One of my favorite big-think papers of recent years tries to explain humanity’s societal evolution, “The computational power of a human society: a new model of social evolution” by David H. Wolpert ...

With the world experiencing the worst pandemic since 1918, people may be wondering whether our way of life is secure. Looking at how civilizational breakdown has happened before can help us understand ...

Amid hundreds of origin stories for hundreds of world societies, religion offers a tidy explanation for why humans started working together. It tells us that people with a common belief in a ...

The appearance of moralizing gods in religion occurred after—and not before—the emergence of large, complex societies, according to new research. This finding upturns conventional thinking on the ...

The first existence of a multilevel society in a non-mammalian animal shows that large brains are not a requirement for complex societies. Multilevel societies have, until now, only been known to ...

Complex societies were thought to only exist among mammals, including humans, other primates, elephants, giraffes and dolphins. But a new study shows that vulturine guinea fowl, a bird with ...

Step aside, honeybees, there’s a new pollinator in town. Hollis Woodard of University of California, Riverside shares the intricate life cycle of bumblebees, whose queens spend most of their life ...

Scientists used a drone and a multi-agent computerized system for complex social structure modeling to test, for example, whether individuals in a herd of feral horses synchronize according to their ...

With the world experiencing the worst pandemic since 1918, many people may wonder if civilization is as secure as it might be. History offers insight into this question. Civilizational breakdown is a ...