under "criticism" Philip Lieberman argues that since band societies of approximately 30–50 people are bounded by nutritional limitations to what group sizes ca

under "criticism" Philip Lieberman argues that since band societies of approximately 30–50 people are bounded by nutritional limitations to what group sizes can be fed without at least rudimentary agriculture, big human brains consuming more nutrients than ape brains, group sizes of approximately 150 cannot have been selected for in paleolithic humans. Evolutionary psychology/nutrition is based on a lot of guesswork. We don't really know how people lived, or what timescales are important. A lot of the early conjectures about historical developments are based on philosophical thought expirements of 19th century intellectuals. Others based on hunter-gatherers in modern times. These theories tend to be "economic" (like Malthus) and resource focused. "Agriculture created surplusses, which enables specialization..etc. underpants.. Greek temples" In eastern Turkey there are fascinating sites from the paleo/neo-lithic transition period. Interestingly, the massive & seemingly ritual/civic site (gobleki tepeh) predates the agricultural sites. Ie, it seems a large complex pre-agricultural society existed, with many people cooperating in ways we thought were first developed by advanced agriculturalists. One could reasonably (though not conclusively) interpret this as large-scale culture giving rise to agriculture, not the other way around. Humans are behaviourally diverse. I imagine one would find groups of various size at all prehistorical times. For analogy, wolves are somewhat behavioural diverse. Many are solitary. Some hunt mostly rodents, and live in small packs. Some hunt mostly large game, and live in large packs. Some scavange more. There is a negotiation between wolves' inherent behavioural range and the "economics" of their lifestyle that dictates group size. Humans have a much wider range. We don't really know much about early humans, even what they ate. We can guess though, that this varied more than it does in wolves.. at least I think so. I recently heard a lecture on archaic sapiens in the Levant. One theorist argues they ate mostly elephants which (I imagine) required and supported large group size. We don't really know. In any case... the reason I bring all this up is that group size, and our ability to cooperate effectively in different group sizes is just interesting. It remains (imo) central to key mystery of human origins, possibly explaining the sapiens ascention. Yuval Noah Harari basically narrates all human history as an increasingly developing ability to cooperate in ever larger groups. This is the underlying difference between language, writing, myth, religion.. The communism-capitalism cliche is basically a debate about mechanisms of cooperation in large groups. What we are doing now (on hn) is coordinating across a large group, so we can think* together. I think Dunbar's number (or another similar one) gives us the maximum group size for spontaneous coordination, without formalization. This is good to know. More research please :)