
Computer simulations suggest war drove the rise of civilizations - llambda
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/09/computer-simulations-suggest-war-drove-the-rise-of-civilizations/
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btilly
Here is my guess.

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.

~~~
milesskorpen
Could you reasonably investigate this by creating a model for one time period,
and then applying it to another time period?

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).

~~~
icefox
If your interested in this in more detail I just finished "guns germs and
steel" which I would recommend for a enjoyable (to me) overview of old
history.

~~~
yk
In the same genre Ian Morris _Why the west rules - for now_ is also very good.
( And if you did not already read it, _Collapse_ by Diamond.)

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crusso
I'm so extraordinarily sick of "Computer Simulations <whatever>" being
reported with any real credibility as though the Computer Simulation part
means accuracy.

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.

~~~
fusiongyro
P'shaw, we all know Noah's Ark is up on Mt. Ararat on Armenian land
politically owned by Turkey.

~~~
moomin
Well they do if they've read Declare anyway. Not enough people properly
appreciate the Kim Philby connection.

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johnward
I ran my computer simulation (Civ 5) and came to the same conclusion.

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sungx105
After reading the paper referenced in the article
([http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/09/20/1308825110.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/09/20/1308825110.abstract)),
I can only conclude that this is pretty cool 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).

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ktavera
Thomas Sowell wrote a spectacular book in the same vein as this.
[http://www.amazon.com/Conquests-And-Cultures-
International-H...](http://www.amazon.com/Conquests-And-Cultures-
International-History/dp/0465014003)

Extraordinary amount of detail as to why war drives the rise of new
civilizations.

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jlgreco
I prefer the beer theory.

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.

~~~
trentmb
I suppose, if you completely discount fortifications.

~~~
jlgreco
I do, since I am unaware of ancient fortifications as old as the earliest
farming communities.

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.

~~~
Ma8ee
The palisade around the village probably came after people had settled there,
but I can imagine someone building a wall to have somewhere to go whenever you
are attacked, and that place eventually also became the place where people
went to trade, thus wall before city.

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eksith
Are we sure that it was definitively war or merely the availability of
resources that gave rise to civilizations? Water, rich soil, minerals (E.G.
Iron, Copper, Gold etc...)

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.

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jacques_chester
Turchin published a book about his theory of the rise of powerful
civilisations, and his theory about their decline, called _War and Peace and
War_.

I reviewed it here: [http://chester.id.au/2012/05/14/review-war-and-peace-and-
war...](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.

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lambdasquirrel
What about trade? Paul krugman (the economist known for his liberal views)
wrote a compelling thesis on the role of transport costs in the rise and fall
of manufacturing hubs, etc. It might explain the empires unaccounted for in
this model.

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scotty79
> if military technology is removed as a factor, the model’s accuracy falls to
> a mere 16 percent

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.

~~~
melipone
But war drives technology.

~~~
scotty79
War accelerates development of technology same way as science accelerates
development of technology same way as commerce accelerates development of
technology but new wars and new science and new forms and magnitudes of
commerce are possible only because of the new technology (new tools of war,
science and commerce to be precise).

There are multiple feedback loops like that but common point of all those
loops is technology.

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vidarh
The graphic in the article shows that their model predicts civilizations with
the highest likelihood along coasts and major waterways, rapidly declining the
further inland you get .

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.

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ballard
Oh, Civilization

[http://www.civfanatics.com/civ1/manual/civ1_man.htm](http://www.civfanatics.com/civ1/manual/civ1_man.htm)

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diydsp
Intriguing concept and neat approach (tower defense anyone?), but many of us
perceive civilization as arising much earlier, around 10,500 BCE.

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."

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frozenport
I have trouble with this notion because aboriginal tribes have a history of
fighting amongst each other. Perhaps the rise of civilization brought on what
the authors consider was war?

I also don't understand what predict 65% accuracy means? If we are taking
about overlap between two binary variables, this is abysmally low.

~~~
jacques_chester
Turchin's underlying hypothesis is that "imperiogenesis" occurs at "meta
ethnic faultlines".

That is: wars between culturally-similar groups don't give rise to this
effect. Wars between culturally-dissimilar groups do.

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teeja
That war drove the rise of -empires- seems no surprise at all (see e.g.
Alexander). But is that _civilization_ ("An advanced state of intellectual,
cultural, and material development in human society") ?? I'm having trouble
decoding the semantics to understand why this isn't trivial.

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zeteo
Maybe this is legit, but 500-1500 CE seems the worst historical period to be
testing such models. Neither civilized areas nor technology (except in China)
changed much during that period. Models that were accurate for periods such as
3500-2000 BCE or 1500-1900 CE would be much more interesting.

~~~
iskander
>Neither civilized areas nor technology (except in China) changed much during
that period.

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.

~~~
zeteo
Yes, but the article talks about military technologies and their impact on the
extent of civilized areas. Neither Islamic nor Mongol invasions were based on
new technologies (if anything, they had less sophisticated equipment than
their opponents). Also these invasions didn't result in significant changes of
the civilized area (cf. the American frontier or Russian expansion into
Siberia).

~~~
iskander
Good comparison with the big inland empires. Any idea what qualifies as
'civilization' in the ground truth data?

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chris_mahan
Psychohistory?

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erikig
Interesting article, it disnt mention tha there's also a common
anthropological hypothesis popularized by Claude Levi Straus that the basis of
these wars was inception of the incest taboo: [http://m.vice.com/read/the-a-
to-z-of-sexual-history-incest](http://m.vice.com/read/the-a-to-z-of-sexual-
history-incest)

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amerika_blog
War, huh! What is it good for?

Evolution, science and philosophy, oh yeah...

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mumbi
I believe it. Competition.

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wildgift
screw civilization.

