Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, found a relationship between primate brain size and average social group size, and extrapolated that to humans, giving a comfortable group size of around 150 people, known as Dunbar’s number. If you work on the principal that that would be about the average size of a tribe in an unstressed hunter society, it would seem quite pkausible that a hunting group would be around 50 people. It’s large enough to take down pretty much anything you’d want to hunt, and small enough to coordinate efficiently.
As far as i know, it was typically around 100 - 120 people and before i knew that i read somewhere that around 100 is the number of relationships the brain can handle.
It’s a fairly nebulous number, it’s going to be different for each individual, and Dunbar was only positing an approximate relationship between brain size and group size. Even if humans can manage 150 or more relationships, it makes sense to keep your group smaller than that to allow for external relationships too.
Is this actually legit?
Yeah, World of Warcraft is a real thing
Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist, found a relationship between primate brain size and average social group size, and extrapolated that to humans, giving a comfortable group size of around 150 people, known as Dunbar’s number. If you work on the principal that that would be about the average size of a tribe in an unstressed hunter society, it would seem quite pkausible that a hunting group would be around 50 people. It’s large enough to take down pretty much anything you’d want to hunt, and small enough to coordinate efficiently.
As far as i know, it was typically around 100 - 120 people and before i knew that i read somewhere that around 100 is the number of relationships the brain can handle.
It’s a fairly nebulous number, it’s going to be different for each individual, and Dunbar was only positing an approximate relationship between brain size and group size. Even if humans can manage 150 or more relationships, it makes sense to keep your group smaller than that to allow for external relationships too.
And it followed into some human culture. Certain Amish groups split up when their population approaches that number.
That makes sense, it keeps communities small enough to be cohesive but large enough to function, and spreads the groups to mitigate risks.