Con base en una comparacion del abundante registro etnohistorico referente a los confiictos prehistoricos en Hawai 7 con la evidencia de guerras en otras culturas, se proponen algunas similitudes bdsicas en su causa y efecto entre muchas culturas hegemonicas complejas. En Hawai'i hay tres tipos de restos arqueologicos que indican que el sacrificio humano y la construccion ritual a una escala monumental formaban parte integral de las contiendas belicas de conquista previas a la epoca del contacto (1778 d.C). Sin embargo, los hawaiianos invirtieron mucho menos trabajo en la respuesta a largo plazo a las posibles amenazas a la

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During the Formative period (ca. 1000 B.C.-A.D. 250) at the site of Yarumela in central Honduras, an indigenous society developed that was constructing monumental architecture well before 400 B.C. Experimentation with new building materials and techniques reached a peak ca. A.D. 200 just prior to the site's abandonment, by which time religious temples and elite residences had undergone a transition from simple pole-and-thatch structures to more complex adobe and stone constructions. Overall labor investment in monumental architecture may, on the other hand, actually have declined during this same period.

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Recent archaeological settlement pattern research in the 550 sq km Comayagua Valley in central Honduras has documented considerable variation in the political structure of one ranked society over a 2,500-year period of prehistory. Data presented suggest that this Lenca and proto-Lenca culture group underwent at least five major political restructurings during this time as a response to the local, regional, and interregional political climate on the southeast Mesoamerican periphery. Such variability calls into question traditional models postulating a lack of complexity or adaptive flexibility for indigenous cultures of lower Central America.