Category Archives: Human sociality

The Long Evolutionary History of Play

Posted on February 7, 2016 by Giorgio Bertini

Play has long been considered an enigmatic behavior that is hard to define, but having many putative functions difficult to confirm. This situation is changing quite rapidly in recent years. This introduction to a special issue on play provides some … Continue reading →

Posted in Animals, Evolution, Human sociality, Humans, Play | Tagged animals, evolution, human sociality, humans, play | Comments Off

Sociality Influences Cultural Complexity

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Giorgio Bertini

Archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence suggests a link between a population’s size and structure, and the diversity or sophistication of its toolkits or technologies. Addressing these patterns, several evolutionary models predict that both the size and social interconnectedness of populations can … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural complexity, Cultural evolution, Human sociality, Sociality | Tagged cultural complexity, cultural evolution, human sociality, sociality | Comments Off

Communication and Collective Action: Language and the Evolution of Human Cooperation

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Giorgio Bertini

All social species face various “collective action problems” or “social dilemmas,” meaning problems in achieving cooperating when the best move from a selfish point of view yields an inferior collective outcome. Compared to most other species, humans are very good … Continue reading →

Posted in Collective action, Cooperation, Human cooperation, Human sociality, Language | Tagged collective action, cooperation, human cooperation, human sociality, language | Comments Off

Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Giorgio Bertini

What motives underlie the ways humans interact socially? Are these the same for all societies? Are these part of our nature, or influenced by our environments? Over the last decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically disproved the textbook representation … Continue reading →

Posted in Ethnography, Human sociality | Tagged ethnographi, human sociality | Leave a comment

Play Makes Us Human

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Giorgio Bertini

We humans have inherited the basic youthful play characteristics of our animal ancestors, but in the course of our biological and cultural evolution we have elaborated upon them and created new functions. Playfulness in humans does not end when adulthood … Continue reading →