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Human history as fractal: How patterns repeat at all scales in our shared past and continue to shape the future
http://seshatdatabank.info/fractal/
Fractal patterns are found within mountains, crystals and galaxies – and everywhere else in the natural world. Is human history mind-bogglingly fractal too? I think it is; and it might change the way you see the world.
What is a fractal? A fractal, like the Mandelbrot Set, is a mathematical equation. It describes patterns that repeat simultaneously at all scales in detail. Now let’s find them in history.
The ‘Mandlebrot Set’ is the traditional illustrated example of a fractal.
Human progress
First, perhaps we can see long-term human progress as a fractal. Social improvement occurs in a rise and fall pattern: something-like ‘two steps forward’ and ‘one step back’.
If the amount of human cooperation that exists can be considered a good proxy for progress, consider the historical evidence for changing levels of societal cohesion.
‘Secular’ cycles, highlighted in the work of Turchin and Nefedov, suggests the rise and fall of social cohesion in a state generally lasts a couple of generations to two-hundred years. There are longer cycles. Ibn Khaldun in 1377 wrote for the perspective of whole civilizations. He coined the term ‘asabiyya’ for social cohesion.
Source: Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia
Over the shorter-term Elliott waves – visible, for instance, on a market price chart – track the rise and fall of modern economies. The shortest Elliott waves last mere minutes and may impact society through the changing value of the currency or stock.
Lastly, consider our life experiences and why our cultures contain proverbs that caution against hubris and over-confidence. “Look before you leap!”
Evolution and war
What other social processes are fractal? The evolution of society might be, and warfare too – one of cultural evolution’s important selective mechanisms.
In biological life the lowest observable level of evolution is at the gene but extinction and selection also occur at higher levels: the cell, organism, and taxonomic group.
Source: Wikipedia The original image showed the multiple levels in biological evolution.
Source: Wikipedia
The original image showed the multiple levels in biological evolution.
In humans the lowest level is the family. Likewise, extinction and selection occur at higher levels than this: friendship-groups, communities, ethnicities, races, nations and cultural regions.
The ‘War on Terrorism’ was an attempt at group extinction and how the doctrine was expanded is a powerful illustration of the fractal nature of the group.
Level 1: Terrorist.
Level 2: Terrorist cell.
Level 3: Terrorist group (collection of cells).
Level 4: Terrorist networks (groups).
Level 5: Terrorist states.
The US war on Iraq in 2005 eliminated a whole state – but not before the Bush Administration declared a Level 6: “Axis of Evil”.
Understandably, war – an important mechanism of the cultural evolutionary process which is fractal – is typically fractal, but rarely do we appreciate the extent this is true.
We usually think of wars as ‘short term’ campaigns (months), battles (days), and theatres (hours). Yet wars occur at huge timeframes – a 100-years-war, or even thousands of years.
One of history’s most epic wars was between Asian Steppe nomads and agriculturalists from about 1000 BCE to 1500 CE. The settled people eventually won but Genghis Khan almost wiped out civilization in Central Asia.
The return of an ancient enemy. Source: Wikipedia
The return of an ancient enemy. Source: Wikipedia
Here’s another war story: from c500 BCE to 1500 CE Eurasia was always at war with Oceania. First the Greeks, then Macedonia, Rome, the Byzantines, and finally the Vatican went to war against Persia in the Middle East.
As part of an extended war, we can perhaps understand why the Crusades were ordered 400 years after the Arabs spread Islam and after the Islamic Caliphates. It was the Persian Seljuk invasion of the Levant in the late 11th Century that provoked action.
Like the lengthy Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage (partly over control of tin supply from northern Europe), this very extended Persian-Mediterranean war may have partly been caused by the presence of a major trade route, called the Silk Road.