Key Takeaways
1. The Puzzle of Ultrasociality: Humans are Uniquely Cooperative
The ISS is the wonderful fruit of something that human beings learned to do only very recently.
Remarkable cooperation. Humans exhibit an astonishing capacity for large-scale cooperation, or "ultrasociality," far surpassing any other species on Earth. Projects like the International Space Station, involving millions of people from diverse nations, exemplify this unique ability, which has emerged only in the last 10,000 years of our 200,000-year history. This rapid development, from small foraging bands to vast nation-states, is a profound puzzle for evolutionary science.
Measuring social scale. We can trace this increase in cooperation by examining monumental architecture throughout history. From the 300 people-years estimated for Göbekli Tepe 11,000 years ago, to the 400,000 people-years for the Great Pyramid of Giza, and finally to the 3 million people-years for the ISS, the scale of human cooperation has grown by four orders of magnitude. This quantitative shift highlights a fundamental transformation in human social organization.
Beyond genetic evolution. This dramatic and rapid increase in social scale cannot be explained by genetic evolution alone, which operates on much longer timescales. Instead, it points to cultural evolution—the transmission and change of socially learned information—as the primary driver. Understanding this process requires a scientific approach, using general, mathematical, and empirically testable theories to uncover the underlying principles of social development.
2. Cooperation's Fragility: The Ever-Present Cooperator's Dilemma
The problem is, even if your side wins and the enemies are killed or chased away, some of your people will be killed or maimed.
The core dilemma. Cooperation, while essential for collective success, is inherently fragile due to the "Cooperator's Dilemma." This arises because the benefits of collective action (public goods) are shared by all, but the costs are borne individually. A "rational agent" will always choose to "defect" (free-ride) rather than contribute, as their individual contribution seems insignificant to the overall outcome, but their personal cost is certain.
Enron's cautionary tale. The Enron scandal, driven by Jeff Skilling's "Rank and Yank" system and the "greed is good" philosophy, vividly illustrates how within-group competition destroys cooperation. Employees, motivated by individual gain, engaged in back-stabbing and fraud, ultimately leading to the company's collapse. This reflects a broader cultural shift in America post-1970s, where extreme individualism eroded social trust and collective action.
Beyond selfish genes. The "selfish gene" theory, while explaining kin selection, fails to account for large-scale human cooperation among genetically unrelated individuals. It suggests humans are "born selfish" and morality is a "by-product" or "mistake" of evolution. This view not only offers a pessimistic outlook on human nature but also provides a flawed basis for understanding how to foster cooperation in complex societies.
3. Cultural Evolution: The Engine of Human Social Change
Nothing in social life makes sense except in the light of cultural evolution.
A new scientific discipline. Cultural Evolution, distinct from Social Darwinism or simple "stadial" theories, studies how and why the frequencies of cultural traits—socially transmitted information like knowledge, norms, and beliefs—change over time. This approach provides the tools to analyze societies as integrated wholes, moving beyond narrow disciplinary silos to understand complex social dynamics.
Multilevel selection. The theory of Cultural Multilevel Selection is central to this understanding. It posits that selection can act simultaneously on individuals within groups and on groups themselves. While within-group competition often undermines cooperation, between-group competition can foster it. This dynamic is crucial for explaining how cooperative traits, like courage or social trust, can evolve despite individual costs.
The Price equation's insight. A key mathematical insight, derived from the Price equation, reveals that cooperation is more likely to spread when cooperators are "positively assorted"—meaning they interact more with other cooperators. Cultural transmission mechanisms, such as imitation and assimilation, naturally reduce within-group variation and increase between-group variation, making cultural group selection a powerful force in human evolution.
4. Warfare as Destructive Creation: The Paradoxical Force of Progress
War both destroys and creates. It is a force of destructive creation, a terrible means to a remarkable end.
War's dual nature. Warfare, though brutal and destructive, has paradoxically been a primary engine of "destructive creation" in human social evolution. It eliminates less cooperative and less organized societies, while simultaneously selecting for those that can scale up, maintain internal cohesion, and innovate. This process, while causing immense suffering, has driven the formation of larger, more peaceful, and more affluent ultrasocieties.
Beyond mere destruction. For war to be "creative," it must result in cultural group selection, where the cultural traits of successful societies spread at the expense of less successful ones. This can range from:
- Genocide (physical elimination of a group)
- Ethnocide (forced cultural assimilation)
- Voluntary adoption of successful institutions (e.g., Russia adopting market economy)
The "destructive" aspect targets cultural traits that make societies dysfunctional, not necessarily the people themselves.
The role of competition. Just as economic competition weeds out inefficient businesses, military competition has historically eliminated less cooperative societies. This intense selective pressure forced groups to:
- Increase in size (more warriors)
- Improve organization and discipline
- Develop better weapons and tactics
This constant struggle for survival pushed human societies up the ladder of social complexity, favoring those that could better mobilize collective action.
5. The Egalitarian Revolution: How Projectile Weapons Suppressed Alpha Males
God made men, but Sam Colt made them equal.
The great equalizer. Unlike our hierarchical great ape relatives, early human societies were fiercely egalitarian, a profound shift enabled by the development of projectile weapons. Tools like thrown stones, spears, and later bows, allowed weaker individuals to collectively punish or even kill aggressive "upstarts" who attempted to dominate the group. This "reverse dominance hierarchy" ensured that power was not based on brute physical strength.
Beyond physical prowess. The ability to kill from a distance reduced the evolutionary pressure on physical strength, shifting the emphasis to social intelligence. Building and maintaining large coalitions became crucial for survival and for controlling potential bullies. This fostered the development of larger brains, adept at complex social computation and communication, including language, which further enhanced cooperative abilities.
Moralistic punishment. Projectile weapons facilitated "moralistic punishment," a key mechanism for enforcing cooperation and suppressing within-group competition. If free-riders or bullies faced severe, collective sanctions, even rational agents found it advantageous to contribute to the common good. This leveling mechanism ensured that cooperators were not at a disadvantage, thereby promoting group cohesion and overall societal strength.
6. The Alpha Male Strikes Back: War's Role in Creating Despotic States
The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad.
The rise of inequality. Following the adoption of agriculture, and after thousands of years, a dramatic reversal occurred: the emergence of highly unequal, despotic archaic states. These societies, exemplified by ancient Hawaii or Assyria, featured divine kings, widespread slavery, and even human sacrifice, with rulers "devouring" common people. This shift from egalitarianism to extreme hierarchy was not voluntary but compelled.
Warfare as the catalyst. The primary driver for this transition was intense warfare among early agricultural societies. As populations grew and resources became scarcer, inter-group conflict escalated, creating immense pressure for larger, more militarily effective polities. The "war alliance route" saw ambitious war leaders consolidate power, leveraging their military success and the existential threat of war to entrench their authority.
Returns to scale in war. Military advantages, particularly with ranged weapons, exhibit "increasing returns to scale" (Lanchester's Square Law), where numerical superiority is magnified. This made larger armies overwhelmingly powerful, forcing smaller groups to either coalesce or face extinction. The need for efficient command structures in these larger forces led to the development of military hierarchies, which, once established, were difficult to dismantle.
7. The Iron Law of Oligarchy: Why Power Corrupts and Inequality Rises
The Iron Law of Oligarchy. It says that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic or autocratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop into oligarchies.
Power's corrupting influence. The "Iron Law of Oligarchy" explains how military leaders, initially granted temporary authority during wartime, inevitably sought to retain and expand their power, transforming temporary war leadership into permanent, hereditary kingship. This process, often involving a coalition of the chief and his loyal retinue, led to the establishment of ruling elites who monopolized political, military, and often religious authority.
Legitimizing despotism. To stabilize their rule and overcome popular resistance to inequality, these nascent elites needed new cultural mechanisms to legitimize their power. They often claimed divine ancestry or became "god-kings," fusing military command with ritual leadership. This ideological shift, supported by a loyal retinue willing to enforce deference through violence, helped to solidify the extreme hierarchies of archaic states.
The Matthew Principle. Economic inequality also played a crucial role. The "Matthew Principle" ("the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer") meant that wealth, once accumulated, tended to concentrate unless actively redistributed. While egalitarian societies had mechanisms like potlatches to prevent runaway inequality, the rise of powerful elites in archaic states allowed for unprecedented wealth accumulation, further entrenching their dominance.
8. The Axial Age Pivot: A Spiritual Awakening Towards Greater Equality
It is when the outstanding warrior can mobilize a band of followers that he can challenge the old egalitarianism and, as a successful upstart, free the disposition to dominate from the controls previously placed on it.
A new kind of ruler. Around 800-200 BCE, a "spiritual awakening" known as the Axial Age swept across Eurasia, giving rise to a new kind of ruler and society. Figures like Ashoka the Great, with his emphasis on Dhamma (righteousness, virtue), non-violence, and concern for the welfare of all subjects, stood in stark contrast to the boastful, despotic god-kings of archaic states. This marked a second major "zigzag" in human social evolution, moving away from extreme inequality.
The rise of renouncers. This period saw the emergence of "renouncers" and "denouncers"—prophets and philosophers (Buddha, Hebrew prophets, Confucius, Socrates) who challenged existing power structures and preached universal egalitarian ethics. They scorned riches, criticized social injustice, and advocated for moral standards that even rulers were expected to meet. Their message resonated with a populace increasingly uneasy with the excesses of despotism.
