theoretical base formed by specialists in the field of ethnography and social anthropology has turned out to be in demand in historical science. This work is an attempt on the one hand to generalize a fairly rich and diverse theoretical material, on the other hand, to consider the stage of formation of various states in a comparative analysis.