Date & Time : 2017. 4. 20 (Thu) 10-11:30am

Location: Hokkaido University, The Humanities and Social Science Building, room W409

Speaker: Prof. Harvey Whitehouse (Chair of Social Anthropology, Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford/Affiliate Researchers, Center for Experimental Research in Social Sciences, Hokkaido University) 、Dr. Pieter François (Senior Lecturer in Digital History, University of Hertfordshire/ Research Coordinator of the Cultural Evolution
Group at ICEA, U. Oxford)

Participants: Yuki Masaki, Susumu, Ohnuma, Masanori Takezawa, Taiki Takahashi, Ayaka Takimoto, and other 22 participants (total 27 participants)

Title: Using Psychology and World History to Test Anthropological Theories

Abstract: Field research in anthropology has generated some compelling hypotheses
about the mechanisms by which groups may be formed, inspired, and coordinated. And in recent years efforts have been made to test many of those hypotheses using carefully controlled psychological experiments. The results of all this research have led to a set of predictions about how social complexity evolves in human history. Seshat: Global History Databank was created to test theories of this kind – a massive storehouse of world history allowing researchers to quantify patterns in the evolution　of social complexity.Two of the founding directors of Seshat explain what inspired their database,　how it works, and what it can do.

Asuka Murata, Assistant Professor of Center for Experimental Research in Social Sciences
e-mail: asukamurata@lynx.let.hokudai.ac.jp, tel: 011-706-230