

When was the most history made? A quantified view. - jonathanbgood
http://1000memories.com/blog/85-collecting-everyones-stories-as-part-of-quantifed-history

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Jabbles
That graph is bizarre. The variable x-axis causes the peak to appear in the AD
1-1800 section, whereas the rest of the article explains that "the current era
is creating history faster than ever before".

A more suitable graph would just be the population of the world.

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brianleb
This is not nearly as interesting as I hoped. Allow me to sum it up for you:

"History" is defined as "person-years lived." Therefore, the more people there
are alive (and the longer they live), the more history is being made. There
are currently more people alive than ever before at a given time. Therefore,
we are currently making the most history.

Mind-blowing, right?

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Sniffnoy
Man, where's the more fine-grained analysis? So disappointing!

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fedd
by the way, there are theories that everything ancient really occurred not
that long ago. if true, the graph may be less steep.

if curious: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_%28Fomenko%29>

(i think its bullshit but who knows? :))

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ggchappell
Amazing. I was familiar with Fomenko as a mathematician, but I had no idea he
was into this stuff. Thanks for the link.

BTW, much of Fomenko's mathematical work is quite accessible -- lots of pretty
pictures. Also, whatever one might say about this history stuff, his math is
not at all crackpot-ish.

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troels
And how do they define "to make history"?

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AretNCarlsen
The article defines "making history" as simply existing. That's why they can
conclude that disproportionate chunks of history were formed during more
recent time periods: human population growth, like that of any other bacteria,
is exponential.

It's an interesting perspective. Even if your definition of who "makes
history" is more narrow, their results are still accurate if you assume that
the history-makers have made up a consistent percentage of the human
population throughout history.

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troels
Yeah, but then they aren't really saying anything more than was already said
with the "12% of the population of mankind is alive today".

