| Autor: |
Tom Froese, Carlos Gershenson, Linda R Manzanilla |
| Jazyk: |
angličtina |
| Rok vydání: |
2014 |
| Předmět: |
|
| Zdroj: |
PLoS ONE, Vol 9, Iss 10, p e109966 (2014) |
| Druh dokumentu: |
article |
| ISSN: |
1932-6203 |
| DOI: |
10.1371/journal.pone.0109966 |
| Popis: |
Teotihuacan was the first urban civilization of Mesoamerica and one of the largest of the ancient world. Following a tradition in archaeology to equate social complexity with centralized hierarchy, it is widely believed that the city's origin and growth was controlled by a lineage of powerful individuals. However, much data is indicative of a government of co-rulers, and artistic traditions expressed an egalitarian ideology. Yet this alternative keeps being marginalized because the problems of collective action make it difficult to conceive how such a coalition could have functioned in principle. We therefore devised a mathematical model of the city's hypothetical network of representatives as a formal proof of concept that widespread cooperation was realizable in a fully distributed manner. In the model, decisions become self-organized into globally optimal configurations even though local representatives behave and modify their relations in a rational and selfish manner. This self-optimization crucially depends on occasional communal interruptions of normal activity, and it is impeded when sections of the network are too independent. We relate these insights to theories about community-wide rituals at Teotihuacan and the city's eventual disintegration. |
| Databáze: |
Directory of Open Access Journals |
| Externí odkaz: |
|
