Social organization isn’t tightly anchored in human nature and environment. Innovations in communal beliefs affect social organization long-term.

In the human evolutionary history of cooperative breeding, childless men have played a crucial role in provisioning middle-aged breeders.

The few remaining human hunter-gather societies have social networks like those typical for Facebook.

Human domestication of other animals has shaped human history.  Dogs, which have been domesticated for at least 10,000 years, have provided humans with guards, hunting aids, carrying aids, and sources of meat and fur.  The domestication of sheep, goats, pigs, cows, and other animals enabled humans to live as herders.  Living in close proximity to [...]

Non-human animals can have quite complex social relationships.  Consider, for example, greylag geese.  They live in flocks.  Within a flock, the geese recognize closely related birds (kin) long past the period of necessary care for dependent offspring.  In addition, the geese form long-term, opposite-sex, reproductive pair-bonds.  The geese identify close genetic relations (kin) with a much [...]

Behavioral technology correlates sociality and communication.  The design of inorganic technologies such as the telephone, email, SMS, and various web-based interfaces for social networking affect both the kinds of social networks among users and characteristics of communication among users.  For example, allowing anonymous commenting typically leads to a higher number of comments but also more [...]