This is a non-exhaustive list of societies that have been described as examples of stateless societies.
There is no universally accepted definition of what constitutes a state, or to what extent a stateless group must be independent of the de jure or de facto control of states so as to be considered a society by itself.
The following groups have been cited as examples of stateless societies by some commentators. But the classification of these societies as truly "stateless" is controversial.
Human society predates the existence of states, meaning that the history of almost any ethnic group would include pre-state organisation. The groups listed below have been identified as examples of stateless societies by various commentators, including discussions relating to anarchism.