The scale at which humans cooperate expanded greatly over the last 10,000 years—from hundreds of people to hundreds of millions. One popular theory that explains this dramatic increase in the scale and complexity of human societies is known as the Big Gods hypothesis. The basic idea,

David Graeber and David Wengrow recently wrote a long piece in the New Humanist, Are we city dwellers or hunter-gatherers? New research suggests that the familiar story of early human society is wrong – and the consequences are profound. What follows is my critical review of it. The s

Gideon Lewis-Kraus wrote a long piece in New York Times which is quite critical of the ancient DNA lab at Harvard led by David Reich. It has generated a lot of discussion and comments, themselves ranging from mildly to very critical – by Razib Khan, Steve Sailor, Greg Cochran, and oth

On Tuesday I am traveling southwest to visit several universities in Arizona and Southern California. Here’s the schedule of lectures that I will be giving: Wednesday Feb. 15 at 12:00 noon: Colloquium on Evolution of Social Complexity (Arizona State University) Tuesday Feb. 27 a

One of my most popular posts ever was on Cultural Evolution of Pants. The comments on old posts are off, but recently I got a new one through the “contact me” feature of my site. It was from a French reader named David; here’s the English translation: Hi Peter, I agr

Philosophers, historians, and social scientists have proposed a multitude of different theories trying to explain the rise of huge complex human societies over the past few millennia. Was the primary driver the invention of agriculture, which seems to be the default explanation held b

What follows is my report on the workshop Evolution of Social Complexity that I organized at Complexity Science Hub-Vienna, October 2–3, 2017. An Agenda for Research on the Evolution (and Devolution) of Social Complexity Over the past 10,000 years human societies evolved from “simple”

Today Catalonians vote (or not) in an independence referendum. As a result of moves by the regional government in Barcelona and national government in Madrid, Catalonia became one of the potentially most dangerous flash points in Europe. The potential for violence has been greatly ele

This evening I am meeting with a group of historians, mostly specializing in the study of Byzantium. The topic of discussion is “Evolution of Large-Scale Societies”. The participants were sent a couple of my papers on the topic, and so the plan is for me to give a short (15 minute) in

Kate Kirby and I have organized a symposium on databases in Cultural Evolution for the first annual meeting of the Cultural Evolution Society in Jena, Germany. The symposium will run in two one-hour sessions on Sept. 14 and Sept. 15 (according to the tentative meeting program that I s