Evolution of human societies and the organization of ventures
I Survey of human societies:
The earliest human functional groups were hunter-gatherer tribes of 100-150 people. This is several extended family groups banded together. The core characteristics of the hunter-gatherer tribe unit were:
- small and tight-knit: Each individual can still understand the relationship and politics between any two individuals in the tribe (see Dunbar’s number).
- relative equality: each person was expected to contribute towards the basic need of food production either through hunting or gathering food. No individual contributor was orders of magnitude more efficient that any other individual e.g. a really efficient berry picker doesn’t pick 10x more berries than a bad berry picker.
- information symmetry: information was quickly distributed amongst a tribe since the bearer of news was within a hop or two of everyone else in the tribe.
- social over explicit...
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