Thursday, July 10, 2014

Active tectonics -- a cultural stimulant in antiquity

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498514279/Impact-of-Tectonic-Activity-on-Ancient-Civilizations-Recurrent-Shakeups-Tenacity-Resilience-and-Change

This posting is now revised and incorporated in a published book as of Aug. 2015 (link above)


Active tectonics -- a cultural stimulant in antiquity

Eric R. Force (eforce@email.arizona.edu)

Is it possible to imagine a world in which the development of each human culture is tied to its plate-tectonic position?  In which tectonism functions as a cultural stimulant producing complexity and innovation?  What if we humans were only fully alive culturally where the earth keeps us that way with constant activity?   If innovations diffuse largely from cultures located along the tectonic boundaries into more static environments in plate interiors away from tectonic plate boundaries?  And if the cultures themselves are unaware of any such factor?
It’s quite a stretch viewed from the world we live in, so this thought experiment might seem fanciful and fruitless.  For anyone reminded of the latest destructive tectonic event, it’s counter-intuitive if not bizarre.  But a remarkable number of lines of evidence seem to converge on just the hypothesis offered above for a previous time interval of our cultural development, of about 4000 years duration, that we refer to as antiquity.
How could we have missed this?  Perhaps because ancient history had no way to record the clues in a way that fit into plate-tectonic theory (1); because in the modern world such clues are obscured behind many layers of other concerns; and because they were already obscured long before any of the precursors of modern tectonic theories were born.  But it’s time to focus our new knowledge on our past with an open mind.
There is a good practical reason to do that. If tectonism was a cultural stimulant in antiquity, it probably still is, though less visible in our more complex world.  And indeed, once the structure of tectonic influence is traced through the ancient world, that structure can be recognized in our own.
In this book I propose to take the reader through those converging lines of evidence that tie tectonism to cultural development in the ancient world.  Many factors are required for complex cultures to thrive, of course, and the literatures that cover those—climate, soil, water, etc.--seem adequate.  They have been apparent all along.  Here I will treat them as mere prerequisites in a framework of more global dimension. 
I once thought that some combination of the obvious factors actually produced the apparent tectonic relation, so I started circling that relation looking for the “real” connection.  When the evidence consistently pointed to tectonism itself, I started thinking of tectonism as a minor factor, a mere thread in the fabric of relations between natural and cultural phenomena.  Now I think the evidence is too strong for such a modest claim.  A minor factor would not produce a spatial relation (fig. 1) so obvious that its random probability is one in several billions.  A minor factor would not explain how independent cultural experiments and geologic variations show similar but not identical results.  A minor factor would not explain the rich texture of response to tectonism in ancient religions, philosophies, and literature.  Nor would a minor factor explain the lack of the innovation and resilience of ancient cultures in tectonically quiescent cratons of plate interiors, or the evidence that cultural complexity preferentially propagates from site to site along tectonic boundaries.  Without disparaging the already-obvious factors, I think we instead are looking at an essential component of our cultural makeup.
            In some ways my thesis is predictable.  The influence of plate tectonics on human evolution and distribution is not in dispute, supported by evidence from both geologic (Molnar 1990, King and Bailey 2006) and anthropologic (Malin and Christensen 2007, Bailey and others 2011) authors, and a transition from evolutionary to cultural aspects can be traced (Sherratt 1996, Force and McFadgen, 2012).   In this book, however, I’m tracing it farther into the cultural realm. 
The ancient cultures that had both robust literatures and the most active tectonic environments did describe tectonism in whatever terms they had for it.  It is these cultures whose influence is most strongly felt in our modern world.  Other ancient complex cultures have recorded tectonism via their archaeological records.  Balancing the recorded destruction resulting from tectonism with the obvious vigor of these cultures, active tectonic environments look like an exercise program these cultures bought into by virtue of their location, an expensive one in terms of pain and cost, but producing a sort of cultural athleticism.

Acknowledgements—Following chapters will acknowledge information and suggestions pertinent to their subjects.  Here I would like to acknowledge those who have encouraged the entire work being presented.  It’s been cooking for ten years now; in some sort of chronologic order these include Jane Brandon Force, George Davis, Victoria Brandon, the late John Dohrenwend, Claudio Vita-Finzi, Henry Spall, Blake Edgar, Gary Huckleberry, Iain Stewart, the late E-An Zen and Norman Herz, Ed Wright, Wayne Howell, Bruce McFadgen, Germaine Shames, Ghasem Khosravi, Bob Tilling, Alastair Gill, Dingzhao, Mohammad Ramesht, and Jelle deBoer. 

