Aggressive and parasitic behavour paid off, in the short term at least, for some Leviathans managed to establish dominance over hundreds of others. These often became hugely swollen with wealth and high populations, massive public and private buildings, specialised manufacturing and distribution areas and all the control and defensive infrastructure that empire involves.

Communities of settlements began to repeat the process of coalescing that we have observed and described in the formation of each dimension of life. In some cases we can see the development of specialist cities within the whole national body, the capital serving as the central nervous system of the whole, operating huge beurocracies, whose inefficiency or inability to communicate rapidly over the vaster distances often led to the break-down of the whole into more manageable parts. For quite long periods, these monsters have sometimes survived, maintaining an inner harmony and some points of high-culture. Some have even attempted the mammoth task of physically walling themeselves within their territory, and defending their inner peace with huge standing armies.

Almost the entire course of history since the Bronze age can be viewed as the jostling for territory and nourishment of the thousands of human communities as they grew larger and more powerful. Only the Basques in Europe can convincingly claim to be indigenous since the ice age. Leviathans have swarmed and squabbled their way into almost every niche of the planet, elbowing the weaker up into mountain fastnesses, or consuming and assimilating the slower in their flight. The process is almost complete, surely, now that the planet is overrun. The great colonial release valves on this tension, America, Australasia and Africa, are no longer available.

Tension is turning inwards, into the swelling cities.