  If Democritus is the source for this theory, it suggests that he took seriously the need to account for the origin of all aspects of the world of our experience.  Human institutions could not be assumed to be permanent features or divine gifts.  The explanations offered suggest that human culture developed as a response to necessity and the hardships of our environment.  It has been suggested that the sheer infinite size of the atomist universe and thus the number of possible combinations and arrangements that would occur by chance alone are important in the development of an account that can show how human institutions arise without assuming teleological or theological origins (Cole 1967).  Although here, as on other questions, the evidence is less than certain, it is plausible that Democritus developed a powerful and consistent explanation of much of the natural world from a very few fundamentals.