Note
1. To give a sense of how far they had to go, the ancient literature does not seem to describe strata or bedding in sedimentary rocks.

Figure 1

Map locations (after Force 2008) of original sites of thirteen prominent ancient complex cultures of the eastern hemisphere relative to plate boundaries.  Numbered cultures (and sites) are 1 Roman (Rome), 2 Etruscan (Tarquinia&Veii), 3 Greek (Corinth) and Mycenaean (Mycenae), 4 Minoan (Knossos-Phaestos), 5 and 6 SW Asian (Tyre and Jerusalem), 7 Assyrian (Ninevah), 8 Mesopotamian (Ur-Uruk), 9 Persian (Susa), 10 Indus (Mohenjodaro), 11 Aryan India (Hastinapura), 12 Egyptian (Memphis) and 13 Chinese (Zhengzhou).  As shown here and discussed in chapter 6, the average distance from these sites to an active tectonic boundary is less than 100 km. 

References

Bailey, G. N., 2011, Reynolds, S. C., and King, G. C. P., 2011, Landscapes of human evolution:  models and methods of tectonic geomorphology and the reconstruction of hominin landscapes:  Journal of Human Evolution v. 60, p. 257-280.
Force, E. R., 2008, Tectonic environments of ancient civilizations in the eastern hemisphere:  Geoarchaeology v. 23, p. 644-653.
Force, E. R., and McFadgen, 2012, Influences of active tectonism on human development: a review and Neolithic example, in Climates, landscapes, and civilizations, L. Giosan and others, eds.:  American Geophysical Union,
Geophysical Monograph 198, p.  195-202
King, G. C. P. and Bailey, G. N., 2006, Tectonics and human evolution:  Antiquity v. 80, p. 265-286.
Maslin, M., and Christensen, 2007, Tectonics, orbital forcing, global climate change, and human evolution in Africa:  Journal of Human Evolution v. 53, p. 443-464.
Molnar, R., 1990, The rise of mountain ranges and the evolution of humans:  Irish Journal of Earth Sciences v. 10, p. 199-207
Sherratt, A., 1996, Plate tectonics and imaginary prehistories: structure and contingency in agricultural origins, in The origins and spread of agriculture and pastoralism in Eurasia, D. R. Harris, ed.: University College London Press, p. 130-141




Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Quantified spatial analysis of tectonic boundaries vs. ancient civilizations


https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498514279/Impact-of-Tectonic-Activity-on-Ancient-Civilizations-Recurrent-Shakeups-Tenacity-Resilience-and-Change

This posting has been revised and incorporated in a published book as of August 2015 (link above)


Quantified spatial analysis of tectonic boundaries vs. ancient complex cultures

Eric R. Force (eforce@email.arizona.edu)

 I have previously described the tectonic environments of the “great” ancient civilizations in the old world (1).  It is impressive how closely associated most of them are with tectonically active plate boundaries, despite the seismic and volcanic dangers involved.  The association is most obvious in the spatial relation at several scales, between the originating sites of these civilizations and the tectonic boundaries (Force, 2008, fig. 1; Force and McFadgen, 2010, figs. 1, 2), though its significance is supported in other ways. In othert posts I analyze various aspects of the dynamics of the relation (2). 
First, however, I need to quantify the strength of the apparent spatial relation, in order to address the possibility that it is some sort of coincidence. Then it may be possible to select subsets, both geologic and cultural, and compare their behaviors in order to provide clues to the meaning of the relation and link these to archaeological-historical observations. 

