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Complex Societies before Agriculture: Göbekli Tepe
A week or two ago I was sitting in a doctor’s office, when I realized that I forgot to bring any readings with me. As I was idly rifling through the usual stack, my roving eye was suddenly arrested by...
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Why Become a Farmer?
The previous blog discussed Göbekli Tepe, which achieved a surprisingly high level of social complexity before the adoption of agriculture. In the language of philosophy of science, Göbekli Tepe is an...
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Another Nail in the Coffin: Poverty Point
In the two previous blogs I have been proceeding under the assumption that the standard ‘bottom-up’ theory is a bankrupt paradigm. (As a reminder, the standard theory says that agriculture came first...
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Harvey Whitehouse: More On Social Glue (a response to commentaries)
The discussions in this forum have raised some big issues, ranging from the implications of two types of social glue for the evolution of groups (e.g. Waring; Smith) to the practical and ethical...
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The Joy of Cooperation
Both the Sci Foo Camp at the GooglePlex and the symposium at the Evolution meeting in Snowbird were extremely productive and enjoyable experiences. I’ll write about some of the sessions I went to at...
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Yule in Denmark
In my previous blog I speculated that the Danes use ritualistic feasting as a way of creating a shared sense of belonging, which is an important basis for social cooperation and trust. Last week I was...
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Scott Atran, Jeremy Ginges, and Rumen Iliev. Devoted Actors, Devoted Realism,...
What is the other commonwealth that remains standing now that the mundane commonwealth, embodied in the Roman Empire, has fallen? ─ Saint Augustine, The City of God (De Civitae Dei), on what survived...
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A Tour of Sacred Places in Moscow
As I more-or-less expected, my trip to Toulouse, Moscow, and St. Petersburg was too intense (and the internet connection too iffy) for me to be able to blog. Lots of new ideas, impressions, and topics...
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Belfast: A Symbolically Dense Landscape
Two weeks ago, after we were done with various Cliodynamics activities in Dublin, we went on a field trip to study the post-conflict landscape in Belfast. Our guide on this trip was Kevin Feeney....
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Murals versus Flags: A Symbolically Dense Landscape, continued
As I said in my previous blog, the Catholic areas in Belfast tend to be symbolically demarcated primarily with murals, while the Protestant ones are festooned with flags. The distinction is not...
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