FIGURING OUT THE PAST: A History of The World

The Seshat Global History Databank is a huge catalogue of historical statistics found online, and now in book form. From the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Iraq, China, Turkey, Mexico, Greece, India, Mali, Iran, Mongolia, Italy, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Japan, before we move on to the medieval era 500-1500CE and the early modern era 1500-1800CE. What was the tallest building of the ancient world? Or the average life expectancy in medieval Byzantium? Where did scientific writing first emerge? What was the bloodiest ritual human sacrifice ever? Join the radical historians Peter Turchin and Dan Hoyer as they draw on their own Seshat project, a staggeringly ambitious attempt to log each piece of demographic and econometric information that can be reliably estimated for every society that has ever existed, to find the large-scale patterns. Join them for a dive into the numbers that reveal the true shape of the past. Who were the first people to use calendars? What was history's largest empire? When was the most widely attended ritual? Covers the period from 3000BCE to 2000CE, a wonderfully interesting book to dip into reminiscent of the social, political and economic tables found in many atlases and information found in The Economist from which this publication comes. With lists of rankings like the ten largest societies by territory, regional adoption such as bureaucracy by world region, and nine maps showing the spread of agriculture, human sacrifice, bronze, writing, moralising religion, chariots, iron, cavalry, coinage and gunpowder. Eminently browesworthy paperback, 254pp.