Collective behavior provides a framework for understanding how the actions and properties
of groups emerge from the way individuals generate and share information. In humans …

Social complexity has been one of the recent emerging topics in the study of animal and
human societies, but the concept remains both poorly defined and understood. In this paper …

We develop a cultural evolutionary theory of the origins of prosocial religions and apply it to
resolve two puzzles in human psychology and cultural history:(1) the rise of large-scale …

Since the origins of agriculture, the scale of human cooperation and societal complexity has
dramatically expanded,. This fact challenges standard evolutionary explanations of …

Human cooperation is highly unusual. We live in large groups composed mostly of non-
relatives. Evolutionists have proposed a number of explanations for this pattern, including …

Digital technology, including its omnipresent connectedness and its powerful artificial
intelligence, is the most recent long wave of humanity's socioeconomic evolution. The first …

It has been suggested that the human species may be undergoing an evolutionary transition
in individuality (ETI). But there is disagreement about how to apply the ETI framework to our …

Ecosystems influence human societies, leading people to manage ecosystems for human
benefit. Poor environmental management can lead to reduced ecological resilience and …

Humans, unlike any other multicellular species in Earth's history, have emerged as a global
force that is transforming the ecology of an entire planet. It is no longer possible to …

The Chinese invented gunpowder and began exploring its military uses as early as the
900s, four centuries before the technology passed to the West. But by the early 1800s, China …