Seshat (project)

Seshat: Global History Databank

The Seshat: Global History Databank is an international scientific research project. The Seshat: Global History Databank gathers together the most up-to-date and complete body of knowledge about human history into one authoritative database. The Seshat Databank systematically collects state-of-the-art accounts of the political and social organization of human groups and how societies have evolved through time.[1] Seshat: Global History Databank

The Seshat: Global History Databank is a nonprofit organization that uses the collective knowledge of thousands of expert researchers about historical societies to gather the information necessary to rigorously test a variety of competing hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies around the globe and provide scientifically valid and meaningful solutions to some of our most pressing problems.[2] Seshat engages sociocultural evolutionary theory to identify the long-term dynamics of the traits and activities that have had significant effects on the course of human history. The Seshat: Global History Databank is an integral part of an exciting new scientific approach to historical research—Cliodynamics. The goal of Cliodynamics is to use the scientific method to produce the data necessary to empirically test competing theories.[3] A large interdisciplinary and international team helps the Seshat project to produce a database that will enable researchers to rigorously study the past using well-established scientific techniques.

Project

The Seshat: Global History Databank is an umbrella organization for several research projects that examine different themes or facets of human life. Each project is led by members of the Seshat Team in collaboration with a group of consultants and contributing experts. Themes include: the evolution of social complexity in early civilizations, the creation of prosociality (i.e., how and why large groups of unrelated individuals come together and cooperate for a common goal), the role of ritual and religion in social cohesion, the causes of economic growth and its consequences on individual’s well-being, and many others. The Seshat team is also heavily engaged in improving the way that cutting-edge digital technologies can aid in research, with projects devoted to developing cutting-edge systems for collecting, analyzing, and distributing information with computer assistance.

Several key research questions drive these research projects. These include the following: What mechanisms transform economic growth into improvements in quality of life for regular people? What roles do ritual activities and religion play in cultural development and group cohesion? How and under what conditions does prosocial behavior evolve in large societies? What is the impact of environmental and climatic factors in societal advance? [4]

To maximise their time and resources, the Seshat project has begun data collection with a representative sample of polities from around the globe and throughout human history, ranging from the late Neolithic (roughly 4,000 BCE) to the early modern period (roughly 1,900 CE). This is the World Sample 30.[5] The World Sample-30 provides the Seshat project with an initial sample of societies that vary along the dimension of social complexity from ten major regions around the globe. Three natural geographic areas (NGAs) were selected within each region––one NGA was selected in each world region that developed complex state-level societies comparatively early; a second NGA was selected that selected complex societies comparatively late, ideally one free of centralized polities (chiefdoms and states) until the colonial period; a third NGA was selected that was intermediate to these two extremes in terms of social complexity.

Funding

Funding for the Seshat: Global History Databank comes from the John Templeton Foundation, the Economic and Social Research Council, Horizon 2020, the Tricoastal Foundation, and the Evolution Institute.[6][7]

Administration

The Seshat: Global History Databank is governed by an Editorial Board, which includes Prof. Peter Turchin, Prof. Harvey Whitehouse, Dr. Pieter François, Dr. Thomas E. Currie, and Dr. Kevin C. Feeney.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Turchin, Peter; Brennan, Rob; Currie, Thomas E.; Feeney, Kevin C.; Francois, Pieter; Hoyer, Daniel; Manning, J. G.; Marciniak, Arkadiusz; Mullins, Daniel; Palmisano, Alessio; Peregrine, Peter; Turner, Edward A. L.; Whitehouse, Harvey (2015). "Seshat: The Global History Databank". Cliodynamics 6: 77. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9qx38718
  2. ↑ http://seshatdatabank.info
  3. ↑ Turchin, Peter (2008). "Arise cliodynamics". Nature 454: 34–35. doi:10.1038/454034a. http://www.sott.net/articles/show/161508-Transforming-history-into-science-Arise-cliodynamics
  4. ↑ http://seshatdatabank.info
  5. ↑ http://seshatdatabank.info/methods/world-sample-30/
  6. ↑ http://seshatdatabank.info/seshat-about-us/acknowledgements/
  7. ↑ Turchin, Peter; Brennan, Rob; Currie, Thomas E.; Feeney, Kevin C.; Francois, Pieter; Hoyer, Daniel; Manning, J. G.; Marciniak, Arkadiusz; Mullins, Daniel; Palmisano, Alessio; Peregrine, Peter; Turner, Edward A. L.; Whitehouse, Harvey (2015). "Seshat: The Global History Databank". Cliodynamics 6: 102–103. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9qx38718

Further reading

External links

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