Most scientists agree that the modern human brain evolved to cope with social groups of 40, 50 or even 100 people.

So it's hardly surprising that social anthropologists have turned their attention to social networking where one person can have hundreds, or even thousands of friends. Here's a good article in the New York Times focusing on the parallels between social networks and tribal societies.

The focus on the spoken word is a critical one. The modern human brain evolved about 150,000 years ago, but the earliest forms of writing date back only 6,000 years or so. No surprise that this coincided with the first large settlements in Mesopotamia and modern day Turkey to ensure that laws and commandments were understood by the wider population.

Which gets you thinking about all those alpha bloggers and twitterers vying for status. Robert Scoble today announced that he has 17,000 followers. Note the difference there between a Facebook friend and a Twitter follower. Scoble and his peers are in a position of power. They control, influence and disseminate information. Above all, they claim a deeper connection with a phenomenon that few of us truly understand.

There may be better places to look, but I'm increasingly finding that my first page view of the day is Scoble's Twitter feed. For all the noise ("I'm on my way to the airport" etc.) I usually find at least three or four clues that set me linking through to the main technology and social media topics of the day. High priest indeed.