While there is an increasing amount of research that aims to understand long-term trends in human history, these still typically only go back a few millennia. However, modern humans (Homo Sapiens) have existed for at least 200 thousand years, thus raising the question of how to reconcile the recent rapid and dynamic phase of human history with its much longer beginnings.

In this talk, Dániel will briefly review some of the current knowledge of humans during the Pleistocene (the period before the end of the last Ice Age, ~12,000 years ago), focusing on characterizing changes in cultural and technological “complexity”.

He will connect these to research in cultural evolution theory that aims to model relationships between group size, connectivity, and technological change.

Finally, he will present my recent modeling effort that aims to reproduce cultural change over a very long term.