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24-2-21 Peter Turchin: End Times > .18-7-10 This View of History: A Conversation With Peter Turchin > .
Cliodynamics (from Clio, the muse of history, and dynamics, the study of why things change with time) is the new transdisciplinary area of research at the intersection of historical macrosociology, economic history/cliometrics, mathematical modeling of long-term social processes, and the construction and analysis of historical databases.
Cliodynamics is a transdisciplinary area of research integrating cultural evolution, economic history/cliometrics, macrosociology, the mathematical modeling of historical processes during the longue durée, and the construction and analysis of historical databases. Cliodynamics treats history as science. Its practitioners develop theories that explain such dynamical processes as the rise and fall of empires, population booms and busts, spread and disappearance of religions. These theories are translated into mathematical models. Finally, model predictions are tested against data. Thus, building and analyzing massive databases of historical and archaeological information is one of the most important goals of cliodynamics.
Historians may be a bit leery about scientists making this sort of attempt, since history is driven by a complex set of of events, some of them seemingly one-time only. But Peter Turchin thinks otherwise. Through an approach he calls cliodynamics (named after Clio, the Greek muse of history), he wants to unravel the past by testing hypotheses against data.
For his latest work, he joined with Thomas Currie, a lecturer in cultural evolution at the University of Exeter. In the new study, they use a computer simulation to model the largest societies in the years between 1500 BCE and 1500 CE.
Their model uses a map of Africa and Eurasia split up into cells that are 100 kilometres on each side. The properties of each cell are its natural landscape, height above sea level and the possibility of agriculture (which was the main driving force behind societies). The borders are seeded with military technology, starting with the use of horses. That technology then spreads as societies fight it out virtually. What emerges is the probability that each [100 km x 100 km] cell of land could or could not be occupied by civilisations as time progresses.
“Remarkably, when the results from the simulation are compared with real data from the past, the model predicts the rise of empires with 65% accuracy,” Currie said. If military technology is removed as a factor, the model’s accuracy falls to a mere 16%. “It seems warfare created intense pressure that drove these societies.”"
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"“The model fails to predict the emergence of large empires in Central Asia. Something not in the current model is going on there.” [I suspect that the problem is one of scale -- flat terrain eliminates natural boundaries to movement (topographic defenses), and low population density facilitates militaristic expansion, meaning that the units of analysis (cells) for flat-low-population areas ought to be much larger than the 100 sq km arbitrarily assigned initially.]
"Why war evolved to be a man’s game – and why that’s only now changing"
Computer simulations show that warfare may have been the main driver behind the formation of empires, bureaucracies and religions.
Historians may be a bit leery about scientists making this sort of attempt, since history is driven by a complex set of of events, some of them seemingly one-time only. But Peter Turchin thinks otherwise. Through an approach he calls cliodynamics (named after Clio, the Greek muse of history), he wants to unravel the past by testing hypotheses against data.
For his latest work, he joined with Thomas Currie, a lecturer in cultural evolution at the University of Exeter. In the new study, they use a computer simulation to model the largest societies in the years between 1500 BCE and 1500 CE.
Their model uses a map of Africa and Eurasia split up into cells that are 100 kilometres on each side. The properties of each cell are its natural landscape, height above sea level and the possibility of agriculture (which was the main driving force behind societies). The borders are seeded with military technology, starting with the use of horses. That technology then spreads as societies fight it out virtually. What emerges is the probability that each [100 km x 100 km] cell of land could or could not be occupied by civilisations as time progresses.
“Remarkably, when the results from the simulation are compared with real data from the past, the model predicts the rise of empires with 65% accuracy,” Currie said. If military technology is removed as a factor, the model’s accuracy falls to a mere 16%. “It seems warfare created intense pressure that drove these societies.”"
....
"“The model fails to predict the emergence of large empires in Central Asia. Something not in the current model is going on there.” [I suspect that the problem is one of scale -- flat terrain eliminates natural boundaries to movement (topographic defenses), and low population density facilitates militaristic expansion, meaning that the units of analysis (cells) for flat-low-population areas ought to be much larger than the 100 sq km arbitrarily assigned initially.]
"Why war evolved to be a man’s game – and why that’s only now changing"
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