Figuring out the past : the 3,495 vital statistics that explain world history Cover Image

Book

Figuring out the past : the 3,495 vital statistics that explain world history / Peter Turchin and Daniel Hoyer.

Turchin, Peter, 1957- (author.). Hoyer, Daniel, 1982- (author.). Economist Books. (Added Author).

Summary:

"What was history's biggest empire? Or the tallest building of the ancient world? What was the plumbing like in medieval Byzantium? The average wage in the Mughal Empire? Where did scientific writing first emerge? What was the bloodiest ever ritual human sacrifice? We are used to thinking about history in terms of stories. Yet we understand our own world through data: cast arrays of statistics that reveal the workings of our societies. In Figuring Out the Past, radical historians Peter Turchin and Dan Hoyer dive into the numbers that reveal the true shape of the past, drawing on their own Seshat project, a staggeringly ambitious attempt to log every data point that can be gathered for every society that has ever existed. This book does more than tell the story of humanity: it shows you the big picture, by the numbers." --Amazon.com.

Record details

ISBN: 9781541762688
ISBN: 1541762681
Physical Description: xiv, 253 pages : maps ; 21 cm.
Edition: First US trade paperback edition.
Publisher: New York : Public Affairs, 2020.

Content descriptions

Formatted Contents Note:

Introduction -- Society profiles. Ancient: 3000 BCE to 500 CE ; Medieval: 500 to 1500 CE ; Early modern: 1500 to 1800 CE ; Modern: 1800 to 2000 CE -- Rankings -- Regional adoption -- Maps.