Societies ranging from ancient Rome and the Inca empire to modern Britain and China have evolved along similar paths, a huge new study shows.
Despite their many differences, societies tend to become more complex in "highly predictable" ways, researchers said.
These processes of development - often happening in societies with no knowledge of each other - include the emergence of writing systems and "specialised" government workers such as soldiers, judges and bureaucrats.
The international research team, including researchers from the University of Exeter, created a new database of historical and archaeological information using data on 414 societies spanning the last 10,000 years. The database is larger and more systematic than anything that has gone before it.
"Societies evolve along a bumpy path - sometimes breaking apart - but the trend is towards larger, more complex arrangements," said corresponding author Dr Thomas Currie, of the Human Behaviour and Cultural Evolution Group at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall.
"Researchers have long debated whether social complexity can be meaningfully compared across different parts of the world. Our research suggests that, despite surface differences, there are fundamental similarities in the way societies evolve.
"Although societies in places as distant as Mississippi and China evolved independently and followed their own trajectories, the structure of social organisation is broadly shared across all continents and historical eras."
The measures of complexity examined by the researchers were divided into nine categories. These included:
- Population size and territory
- Number of control/decision levels in administrative, religious and military hierarchies
- Information systems such as writing and record keeping
- Literature on specialised topics such as history, philosophy and fiction
- Economic development
The researchers found that these different features showed strong statistical relationships, meaning that variation in societies across space and time could be captured by a single measure of social complexity.
This measure can be thought of as "a composite measure of the various roles, institutions, and technologies that enable the coordination of large numbers of people to act in a politically unified manner".
Dr Currie said learning lessons from human history could have practical uses.
"Understanding the ways in which societies evolve over time and in particular how humans are able to create large, cohesive groups is important when we think about state building and development," he said.
"This study shows how the sciences and humanities, which have not always seen eye-to-eye, can actually work together effectively to uncover general rules that have shaped human history."
Explore further:
Math explains history: Simulation accurately captures the evolution of ancient complex societies
More information:
Peter Turchin el al., "Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization," PNAS (2017). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1708800115
Steve 200mph Cruiz
We can be anywhere in the world in a day. We have developed a instant and global communication system and have public access to the most meticulous records ever kept in history.
A lot of things are changing, and it's a constant tug of war learning to live on such a small planet with each other, we are being forced into the most complex society possible
Whydening Gyre
https://phys.org/...tly.html
And actually, Steve, it's pretty simple - in the end, it all becomes one...
Jeffhans1
ddaye
JongDan
There is no such thing as "post-scarcity". Get off your ivory towers, please.
TheGhostofOtto1923
- No apparent knowledge, that is.
One great mystery is why the early great civilizations emerged within a few millennia of each other, after a few hundred thousand years of chaos and intertribal conflict.
I think this can be explained in part by the acceptance of endemic overpopulation within the species, the discovery of ways to manage it, and the initiative to begin controlling growth on a global scale.
Agriculture quickly spread globally soon after it was invented so it's naive to think that similar social and technological developments could not be spread intentionally.
I believe that early rulers accepted the inevitability of overgrowth and began to manage it by staging preplanned conflict between competing tribes.
Predetermining the outcome of conflict would preserve overall stability and progress and the ability to create these great civilizations.
Cont>
TheGhostofOtto1923
Domestication supplanted evolution as humans were systematically selected for their ability to conform to the unnatural environment of tribal living.
Knowledge about the natural world could provide advantages in conflict and allow for enduring stability and progress. But archeology shows us the repeated fall of incipient order in the layers of city mounds. Uncontrolled overgrowth would always overwhelm stability, and the store of knowledge, our most valuable commodity, would be lost.
So Leaders took it upon themselves to wage war intelligently, always with preconceived goals in mind. And Leaders of both sides would be in on it.
Cont>
TheGhostofOtto1923
We can see how leaders of both Macedonia and Persia were schooled by Aristotle, and shortly thereafter a young and inexperienced conqueror miraculously consolided the entire known world.
We can wonder how a similar Leader born in the Mongolian wilderness could sweep the largest continent in a few short decades. Easier to assume that he was schooled and advised on proven ancient methods of conquest and consolidation.
TheGhostofOtto1923
A Tribe of Leaders emerged, dedicated to preserving stability and progress, and to protecting our precious store of knowledge at all costs. THEY established the great civilizations. THEY established the great Chinese dynasties. THEY established Rome, ruled Europe and Asia, and designed the religions which made it possible.
And they did this by dividing the people up and setting them against one another in planned and controlled ways.
Cont>
TheGhostofOtto1923
Book of Enoch chap 10
TheGhostofOtto1923
17 And then shall all the righteous escape,
And shall live till they beget thousands of children,
And all the days of their youth and their old age
Shall they complete in peace."
-The victorious tribe, the Tribe of Leaders, will conquer the corrupted by having them kill each other off.
"I love it when a Plan comes together." - Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith
TheGhostofOtto1923
Daniel Hudson Burnham 1907 - Great American architect and urban planner; high-ranking Freemason
TheGhostofOtto1923
Haha I totally missed that part. Brilliant.
cortezz
TheGhostofOtto1923
Do any of these Reeves make as much sense as otto does? I think not.
TheGhostofOtto1923
George Bernard Shaw
Man and Superman "Maxims for Revolutionists" (1903)
TheGhostofOtto1923
"I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?
All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man?" Nietzsche, thus spake zarathustra
Or this one?
"16 For God so loved the WORLD that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the WORLD to condemn the WORLD, but to save the WORLD through him." John 3
- God and Nietzsche and Shaw and Burnham and Enoch and his priestly descendents all seek to save the WORLD from the people upon it. And so god will promise them absolutely anything in order to get them to do what he says.
And what he says is that unbelievers do not deserve to inhabit this world. Only the Just are worthy to fill it up. As Enoch is telling us and the others are predicting.