Quantification of the basic spatial relation.--Since the originating sites of the ancient civilizations are map-points whose distance from the nearest tectonic-boundary line can be approximated, we have the basis for finding an approximate probability that this distance is random for the available space where such sites are possible.  In my paper of 2008, I performed this calculation excluding two ancient civilizations, China and Egypt, as exceptions because I did not see any particular connection to tectonic boundaries.  Subsequently (3), I placed these civilizations in tectonic environments that permit inclusion, albeit at greater distance, and  omitted Assyria as a separate civilization, bringing the number of treated ancient civilizations to twelve.  In this post I redo the calculation to incorporate these changes in variables. 
Note 4 lists the distances used to calculate average distances of ancient civilizations from active tectonic boundaries.  The average distance is about 100 km.  In other words the civilizations lie in a belt averaging only 200 km wide, with the southern boundary of the Eurasian plate and related plate-tectonic boundaries defining the center of this belt, which contains an area of 4.4 million square kilometers. In contrast the theoretically available land area for origination of these civilizations in Eurasia and Africa was 85 million square kilometers, suggesting that the ancient civilizations crowded into the 5.2 percent of available land that is adjacent to tectonic plate boundaries.  This might seem an unrealistic percentage given that northern Siberia and other extremely unsuitable areas were included as available areas, so to exclude these I have used a figure of 77 million square kilometers in the calculation as being available (5). 
It may also be misleading to measure to the nearest fault that represents a plate boundary where the boundary is partitioned among two or more main faults, as in the Zagros Mountains and Baluchistan.  To accommodate this ambiguity, I have used a double-width of 290 km, which along most of the boundary is a generous overestimate.  This combination gives a percentage of 8.3, or about 1 in 12 (6) as the fraction of available land where ancient civilizations originated adjacent to active continental-scale tectonic boundaries. 
Next is the calculation of the probability that this distribution is random (7), given that the area of the belt is about 1/12th of the available land areas.  Because there are now no exceptions, this is an easy calculation.  The chance of random distribution given the observed distribution is one in twelve to the twelfth power, using the binomial probability distribution formula (given in Force 2008).   Technical points of the calculation need not be repeated here, but readers who do some gambling may enjoy an analogy that makes it easier to visualize.  Computing this probability is the same as computing the probability in roulette of a ball landing on the same number twelve times in a hypothetical roulette wheel that has twelve numbers.   These readers will not be surprised to learn that this calculated probability is one in 8.92  trillion.  Thus the probability that the civilization distribution is random relative to tectonic boundaries is so small that the spatial relation is like those we accept instinctively.  It is far beyond any need for statistics.
In my 2008 paper I also varied another factor in order to see whether the probability of random distribution could be increased, in a sort of sensitivity analysis. Four civilizations IN the belt were omitted on the grounds that some authorities would lump them with other civilizations or not recognize them as “great.” In the equivalent calculation of this “worst-case scenario” using the above figures, the probability of random distribution was still one in 282 billion.  The conclusion that these ancient civilizations are spatially related in some way to tectonic boundaries is robust.  In other posts I present probability calculations that confirm various different aspects of the relation (8).


Looking at assumptions, constraints, and definitions.—Perhaps the outcome of quantification was pre-determined by the design of the experiment, which involves a certain time period and a certain half of the world.   I think it’s pretty obvious that “constraining” to the period of antiquity from the beginning of the Bronze Age to about A.D. 500 (about 4000 years) and “constraining” the area considered to the whole eastern hemisphere gives ample scope to variation!  Times and areas outside those boxes are considered in other posts.  They present interesting stories of their own, consistent with the conclusions drawn thus far, suggesting in fact that they have broader application. 
Perhaps most critical is the term civilization, in the sense of “great ancient civilization.”  This is a term not much in favor among anthropologists of our day, and for some good reasons.  Cultures can be complex in different ways, and the complexity of “GAC”s as conventionally defined requires recognition of characteristics that can be preserved in archaeological and historical records, with particular emphasis on public architecture and preserved writing (10).  Postings listed above have recorded some of the accomplishments of GACs that have convinced previous authorities (and me) of their greatness, in the sense that their complexity has many dimensions and far exceeds that of the neighboring cultures of their times.  But it would be desirable to get beyond both the term “great civilization” to give cultural complexity a more rigorous basis.
Some historians and anthropologists think that attempts to quantify cultural comparisons are to be avoided (but see note 11). For my purposes, a list of the characteristics of GACs by Childe (12) that is still highly regarded (and which has been discussed and slightly modified for 60 years) seems the best basis.  The assemblage of ten characteristics listed by Childe is that which more or less defines GACs as they are conventionally accepted and which seems to correspond to the spatial relationship I’ve documented. Thus a rough “quantification” of my use of GAC corresponds to Childe-scores of eight or more. 
The correspondence invites, indeed demands, exploration independently of reactions to “great civilizations”. That is, the correspondence of Childe-scores of cultural complexity with tectonic boundaries is telling us something about the emergence of this assemblage of cultural traits in a tectonic context.   In Mar. 4, 2014 I aggregate Childe’s criteria to construct cultural complexity “transects” at continental scale; the resulting distributions justify confidence that the “GAC” designation is meaningful and that it corresponds spatially to tectonic boundaries. 
            It seems safe to conclude that ancient cultures sufficiently complex to have been called “great ancient civilizations” show a remarkable spatial relationship to active tectonic boundaries, especially the southern boundary of the Eurasian plate and closely associated structures.  Though apparent in map view, the relationship is resoundingly supported by quantitative probability analysis.  The next and more interesting steps are to probe the meaning of the relationship. 




