The interrelated processes of agricultural intensification and ever increasing requirements for food seen throughout the world share a critical variable: human well-being. The most dramatic change to occur following the shift from hunting gathering to farming in Eurasia and the New World was the appearance of a distinctive settlement system vastly altering preexisting ecological conditions: the emergence of settlement hierarchies joining highly nucleated settlements that later developed into urban centers. Scholars have long disagreed over the causal linkages among intensive farming, the development of urban centers, and the rise of states, but all agree that these developments are mutually reinforcing. One element common to all large, differentiated settlement systems is that they are based on the combination of intensive agriculture, economic specialization, and exchange or trade, so that even seemingly remote settlements are closely tied to a larger economic and political context, and their local environmental or ecological arrangements are similarly connected. In fact, most geographers argue that, in general, rural events or activities reflect the influences of regional metropolitan political and economic organizations.