The societies in which most humans live have changed dramatically over the past 10,000 years. At the end of the last ice age, all humans lived in hunting and gathering bands where nearly everyone was related, generalized reciprocity was the norm, families produced almost everything they needed, and group decision-making was consensual. In contrast, today most of us live in industrial nationstates where we will never meet most of our compatriots, economic exchange is the norm, families produce only the tiniest fraction of the goods and services they need, and political decisions are made through bureaucratic governments

Between two and six thousand years ago something unprecedented began happening in about six separate places around the world: The people of small chiefdoms in places like the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, the Peruvian Andes, Mexico, China, and the Indus Valley began uniting to form the first large centralized states. It’s not known what triggered these transformations. There were no scribes yet to record the transition from villages to states and, until very recently, there wasn’t enough information about these first complex civilizations to make detailed comparisons

The SFI Bulletin began 27 years ago as a mimeographed review of people and events contributing to SFI science. Since then it has transformed several times, ranging from a quasi journal containing scholarly review articles to an accessible magazine for SFI’s diverse audience