Notes

1.   June 27, 2014, June 16, 2014, May 18, 2014, and May 8, 2014)

2. Mar. 4, 2014, Feb. 1, 2014, Jan. 7, 2014, Dec. 11, 2013, Nov. 26, 2013, Oct. 16, 2013, Aug. 29, 2013, July 17, 2013, June 3, 2013, and May 10, 2013

3. May 8, 2014

4. Distances in km used to calculate average—Rome 130, Etruria 150, classical Greece 10, Mycenaeans 25, Minoans, 60, SW Asia 25, Mesopotamia 150, Indus 90, Persian 30, Aryan India 100, China 300, India 130.  These values are discussed in posts describing individual civilizations, and in some cases are themselves averages for civilizations of composite origination. 

5. Subtracting areas north of 60 degrees and a few extremely mountainous areas.

6. cf. Force 2008, rows 3 and 4 of table 1)

7. To calculate probabilites, I used the binomial distribution formula, which requires that the outcome of each “experiment” be independent of previous ones. The people founding ancient civilizations of course knew nothing about plate tectonics, but they were cognizant of earthquakes and volcanoes.  If we’re trying to increase the probability of random distribution, the question is whether such phenomena in previous civilizations influenced them in founding new sites of civilizations in similarly active locations.  It seems unlikely that they would choose locations on this basis, which to them seemed to hold only disadvantages.  A related consideration is whether the location of the previous civilization has preempted a significant share of the length of the plate boundary.  On this subject remember that the occurrence in question involves only the founding sites for each civilization, i.e. only a point on a line.  But if such preemption should occur, the probability of random occurrence would be decreased, not increased.  Thus if exceptions to independence occur, they would seem to strengthen the spatial relation. 

8.  Jan. 7, 2014, Dec. 11, 2013, and Nov. 26, 2013

9. Jan. 7, 2014, and Oct. 16, 2013).

10. Questions remain where the evidence has been erased.  For example, only scraps of either the civic architecture or the language and literature of the Etruscans have been preserved.  Would we regard Etruscan civilization as “great” had it not been for their funerary arts and architecture, and the evidence from other cultures (and the plaques of Pyrgi) that they did have a literary corpus?

11. Ian Morris (2010) on the other hand, has tried to use quantification methods that avoid cultural baggage, with an index that includes energy capture, urbanism, and ability to wage war.

12. Childe (1950).  These are cities, occupational specialties, concentrated food surpluses, monumental public architecture, capabilities for planning and organization, record-keeping and writing, practical science, arts, trade, and some sort of ideological solidarity. 




References

            Childe, V. G., 1950, The urban revolution: The town planning review, v. 21, p. 3-17

Force, E. R., 2008, Tectonic environments of ancient civilizations in the eastern hemisphere:  Geoarchaeology v. 23 p. 644-653.

Force, E. R., and McFadgen, B. G., 2010, Tectonic environments of ancient civilizations: opportunities for archaeoseismological and anthropological studies, in Ancient Earthquakes, M. Sintubin, I. S. Stewart, T. M. Niemi, and E. Altunel, eds.:  Geological Society of America Speical Paper 471, p. 21-28.

Morris, Ian, 2010, Why the West rules—for now: Ferrar, New York

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Transects--Viewing the complexity of ancient cultures at a continental scale

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498514279/Impact-of-Tectonic-Activity-on-Ancient-Civilizations-Recurrent-Shakeups-Tenacity-Resilience-and-Change

This posting has been revised and incorporated in a published book as of August 2015 (link above)


Transects: Viewing the comparative complexity of ancient cultures at a continental scale

Eric R. Force (eforce@email.arizona.edu)

