Because travel paths need not be linear, we generalize their geometry via a fractal dimension,

four important characteristics of these societies: (1) the need for food and other resources obtained from foraging, and the tension this requirement poses to (2) the attractive forces for larger-scale socialization.

Sociologists measure power and influence in terms of the structural positions of agents (nodes) in complex networks.

The issue of connectivity is especially poignant in light of inequality, segregation, poverty, and other challenges of human development.

what is missing at an essential level from most of the models described so far is a more general approach based on the statistical dynamics of heterogeneous strategic populations and their social interactions.

information on the allocation of resources to events with high (and, whenever possible, open-ended) returns. Seizing “free lunches” is critical; channeling local and scarce information into productive collective arrangements is the name of the game.

where specific interactions between people must occur at specific fixed spaces and times.

Agricultural surpluses could then be stored and used more strategically, including in ways that supported long-distance trade and the division of labor, creating full-time nonprimary producers, such as administrative classes associated with religion and emergent forms of political organization.

There will be three main ingredients necessary for setting up a statistical theory of growth. The first two have to do with the probabilities of various events in the world and the payoffs from predicting them correctly. The third ingredient deals with the allocation of the agent’s resources to various alternative stochastic events,