I have some further thoughts to share on UR (“UR”, by the way, refers to not only my initials but “the ultimate source or the start of everything” in Swedish, and as you may or may not know, is the city in the Bible from which Abraham originally came).
In fact it was probably in Africa, not in the Arabic part of the world, that humans first become humans. And guess what – there is evidence that this period, 100,000 to 10,000 years ago, was a period based on collaboration, peaceful conflict resolution and above all talk, talk, talk and more talk.
Swedish scientists have done extensive research on this and they found we first lived in small groups of 20 to 100 people who in any given week averaged 2.5 days for gathering and hunting and 4.5 days on talking. The conclusion they came to from this data was that the brain, the neurological system, and our hormonal systems have had 90,000 years of programming us for talk and collaboration, and only 10,000 years for competition and fighting.
Do you think this will have affected the constitution of the human being? Yes, I thought so! The World Café is a modern version of the oldest form of social construction humans know!!!
UR can also mean (system of) Ultimate Reality.
Also, I read somewhere that the ideal maximum collection of people is around 150. Personally, I think such a group would still be quite busy getting to know one another.
The formula for the number of 2-way conversations that could be conducted with N people is (N**2 – N)/2 (n squared minus n all over 2). If N=150, we get a very large number.
And since conversations are all incomplete since historical context and perspective change even over a little span of time, there is still of talking, sharing, story telling, etc that can go on even if all the possible conversations had been held. Then when there are 3-way conversations, . . .
‘Swedish scientists have done extensive research on this and they found we first lived in small groups of 20 to 100 people who in any given week averaged 2.5 days for gathering and hunting and 4.5 days on talking.’
Hi Ulric Id love to know the source of this study please, where might I locate it thanks, Ruth