Previous postings of this weblog, and related publications (see references) have described the remarkably active tectonic environments of ancient civilizations, and quantified the apparent spatial relationship.  An additional way to verify the significance of this relation between ancient civilizations and active tectonic boundaries is to back away, to view it as if from afar, comparing the complexity of cultures in tectonically quiescent cratonic interiors with those we have described on tectonically active plate margins (1).  This could be done along “transects” ideally crossing plate margins at right angles for particular times in antiquity, as a way of dealing with the huge number of cultures that have come and gone in the entire eastern hemisphere.  Figure 1 quantifies the results in terms of the listed criteria of Childe (1950) for civilization normalized to plate-boundary location.  An extended discussion of the validity of these criteria is below in a note (2).
My introduction in this weblog to the quandary posed by the spatial distribution of civilizations (3) is itself a transect of sorts across the southern margin of the Eurasian plate, from Greece to Etruria to southern Gaul in about 600-300 B.C.  It was noted that cultural accomplishment varied with tectonic activity; both accomplishment and tectonism were great in Greece, both more moderate in Etruria, both very modest in pre-Roman Gaul (4).  As a transect this assemblage is somewhat compromised, as it crosses tectonic boundaries in a composite way and is discontinuous.  It of course was only meant to provoke thought, but we can keep it in mind as better sample transects come along.  It is linked with one of these in figure 1.
Good transect possibilities are actually hard to find.  Many are inherently one-sided due to intervening seaways or nearly-impassible deserts or mountain ranges.  The looped shape of plate boundaries make some of them impractical to cross with straight lines (fig. 2).  So, a few of those I’ll describe start in a quiescent cratonic interior and approach an active margin, but end when we get there, i.e. they are one-sided transects. 

A western Asia transect.—One exception to these difficulties would extend from modern Jordan through northern Mesopotamia into the land between the Black and Caspian seas and on to the Caucasus Mountains.  If we look in on the area in the interval 900-700 B.C. we find the SW end inhabited by Aramean-speaking nomads.  The country is dry, of course, but not so useless that Nabatean farmers and builders could not inhabit it some centuries later.  Far to the west were principalities of Moab and Edom, but another plate boundary lies just beyond them.
At the Euphrates plain we abruptly enter the Assyrian  civilization and empire, which seemingly could have written Childe’s criteria as self-description.   This culture and its capitals Ninevah and Assur are well-described as exceedingly complex (5) .  The convergent boundary between the Arabian and Eurasian plates is only about 120 km to the northeast.  It is somewhat distributed, with different motion types on different faults (6). 
Across this zone was the Urartu kingdom, centered around Lake Van.  These people, successors to Bronze-age Hurrians and ancestors to Armenians, were renowned for their metal (especially bronze) work, complex dams and canals, temples, fortresses, and inscribed stele, and they left behind epigraphy suggesting  a national consciousness.  They had their own religion, and their language, though commonly written in Assyrian, is still poorly understood.
Past Urartu toward the Caucasus Mountains were nomadic Cimmerians, and at times the Scythians, for which there will be more description later.  Portable art, trade, and occasional concerted effort of these cultures seem the only assets that Childe would appreciate (7).  Figure 1 shows this transect in terms of Childe’s criteria for the cultures described.  Note that he greatest cultural complexities plot nearest the plate boundary. 
The result of this transect would have been roughly the same if our path had crossed the Tigris-Euphrates valley anywhere along its length.  What if the time period had been different?  If we adopt the same path and look at the late Bronze-Age cultures along it, in Jordan there would have been nomads; in place of Iron-age Assyrians we would have a so-called Old Assyria, the northern half of the previous Akkadian empire of Mesopotamia (but lacking the famous art and architecture of its descendent); in place of Urartu we would have the Hurrian-Mittani culture, famous for its ceramics, metallurgy, music, religion, and thriving cities; and the nomads to the north were not yet as accomplished as the Scythians would be.  Figure 1 shows (dotted) that we have replicated the same curve as for the later period but at a lower level and with narrower distribution. 

South and central Asia.—Another nearly-symmetrical transect begins in peninsular India, crosses the Ganges plain, then the Himalayas onto the Tibetan plateau and into central Asia.  Let’s look at this for about A.D. 400-600 when complex cultures are most evident and numerous for this region (8).
The south end begins in ancient Kalinga, roughly the Bihar of today, then under the thumb of the rulers of the Ganges plain to the north.  It contained rich cities along the coast carrying on a flourishing trade with Burma (and already boasting some notable temples) but very few sizeable settlements to the south and west.  The culture was based on tribal feudalism, though Kalingans had previously united sufficiently to battle invaders from the Ganges.  Kalingans had their own Dravidian script.  The religion was mostly Jain, already ancient, though the area has a rich history of religious transitions involving Hinduism and Buddhism.
Northward into the Ganges plain we enter at this period the Guptan empire and its culture.  It was one of the world’s greatest, already showing all the essential characteristics we associate with Indian culture as still revered by countless devotees the world over (9).  North of the Ganges plain only 150 km we pass across the plate boundary into the Himalayas, and we’ll have to excuse areas at very high elevations for a lack of great civilizations, but remarkably soon we pass into a part of the Tibetan plateau where an empire was emerging.   Many palace-fortresses that subsequently became monastic cities included barley-granaries, military armories, and factories for trade goods (10).  Chinese records show the militaristic nature of this culture, later minimized as Buddhism took over its records. 
Moving north again onto the northern Tibetan plateau we would encounter only Altaic-speaking nomadic cultures that seem embodiments of a contrast with Childe’s criteria.  Still farther north come the Hsiung-Nu nomads against whom China built its great wall.  Figure 1 thus shows a definite relation between cultural complexity and distance from tectonic plate boundaries. 

Southeastern Europe.—A one-sided transect could go from Greece northward into eastern Europe.  Ancient Greek civilization (11) must be what Childe had in mind when he proposed his criteria, and as we’ve seen, several of its originating sites are practically on major tectonic boundaries.  Several time periods including the Mycenaean era would be suitable for our transect, but if we choose that for 600-300 B.C., classical Greek civilization is at its height.  Its northern margin is with a tribal mostly-agricultural culture called the Thracians by Herodotus, a major source of information about them.  In the later part of our time interval it was united into a so-called Odrysian kingdom that was in the process of becoming Hellenized, speaking Greek in court, etc. and styling its capital village of Seuthopolis a city.    Then at about the Danube River the dominant culture becomes that of the Scythians, a semi-nomadic tribal culture about which Herodotus was particularly intrigued.  Their portable arts, especially in gold and mostly preserved in their burial mounds, are widely admired. Their language and religion are vaguely Iranic, and reportedly their economy benefitted from trade in slaves they captured in raids.  The Scythians were the end point of our south and central Asia transect also; as a loose confederation they occupied an enormous area of central Asia. 
This transect, along with the composite transect of my introduction (12),  pivots at ancient Greece as a common point and using the same time interval.  As with the other two transects (of figure 1), cultural complexity falls off markedly away from tectonic plate boundaries.  And clearly, the same transect taken in the late Bronze Age would have the same general character, with lower Childe-scores and with narrower geographic spread (13).

Two African half-transects.—Transects of ancient cultures do not have to run through great civilizations; they just have to present contrasts in both cultural complexity and tectonic environments.  In Africa, two possible transects are limited by seaways and deserts to being one-sided, but are nevertheless illustrative. 
First, if we start anywhere on the Punic coast of present-day Tunisia and venture southward, it is over 400 kilometers before we reach country too dry for settlement, partly because of the coastal embayment of the Gulf of Gabes.  The boundary between the African and Eurasian plates swings gently in the other direction, however, giving a range of distance from plate boundaries from about 100 km for ancient Carthage, Utica, etc. to 500 km at the south end of the Gulf where Phoenicians never settled but nomads roamed until late in Carthage’s history (14).  Thus any such transect taken from at least 1000 B.C. to about 200 B.C. would show cultural complexity approaching the Childe maximum at the end nearest the plate boundary to the Childe minimum at the other end.
Transects that cross the Nile where it traverses desert landscapes would show complex cultures only along the river.  But farther south, the ancient kingdom of Axum (Aksum) was adjacent to the Afar triangle, where the African-Arabian plate boundary is in the adjacent narrows of the Red Sea and where the East African Rift begins. The highlands at this latitude are vegetated across Ethiopia to the Sudan.  By A.D. 200 and for about 500 years thereafter, Axum might be considered a great ancient civilization (15) if we knew enough about it .  But to the west were like Neolithic tribes, except for Egyptian refugees that formed a kingdom of Meroe on the river—which Axum eventually conquered.  Again, an exceedingly complex culture about 200 km from a plate boundary contrasts with a comparatively simple one at about 900 km. 
These two half-transects each consist of only two points, and are hardly worth plotting as their geometries seem obvious.  Added to figure 1, they would support the array showing maxima of cultural complexity along active tectonic boundaries. 

