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The very fact that people decide to live in the same patch, rather than dotted around at random, has to do with cooperation. Why? Some believe, for example, that the first communities evolved as a result of success in agriculture: surplus food from farming enabled people to settle down and specialize, from butcher to baker to candlestick maker. Others link it to ancient belief systems and religions. At Göbekli  Tepe in Turkey (“Hill with a potbelly”), for example, is a sanctuary with limestone pillars that were carved and erected by hunter-gatherers more than eleven thousand years ago. That remarkable discovery would suggest that temples planted the seeds of cities.

Perhaps cities were born of the struggle for existence: in his book Whole Earth Discipline, Stewart Brand suggests that the very first urban invention was the defendable wall, followed by rectangular buildings that could pack people efficiently inside that wall. The Cambridge archaeologist Colin Renfrew argues that the first communities came with the birth of the modern mind. That is when the effects of new intellectual software kicked in, allowing our ancestors to work together in a more settled way. However, I would discover from my computer simulations that you do not need any brainpower at all to benefit from forming a huddle.

Excerpted from page 70of ‘Super co-operators ’ by Martin Nowak