The Seshat: Global History Databank-Project

08.09.2015 17:40

A team of scholars from around the world, from fields as diverse as evolutionary biology, psychology, and archaeology, is working on a project that's concentrating huge volumes of data on social complexity, warfare, ritual, religion, resources, politics, and economics all into one place.

The Databank systematically collects what is currently known about the social and political organization of human societies and how civilizations have evolved over time; https://evolution-institute.org/project/seshat/

This massive collection of historical information allows to rigorously test different hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies across the globe and human history. Working with a large international and interdisciplinary team, our database offers the means to study the past through well-established scientific techniques.

The founding editor and overall coordinator of Seshat is Professor Peter Turchin (UConn), an evolutionary biologist and theoretician of human history (Cliodynamics; https://peterturchin.com/); currently, Prof. Turchin is guest of the University of Vienna for the conference "The Haves and the Have-Nots: Exploring the Global History of Wealth and Income Inequality" (https://altegeschichte.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/inst_alt_ges_altertum_papyr/Veranstaltungen/Einladung_the_haves_and_the_have_nots_web.pdf).

Seshat and Prof. Turchin are also cooperating with Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, who is responsible for the data on Byzantium for the Seshat-project and himself is executing several projects on complexity theory, network analysis and history (https://oeaw.academia.edu/JohannesPreiserKapeller).

You can also learn more about this project by watching this video: