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Like some insect societies, but unlike other great apes, Homo sapiens became eusocial, or highly social. At the same time, in-group sociality was matched by aggression toward out-groups. Cooperation within the group was forged by war between groups.
Jeffrey D. Sachs • The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions
Then, three years after Goodall’s book was printed, a series of incidents occurred that horrified her. The tribe of chimps Goodall had been watching became quite large. Food was harder to find. Quarrels broke out. To relieve the pressure, the unit finally split into two separate tribes. One band stayed in the old home territory. The other left to c
... See moreHoward Bloom • The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History
We often assume that “survival of the fittest” applies to a sense of dominance and aggressiveness. But going back to the early 1960s, Theodosius Dobzhansky, a prominent Ukrainian-American geneticist and evolutionary biologist, proposed a twist on this assumption. As he put it: “The fittest may also be the gentlest, because survival often requires m
... See moreStephen W. Porges • Our Polyvagal World
Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings. Even today, a critical threshold in human organisations falls somewhere around this magic number.
Yuval Noah Harari • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings.
Yuval Noah Harari • Sapiens
Tomasello believes that human ultrasociality arose in two steps. The first was the ability to share intentions in groups of two or three people who were actively hunting or foraging together. (That was the Rubicon.) Then, after several hundred thousand years of evolution for better sharing and collaboration as nomadic hunter-gatherers, more collabo
... See moreJonathan Haidt • The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
If a fifth person joins, it will split into two separate conversations within as little as half a minute.
Robin Dunbar • Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships
‘The Hobbesian image of humans, judging from the most common evidence, is empirically wrong,’ Collins asserts. ‘Humans are hardwired for […] solidarity; and this is what makes violence so difficult.’29