Phys.org October 20, 2021
An international team of researchers (UK, Canada, Russia, USA – Field Museum of Natural History, Evolution Institute, Austria) analyzed the evolution of key military technologies in a sample of pre-industrial societies world-wide covering almost 10,000 years of history using Seshat: Global History Databank. They empirically tested previously speculative theories that proposed world population size, connectivity between geographical areas of innovation and adoption, and critical enabling technological advances, such as iron metallurgy and horse riding, as central drivers of military technological evolution. They found that all these factors are strong predictors of change in military technology, whereas state-level factors such as polity, population, territorial size, or governance sophistication play no major role. According to the researchers their approach can be extended to explore technological change more generally, and their results carry important ramifications for understanding major drivers of evolution of social complexity…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Rise of the war machines: Charting the evolution of military technologies from the Neolithic to the Industrial Revolution…Â Credit: PLOS ONE October 20, 2021Â