A groundbreaking look at Western and Eastern social development from
the end of the ice age to today In the past thirty years, there have
been fierce debates over how civilizations develop and why the West
became so powerful. The Measure of Civilization presents a brand-new
way of investigating these questions and provides new tools for
assessing the long-term growth of societies. Using a groundbreaking
numerical index of social development that compares societies in
different times and places, award-winning author Ian Morris sets forth
a sweeping examination of Eastern and Western development across
15,000 years since the end of the last ice age. He offers surprising
conclusions about when and why the West came to dominate the world and
fresh perspectives for thinking about the twenty-first century.
Adapting the United Nations' approach for measuring human development,
Morris's index breaks social development into four traits—energy
capture per capita, organization, information technology, and
war-making capacity—and he uses archaeological, historical, and
current government data to quantify patterns. Morris reveals that for
90 percent of the time since the last ice age, the world's most
advanced region has been at the western end of Eurasia, but contrary
to what many historians once believed, there were roughly 1,200
years—from about 550 to 1750 CE—when an East Asian region was more
advanced. Only in the late eighteenth century CE, when northwest
Europeans tapped into the energy trapped in fossil fuels, did the West
leap ahead. Resolving some of the biggest debates in global history,
The Measure of Civilization puts forth innovative tools for
determining past, present, and future economic and social trends.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781400844760
Publisert
2013
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter