A study by Sergey Gavrilets, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and associate director for scientific activities at National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, has found that intense warfare is the evolutionary driver of large complex societies. Using math to explain history, the study’s cultural evolutionary model predicts where and when the largest-scale complex societies arose in human history. The study appears as an open-access article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
To read more about the research, visit the NIMBioS website.
To view an animation of the distribution, visit tiny.utk.edu/polities.