Computer simulations suggest war drove the rise of civilizations
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
This is not the first iteration of the computer simulation. They keep tuning the simulation until it produces better and better results. But are you getting better results because the simulation is right, or because it was implicitly fit to the historical data?
In machine learning terms, their training set and test set are the same, so odds are that the model is bunk.
But it publishes, I guess.
Alternatively, train it with one region (say Europe) and then test a second region which is mostly isolated (Americas, if we know enough, or Japan / SE Asia).
But if you're trying to improve the model, only take ideas from training in one region. Never, ever, look at how it failed in the test region because you'll quickly fall in the "overfitting for your data" trap.
Sadly, the public can't tell the difference between "Computer Simulations Predict Aerodynamic Qualities of a Porche 911" and "Computer Simulations Show Where Noah's Ark Landed".
This article and simulation looks halfway between the two examples above... maybe closer to the Noah's Ark one.
Just eyeballing their graphs, I would say their model is doing better at predicting areas weighted by soil fertility and temperate lattitudes. It's missing some giant areas from the data graph.
Also, without defining what they mean when they say 'civilisation', it's pretty worthless for any real work.
The authors actually do point out that their sampling method collects data in a way that is independent of the hypothesis they test, so it is not an example of cherry-picking examples that support their ideas.
While I cannot comment on how valid the model is because I'm definitely not an expert in that area, it seems pretty solid; they gave neighboring areas the capability to develop military techniques of certain strengths, the capability to lose it, and saw where civilizations tended to develop the different areas would "fight it out" and transfer military technique back and forth, and the result of their simulation appeared to be quite similar to the map of that time period.
There was also some talk in the comments about overfitting, and while as a person who works in chemical simulation I understand those concerns, this work seems to involve simply their taking initial conditions and plugging it into their simple simulation, and obtaining a result which was a remarkably good match to the actual world map of the time.
I do think the Ars article, like most scientific reporting, restates the conclusion in a way that is a stronger statement than the actual paper. Unfortunately, the way it was said changes the meaning of what was said in a subtle but important way. But.. that's typical scientific reporting, I guess. Overall the work is pretty cool, showing a computational model for studying the spread of military technology in a field that doesn't tend to frequently use computational models (according to the paper).
Extraordinary amount of detail as to why war drives the rise of new civilizations.
Settling down and growing things doesn't seem like a military tactic that pays off in the short term. Quite the opposite actually... that is probably a great way to get slaughtered. However it does make sense if your objective is to get wasted.
Perhaps they did exist, but it seems to me that a farm is a prerequisite for fortifications since fortifications require you to stay in one place for an extended period of time. (Staying in one place requires you to stop following around the herd of whatever you eat. Farms however are much easier to bootstrap. You can plant a field then abandon it, only to come back later).
Basically, my understanding is that city walls tended to be built after cities.
This sort of modeling is very tricky and, even though I don't want to put down the effort that went into this, I'm not sure if they controlled for other factors. We do know that people started war over these very resources, so it shouldn't be surprising that banding together (I.E. forming societies and by extension, civilizations) was a good way to prevent these from being taken by more powerful adversaries. The technology to defend, seize and improve these resources can also build civilizations so while war may be a factor that is common to it, calling it a cause is a bit of a rush to judgment IMO.
I reviewed it here: http://chester.id.au/2012/05/14/review-war-and-peace-and-war...
This article covers the creation side. It's worth mentioning that in the book he requires these wars to be between very dissimilar groups. The intense differences create a much nastier competitive dynamic, creating much higher social and cultural pressure. Eventually one group wipes the other(s) out, establishing a new imperial civilisation.
Imho technology drives culture. Drives our history. History focusing on dates and decisions of individuals or relations between groups of people and their character is bogus narrative. It should focus on technology available and how this technology enabled things to happen.
It's often claimed that our technological development outpaced our cultural development. I think that's not the case. Imho only new technology can cause culture to change. If not for development of nuclear weapons we would never could form culture that makes us civilized enough not to use it.
There are multiple feedback loops like that but common point of all those loops is technology.
It would seem like you could get a similarly inaccurate model by simply modelling people preferring to live by the coast, and only displacing inland when density along the coast gets too high.
I'm sure war had a substantial role, but their model doesn't seem to predict anything it couldn't have without considering warfare at all.
Also, I cringe over this statement: "if military technology is removed as a factor, the model’s accuracy falls to a mere 16 percent."
That's like saying, "If you take the beans out of my soup, it doesn't taste like potatoes as much."
I also don't understand what predict 65% accuracy means? If we are taking about overlap between two binary variables, this is abysmally low.
