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demonstrates how, compared with individuals, “groups may often be more efficient” not only “in finding and taking prey, particularly large prey” but also in coordinating the activities of individuals, who might otherwise unduly interfere with one another. Finally, as in the case of resource storage, foraging groups that pool and share resources have the effect of ‘smoothing’ the variation in daily capture rates between individuals.” That is, as the group grows larger, “lucky” individuals share their take with “unlucky” individuals, and everyone benefits. Cooperation would have been as powerful a drive in human evolution as competition, if not more so. And communication is an essential tool of cooperation, so it makes sense that Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, as well as their modern counterparts, would have employed language to tell stories and solve problems.

How large were these communities? Most modern hunter-gatherer groups range in size from 50 to 400 residents, with a medium range of 100 to 200 people. Anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, in his extensive studies of the Yanomamö people in the Amazon, found the typical group to be roughly 100 people in size, with 40 to 80 living together in the rugged mountain regions, and 300 to 400 members living together in the largest lowland villages. He has also noted that when groups get excessively large for the carrying capacity of their local environment (given their level of technology), they fission into smaller groups. Such bifurcations may also be a product of exceeding the carrying capacity of the social environment. Psychologist Robin Dunbar, in his book, Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, argues that the figure of 150 people in a typical group has a deeper evolutionary basis. It turns out that 150 is roughly the number of living descendants (wives, husbands, and children) a Paleolithic couple would produce in four generations at the birthrate of hunter-gatherer peoples—this is how many people they knew in their immediate and extended family. Archaeologists believe that early agricultural communities in the Near East 7,000 years ago typically numbered about 150 people. Even modern farming communities, like the Hutterites in Europe (and now Dakota and Canada), average about 150 people.

When groups get large they split into smaller groups. Why? According to the Hutterites, it is because shunning does not work as well in large groups, and shunning is a primary means of social control. Sociologists know that once groups exceed 200 people a hierarchical structure is needed to enforce the rules of cooperation and to deal with offenders, who in the smaller group could be dealt with through informal personal contracts and social pressure. Still larger groups need chiefs and a police force, and rule enforcement involves more violence or the threat of violence. Even in the modern world with a population of six billion people crowded into dense cities, people find themselves divided into small groups. In the Second World War, for example, the average size company in the British army was 130 men, in the United States army it was 223 men. The 150 average also fits for the size of small businesses, of departments in large corporations, and of efficiently run factories. A Church of England study, conducted in an attempt to balance the financial support provided by a large group and the intimacy of a small group, concluded that the ideal size for congregations was 200 or less. The average number of people in any given person’s address book also turns out to be about 150 people.

It would appear that 150 is the number of people each of us knows fairly well. Dunbar claims that this figure fits a ratio of primate group size to their neocortex ratio: that is, the volume of the neocortex—evolutionarily the most recent regions of the cerebral cortex—to the rest of the brain. Extremely social primates need big brains to handle living in big groups, because there is a minimum amount of brain power needed to keep track of the complex relationships, in order to live in relative peaceful