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Optimising human community sizes

We examine community longevity as a function of group size in three historical, small scale agricultural samples. Community sizes of 50, 150 and 500 are disproportionately more common than other sizes; they also have greater longevity. These values mirror the natural layerings in hunter-gatherer soc...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dunbar, Robin I.M., Sosis, Richard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Science 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5756541/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29333060
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.11.001
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author Dunbar, Robin I.M.
Sosis, Richard
author_facet Dunbar, Robin I.M.
Sosis, Richard
author_sort Dunbar, Robin I.M.
collection PubMed
description We examine community longevity as a function of group size in three historical, small scale agricultural samples. Community sizes of 50, 150 and 500 are disproportionately more common than other sizes; they also have greater longevity. These values mirror the natural layerings in hunter-gatherer societies and contemporary personal networks. In addition, a religious ideology seems to play an important role in allowing larger communities to maintain greater cohesion for longer than a strictly secular ideology does. The differences in optimal community size may reflect the demands of different ecologies, economies and social contexts, but, as yet, we have no explanation as to why these numbers seem to function socially so much more effectively than other values.
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spelling pubmed-57565412018-01-10 Optimising human community sizes Dunbar, Robin I.M. Sosis, Richard Evol Hum Behav Article We examine community longevity as a function of group size in three historical, small scale agricultural samples. Community sizes of 50, 150 and 500 are disproportionately more common than other sizes; they also have greater longevity. These values mirror the natural layerings in hunter-gatherer societies and contemporary personal networks. In addition, a religious ideology seems to play an important role in allowing larger communities to maintain greater cohesion for longer than a strictly secular ideology does. The differences in optimal community size may reflect the demands of different ecologies, economies and social contexts, but, as yet, we have no explanation as to why these numbers seem to function socially so much more effectively than other values. Elsevier Science 2018-01 /pmc/articles/PMC5756541/ /pubmed/29333060 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.11.001 Text en © 2017 The Authors http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Dunbar, Robin I.M.
Sosis, Richard
Optimising human community sizes
title Optimising human community sizes
title_full Optimising human community sizes
title_fullStr Optimising human community sizes
title_full_unstemmed Optimising human community sizes
title_short Optimising human community sizes
title_sort optimising human community sizes
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5756541/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29333060
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2017.11.001
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