Large anonymous communities emerged as a very recent blip in human evolutionary history.

Evidence

Its origins can be found in the earliest towns and villages that arose on the Fertile Crescent and the Nile, at the start of the Holocene period. This is the time marked by the agricultural revolution a mere 12,000 years ago, a blip in the vast timescale of human evolution. These communities of a few thousands, not to mention the mega-societies of today numbering in millions, contrast sharply with most of human existence, characterized by the comparatively smaller bands of foragers and hunters tied to each other with the tight bonds of blood and brotherhood driven by face-to-face interactions, and occasionally, some forms of limited interactions with strangers. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 30

Categorization

• XREF: Sets the temporal frame for the reader’s causal argument: the Big God mechanism arose in this Holocene window to sustain large-scale cooperation that kin-based blood bonds could not.