Social evolution
...about which an anthropologist might be presumed to have thought and read widely. But I have not, because I've chosen to attend to other acts under the Big Top of anthropology, and to keep and eye/ear on several other nearby circuses.
I sent David a pointer to Graeber and Wengrow (link to my Kindle Notebook), and realized that a shelflist would be worth constructing, centered on books that seek to plumb the historical and prehistorical records. My first thought was for William McNeill, whose synoptic view appealed to me from first encounter in the 1970s.
It also dawned upon me that my interests and attentions have been mostly concentrated in the last 500 or so years, and thus in the processes and consequences of a primary drama: the relations of Europeans with other peoples —which have welded a World System that is fundamentally capitalist, in which the Actors in the unfolding drama seek profit, and so demonstrate and might even measure their Rationality.
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As for 'social evolution' and 'social evolutionary theory', I'm uncomfortable with the baggage they (or at least some of the disputants in that community and that Literature) carry (I'm thinking of eugenics and racism and ethnocentrism). And with the arrogant tacit assumption that WE are living at the advancing edge of evolution, the culmination and Apotheosis of a process that began in our species some millions ago of orbits of the Earth around the Sun.10vii26
I haven't been much concerned with "trends or patterns in history and prehistory" so much as in emergence during recent time —say 1500 and after, which I take to be emergence of the Anthropocene.
...I've been much more concerned with Ecological perspective than with organizational/political/economic framing of the Story of humanity, in a Gaian framework of intercalated life forms, not attending to the details of Hobbes' Bog
...My question is often HOW and WHY did It get to be what we NOW observe? What's the story, what are the processes that have unfolded to produce what we seem to see NOW? What do we include in the story we construct about what we see around us?
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Some due diligence on 'social evolution'
Social evolution Wikipedia
Social evolution — Latest research and news Nature
Social Evolution: an overview sciencedirect.com
Social Evolution Sage Reference
The Origins of Social Evolution: An Enlightened Perspective Sociology.Institute
Social Evolution of Anthropological Theory LibreTexts
Social evolution theory: A review of methods and approaches Tom Wenseleers et al. (2010) (pdf)
Over the past decades much progress has been made in understanding the evolutionary factors that can promote social behaviour. Nevertheless, the bewildering range of methods that have been employed leave many confused. Here we review some of the major approaches that can be used to model social evolution, including the neighbour-modulated fitness, inclusive fitness and multilevel selection methods. Through examples we show how these different methodologies can yield complementary insight in the evolutionary causes of social behaviour, and how, for a wide range of problems, one method can be translated into the other, without affecting the final conclusion. We also review some recent developments, such as the evolution of cooperation in spatial settings and networks, and multilocus extensions of the theory, and discuss some remaining challenges in social evolution theory.