Most people think of history as a series of stories—tales of one army unexpectedly defeating another, or a politician making a memorable speech, or an upstart overthrowing a sitting monarch.
Peter Turchin of the University of Connecticut sees things rather differently. Formally trained as a ecologist, he sees history as a series of equations. Specifically, he wants to bring the types of mathematical models used in fields such as wildlife ecology to explain population trends in a different species: humans.
In a paper published with colleagues today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he presents a mathematical model (shown on the left of the video above) that correlates well with historical data (shown on the right) on the development and spread of large-scale, complex societies (represented as red territories on the green area studied). The simulation runs from 1500 B.C.E. to 1500 C.E.—so it encompasses the growth of societies like Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt and the like—and replicates historical trends with 65 percent accuracy....MUCH MORE
Also at Smithsonian:
How Third-Century China Saw Rome, a Land Ruled by “Minor Kings”
