In 2019, Whitehouse et al. ignited a relative firestorm of controversy around the Big Gods Hypothesis of social complexification. The Big Gods Hypothesis holds that belief in moralizing big gods allowed, or perhaps even drove the significant increases in the scale and complexity of human societies that we see in many places throughout the past…
Seasonal Stanley Cup Playoffs post: Culture change, and… when did everyone start wearing merch to the games, anyway?
As an archaeologist, I am interested in culture change, and that includes changes in conventions, expectations and practices. Sometimes, these can happen over amazingly short time-spans (archaeologically speaking). One change that I’ve noticed over the past few decades, which is a short time for an archaeologist, is that especially at playoff games, almost the entirety…
Moralizing gods update: Seshat still searching for something that isn’t there
Last week, Turchin et al posted a reply to critiques of their Nature paper that argued that social complexity precedes moralizing gods. This goes against the big gods hypothesis that the presence of moralizing gods in human social networks allowed the growth of larger and more complex communities. Instead, Turchin et al argue that larger…
Understanding the visceral reaction to Laura’s Spinney’s History as a giant data set
This week, Laura Spinney covers recent developments in the use of big data in history, the potential it has for illuminating the present, and for helping us prepare for the future. The online reaction from at least some of the history, archaeology, and social science community, has been visceral. Spinney simply ran headlong into the…
The moralizing gods debacle takes a turn for the worse
Savage et al. (2019) have posted their response to Beheim et al.’s (2019) critique of their Nature paper (Whitehouse et al. 2019a) which argues that moralizing gods appear as a consequence of social complexification, rather than as its precursor, which the Big Gods hypothesis requires. I discussed the original controversy here and here. The Seshat…
ArcheoThoughts 