Collaborators through Time: How Humans Partnered with Nature, Technology, and Each Other

C2S2 Seminar 

Abstract

For most of human prehistory, sociocultural complexity evolved gradually as technical knowledge was transmitted within kin-based communities across many generations. Today, by contrast, knowledge often spreads rapidly across populations and within single generations, producing evolutionary patterns that increasingly resemble random copying. Drawing on examples from prehistoric technologies, arts, disease, and kinship, I will explore how cultural evolution has shifted from the deep past to the present era of artificial intelligence. Computational approaches, together with qualitative study and models of social learning, allow us to bridge these different modes of cultural change. This perspective highlights why anthropology remains vital—not only for understanding the deep ancestry of being human, but also for adapting to a world where AI and humans comingle in a new society.

About speaker

R. Alexander (Alex) Bentley is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity at the University of Tennessee. His research uses computational social science to study cultural evolution from early human societies to modern digital environments and artificial intelligence. He is the author of Collaborators through Time (Bloomsbury, 2026), which explores the long history of human collaboration.