Social Evolution & History. Volume 16, Number 1 / March 2017

Tisdell, C.; Svizzero, S., Optimization Theories of the Transition from Foraging to Agriculture: A Critical Assessment and Proposed Alternatives
This article examines how well two parallel behavioral approaches, one in economics and the other in anthropology, explain the economic evolution of Neolithic societies, particularly their transit from foraging to agriculture. Both assume rational optimizing behavior. It is argued that....

Nazaretyan, Akop P., Mega-History and the Twenty-First Century Singularity Puzzle
A series of calculations carried out independently by the Australian, Russian, and American researchers have demonstrated that a crucial global polyfurcation is expected somewhere near the middle of the twenty-first century. This result is drawn by extrapolating into the future the logarithmic....

Ionescu, Mădălina, Keeping Together Long Distance Families: Technology as a Social Actor
The article examines how communication tools became social actors for family members separated due to economic migra-tion and for parenting from abroad. Media and movies became aware of social problem in communication within long dis-tance families, and they are not only witnessing but support....

Zinkina, Julia; Ilyin, Ilya V.; Korotayev, Andrey, The Early Stages of Globalization Evolution: Networks of Diffu-sion and Exchange of Domesticates, Technologies, and Luxury Goods
The paper looks into the evolution of globalization at its ear-liest stages (from the Neolithic Revolution to the Urban Rev-olution). Building on the approach by Frank, Chase-Dunn, and Hall to defining the age of the World System, we view the network space of the ancient World System which....

Harper, T., The Punctuated Equilibrium Macropattern of World System Urbanization and the Factors that Give Rise to that Macropattern
Change in complex systems, system evolution, is itself complex. This paper is about world system evolution as it is reflected in the pattern of urbanization over the last 5000 years. It will be shown that the pattern of urbanization as part of the immensely complex world system exhibits....

Kyrchanoff, Maksym W., Difficulties of Mental Mapping of Historical Time in the Chuvash National Identity: Cultural Continuities and Intellectual Failures
The concepts of historical time are among the focal points in the perception and invention of national history. The concepts and categories of historical time were actualized among non-historical nations when the latter became independent actors of historical process. The nationalists played a....

Claessen, Henri J. M., Inequality and More
A review of Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus, The Creation of Inequality. How our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire. 2012, 631 pp., illustrations. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts – London, England..

Richerson, Peter J.; Brewer, Joe, Inaugural Meeting of the Cultural Evolution Society
The field of cultural evolution has grown considerably since the turn of the 21st century. Researchers who apply evolutionary principles to the study of human culture and social learning in other animals are spread out among a great diversity of fields. They can be found in human sciences like....