>>17797499They don't. It just a shallow association of "monumental architecture and city building = state" that old academia did.
We don't have any real reason to think Norte Chico had the same concept of state as Old World civilizations or that it organized itself politically in a similar form.
It's just circular arguments all the way down.
By the way, the opposite association also happens, such as China being depicted as a pre-state society, despite having a very older and archeological proven state-like organization, only because they didn't have large cities and monumental stone architecture at that time.