That is: wars between culturally-similar groups don't give rise to this effect. Wars between culturally-dissimilar groups do.
The extremely sudden rise of Islam seems like a pretty big change to me. You had Western Roman influence in North Africa, a big functioning Eastern Roman Empire, and a thriving Sassanid Persian empire, which all got swept away.
This political/military upheaval led quickly to a golden era of learning and inquiry that the world hadn't seen in half a millenium...which then itself was swept away by the Mongol invasion (and sacking of Baghdad in 1258).
If a simulation could predict extremely important upheavals of that sort I'd be pretty damn impressed.
If we consider military technology, gunpowder had hardly begun to have an impact. Machiavelli's Art of War (1521) still recommends Roman military equipment and methods. Armored cavalry, pikemen, archers dominated the battlefields in 1500 CE; all familiar to Byzantines and Sassanids 1000 years before. And the centers of civilization in the Old World (Fertile Crescent, Mediterranean, India, China) were pretty much established by 300 BCE if not well before that.
So wrong... huge portions of Asia had massive material changes during that period. The rise and fall of multiple empires in many of the major population centers (Cambodia's Angkor, Funan and predecessors, Central Asia, China's Shu, India's significant naval and land empires, Indonesia's various naval civilizations, Myanmar's Ava and Pegu, Thailand's Dvaravati, Vietnam's Champa, Dong Son and Zhenla), extreme changes to the structure and material culture of societies through Buddhism, the expansion of China, the Silk Road, Hinduism, Islam, the Mongols.
China re-invaded Vietnam in 1403 with significant use of gunpowder[1], in the first major gunpowder utilizing land war in the region, commemorated by Chinese imperially commissioned French copperplate engravings[2]. They then mounted gunpowder weapons on a huge fleet of ships and sailed as far as east Africa in seven separate voyages[3].
[1] http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=279471 [2] http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/coll... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He
Like, for example, the number 0. It rose to prominence right in the middle of this period. Or in agriculture, we have the birth of the three-field system, which was a massive step forward, along with horse collars and heavy ploughs. The beginnings of the modern musical notation system happened smack-bang in the middle of this period. Cast iron was invented in the middle ages. Naval technology was steadily on the improve, from the Vikings in the middle of the period who reached North America, to the end of the period when the Spanish 'discovered' America, and trading vessels were always getting bigger with longer ranges. Social 'technology' like the Magna Carta acted like keystones for formalising and limiting the power of monarchs. Other social technology sees the birth of federated republics, like the Holy Roman Empire. Windmills became common as a cheaper way to grind grain. Horseshoes came into vogue right in the middle of the period - a significant advance. Vaults and buttresses allowed the construction of ever-greater sizes of buildings - and the wheelbarrow to help build them, simple as it seems today, was a middle-ages invention of significance. And, surprisingly, soap was born in this period. The saddle and the stirrup were also widely implemented at this time, allowing cavalry to take a significantly different and powerful role in warfare.
The middle east in particular is generally considered to have had its golden period during this time, a flourishing place of learning and technological advancement. Admittedly I know much less of eastern technological development, but certainly in the middle east and europe, it wasn't stagnant.
So sure, if technology is "gunpowder", there wasn't much of it in that period (though the same could be said of your armoured cavalry and the period before it). Technology is not "gunpowder" though, and it was continuously undergoing change throughout 500-1500.
>The borders are seeded with military technology, starting with the use of horses. That technology then spreads as societies fight it out virtually.
There are periods in which military technology varied significantly. 500-1500 CE is not one of them.
And like I said, the saddle and stirrup made significant changes to the way cavalry were used in battle.
Sure, it didn't change as fast as we've seen in the past couple of hundred years, but nothing else has either. I'm not sure what other periods you're talking about, since the broad tech you're complaining of - spears and archery - predates written history.
I'm sorry, you're off by two centuries [1]. Yes, cannons started making an impact in the 15th century, but that doesn't change the fact that military technology was overall pretty stagnant during 500 - 1500.
For comparison, here are some major developments during the previous millennium: [2] [3] [4] [5]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_artillery_in_the_Midd...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphract#Exposure_to_Western_...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catapult#Greek_and_Roman_catapu...
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_infantry#Antiquity
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_archer#Appearance_in_hist...
Medicine doesn't necessarily shift the borders of empire but it does dramatically affect the quality and duration of a typical person's life. The difference between being born in the 6th century vs. the 11th would (to us) I think be painful brutal existence vs. civilization.
Evolution, science and philosophy, oh yeah...