Levels of inequality have changed dramatically during the course of human evolution: from the social hierarchies of our great ape ancestors to egalitarian small-scale societies of hunter-gatherers, and then to large-scale hierarchical societies with great inequities in the distributio

Diabetes expert warns paleo diet is dangerous and increases weight gain! proclaims the press release from University of Melbourne. It says: A new study has revealed following a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet for just eight weeks can lead to rapid weight gain and health complications.

One thing I love about Cultural Evolution is how it makes us look at ordinary things we do every day from a completely new angle. As an example, if you think about it, wearing pants, especially in warmer climates, is a very strange thing. It turns that there is a surprising explanatio

  In the current issue of Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution the anthropologist Sarah Mathew reviews War, Peace, and Human Nature, edited by Douglas Fry. Fry is one of the large group of anthropologists and other social scientists who have be

link to the journal issue Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution Volume 6, Issue 1, 2015 Articles Modeling Strategic Decisions in the Formation of the Early Neo-Assyrian Empire Baudains, Peter; Zamazalová, Silvie; Altaweel, Mark; Wilson, Alan Agricult

Readers of this blog must have wondered where I disappeared to over the last two weeks. Indeed, I was away – traveling in South America (Peru and Chile). I went to Santiago to attend a workshop on modeling innovations, but most of the time I spent in Peru. Together with two friends we

My post The Ultimate Health Food, Revealed! generated a number of comments, some of them quite critical of foie gras and gavage, the process by which ducks and geese are fattened. Fortunately, one reader (Bruce) weighed in on the opposite side and I reproduce his response here, becaus

This is Christmas and I think it’s a good time to switch to some lighter topic than our usual fare of social science and history. Although history is still going to be a part of today’s post, as you will see. Today is one of few days in a year when we are supposed to gorge ourse

The previous blog set the framework for a discussion of the evolution of the state in Egypt, and promised that I would next consider some of the theories proposed by Egyptologists. First, though, let’s put this theoretical discussion in a broader context. At a very broad level, most t

In my previous post I wrote about how the majority of Egyptologists (with a few important exceptions) have avoided using their knowledge to help us figure out how and why early states evolved. While eventually we will remedy this situation with the help of Seshat, and in a very rigoro