%0 Journal Article %J PLoS ONE %D 2014 %T Can Government Be Self-Organized? A Mathematical Model of the Collective Social Organization of Ancient {Teotihuacan}, Central {Mexico} %A Froese, Tom %A Gershenson, Carlos %A Manzanilla, Linda R. %X

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.

%B PLoS ONE %I Public Library of Science %V 9 %P e109966 %8 10 %G eng %U http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0109966 %R 10.1371/journal.pone.0109966