文章基本信息

标题：Quantitative historical analysis uncovers a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization
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作者：Peter Turchin ; Thomas E. Currie ; Harvey Whitehouse 等
期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2018
卷号：115
期号：2
页码：E144-E151
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1708800115
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as “Seshat: Global History Databank.” We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history.
关键词：cultural evolution ; sociopolitical complexity ; comparative history ; comparative archaeology ; quantitative history