Warfare's unintended consequence. This shift was not a sudden moral enlightenment but a response to intensified warfare. The military revolution of 1000 BCE, driven by horse-based warfare (cavalry, composite bows, iron), made agrarian states highly vulnerable. To survive, states had to drastically increase in size, but also needed greater internal cohesion and legitimacy. Despotic rule, which alienated populations, became a liability in this new competitive environment.
9. Big Gods and Mega-Empires: How Universal Religions Fostered Cooperation
Big Gods are supernatural beings who have three important abilities. First, they are capable of looking inside your head to find out what you think. In particular, they know whether you really intend to fulfill your part of the bargain, or whether you are planning to cheat. Second, Big Gods care whether you are trying to be a virtuous person or not. And third, if you are a bad person, they can (and will) punish you.
New social glue. The Axial Age religions provided the crucial "social glue" for the unprecedentedly large "mega-empires" that emerged during this period (e.g., Achaemenid Persia, Mauryan India, Han China, Roman Empire). These multi-ethnic empires required new forms of legitimacy and cohesion beyond mere force. Universal, proselytizing religions like Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and later Christianity and Islam, expanded the circle of cooperation beyond narrow ethnic or tribal lines.
Moralizing Big Gods. A key innovation was the concept of "Big Gods"—supernatural, moralistic punishers who are all-knowing, care about human virtue, and enforce prosocial behavior. Belief in such deities fostered trust in anonymous, large-scale societies, as individuals were more likely to cooperate with strangers if they believed those strangers feared divine retribution for cheating. This belief system effectively extended the "watched people are nice people" principle to vast populations.
Constraining the powerful. Big Gods also served to constrain rulers and elites. A monarch, even if personally atheist, risked being overthrown by a populace or elite coalition that demanded a godly leader. This provided a powerful check on despotic tendencies, forcing rulers to act in less selfish ways and promoting a more egalitarian ethos. Thus, religion, far from being a mere delusion, became a vital ideological foundation for stable, large-scale empires.
10. Zigzags of Violence: War's Complex Trajectory in Human History
During the past 10,000 years the curve of war resembled the Greek letter Λ, with an initial rise followed by a decline.
Beyond linear decline. The history of violence is not a simple linear decline, as some suggest. Instead, it follows a complex, zigzagging trajectory. While individual-on-individual homicide rates generally declined from hunter-gatherer times, warfare (group-on-group violence) and despotism (violence by the powerful against the powerless) followed a Λ-shaped curve: rising after agriculture and peaking in pre-state/early state societies, before declining during the Axial Age and beyond.
Different causes, different trends. These distinct trajectories for different forms of violence highlight that they are driven by different causes. The rise of states, for instance, reduced internal homicide but initially intensified inter-societal warfare. The subsequent decline in war's relative lethality was linked to the increasing scale of societies, where a smaller proportion of the population was directly involved in conflict, even as absolute casualty numbers grew.
The paradox of pacification. The central paradox is that violence—specifically, inter-societal warfare—was the primary force driving the evolution of ultrasociality, and it was ultrasociality that ultimately led to the decline of violence. As societies grew larger and more internally cohesive under the pressure of external competition, they developed more effective institutions and values to maintain internal peace, pushing conflict to their frontiers and eventually fostering non-violent forms of competition.
11. The Science of History: Using Data to Understand and Improve Society
What emerges is not the ultimate truth in any sense, but it is pretty good. Science has enabled us to build all kinds of wonderful things, reach out into the space beyond this planet, and cure previously incurable diseases. Similarly, by transforming the study of human societies into a real science, we will learn how to cure many social ills.
Beyond anecdotal history. To truly understand the complex dynamics of human social evolution and address contemporary challenges like state failure or economic decline, we need a rigorous, scientific approach to history. This means moving beyond anecdotal evidence and inductive reasoning to develop testable theories that can be systematically confronted with massive datasets.
The Seshat Databank. Projects like "Seshat: The Global History Databank" are making this possible. By systematically collecting and organizing vast amounts of historical and archaeological data into computer-readable formats, Seshat allows researchers to empirically test rival theories about social evolution. This unprecedented level of empirical scrutiny will enable us to reject flawed explanations and build more accurate, productive theories.
Informing the future. The goal of this scientific endeavor is not merely academic. By understanding the deep historical roots of cooperation, conflict, and inequality, we can develop effective policy recommendations to improve people's lives. Insights from cultural evolution, such as the benefits of monogamy for societal stability or the corrosive effects of within-group inequality, offer concrete pathways to fostering more cooperative, peaceful, and prosperous societies.
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