Other possible transects.—These five transects present a remarkably orderly variation of cultural complexity with tectonic position in antiquity (fig. 1).  The reader is bound to wonder how the outcome was determined by my positioning of transects.  For all of them, the path could be varied significantly without changing the overall result—indeed in most cases the peaks at tectonic boundaries would be sharper, with fewer shoulder-cultures.  And choosing an earlier time interval in antiquity would generally sharpen the peaks also, as there would be fewer outlying complex cultures, whereas predecessors of the most accomplished civilization would already be complex.
Many transect possibilities are ruled out by the distribution of major seaways and deserts.  One additional one in south Asia could be added for the specific period of the Indus-Saraswati civilization, extending from peninsular India across the Indus into the mountains of Baluchistan.   This would be analogous to the south Asian transect already plotted (fig. 1) and would resemble it closely.
Ancient Egypt shows no convincing association of ancient civilizations with tectonism; a transect passing through Egypt would show its mode at least 300 km from a plate boundary.  In SE Asia, civilizations that would score high marks on Childe’s scale had not yet arrived in antiquity as treated here, but by about A.D. 900 they had, and Pagan and Borobodur would plot on the boundary between the Eurasian and Indo-Australian plate, but the Khmer empire would not, making this hypothetical plot bimodal.  No transect has been shown through ancient China because of the semantic ambiguity of plate boundaries nearby (16). But these are the only complex considerations I’m aware of; all the ten-pointers derived from Childe’s list in the eastern hemisphere of antiquity have been considered and plotted in figure 2. 

Conclusions.—The transects show that criteria for cultural complexity as listed by Childe (1950) and repeated in modified form by many subsequent authors tends to show a maximum along active tectonic boundaries in antiquity.  This of course is consistent with figure 2, which shows the originating sites of “great ancient civilizations” arrayed along tectonic plate boundaries almost like beads on a string.  But the transect approach not only verifies this distribution, it also gives us the beginnings of a converse case—a “what’s wrong with other places and other cultures” approach, one that will be extensively explored in another post.  It looks like other cultures that occupied the broad quiescent margins of tectonic boundaries were there all along but did not become as accomplished, at least as scored by Childe’s criteria.
The presence and shape of shoulders adjacent to peaks near tectonic boundaries on figure 1 is intriguing.  They give the curves a continent-scale dimension and also suggest that tectonic boundaries have some primary influence--if their influence were secondary to some “real” controlling factor there would be reversals.  The width of the shoulders is greater than expected seismic impact, suggesting possible spread effects.
The transects also give us some very strong clues to the meaning of the distribution.  For the Childe criteria are all cultural criteria, and figure 1 thus suggests that tectonism has an impact on cultural development per se.  We’ve seen some examples of close culture-tectonism relations in descriptions of individual ancient civilizations (18).  Of course tectonic impacts could be indirect, and we’ll look into several possible indirect linkages (19).  Many important variables such as spring distribution that influence cultures are far more fine-grained than either figures 1 or 2 can show. The possibility of multiple factors is also consistent with our data so far--as long as a cultural factor is included.  Indeed we’ll focus on water supply as one such factor in a future blog-post (20).  But as we’ll see, there are a number of seemingly-possible explanations that are inconsistent with the transect data (21).  In the meantime, we have several indications including this very powerful transect information that cultural development in antiquity was somehow related to active tectonism. 
            Despite my participation in several publications on tectonic environments of ancient complex cultures (see references), these transect data are still unpublished.  I will look for opportunities to remedy that situation. 





Notes
1. This approach first suggested to me by the late John Dohrenwend.  I have used conventional descriptive surveys (Barraclough 1978, Wood 1985, Starr 1991; Scarre and Fagan 2007, supplemented where necessary for obscure cultures by internet encyclopedias) for my brief descriptions except where noted. 
2. Feb. 14, 2012
3. The criteria for great ancient civilizations listed by Childe (1950) are 1 cities, 2 occupational specialties, 3 concentrated food surpluses, 4 monumental public architecture, 5 capabilities for planning and organization, 6 record-keeping and writing, 7 practical science, 8 arts, 9 trade, and 10 some sort of ideological solidarity.  This list has been much modified and re-interpreted (perhaps most recently by Scarre and Fagan 2007) but basically accepted by authorities that put any stock in the term ancient civilization. Some anthropologists do not, for reasons discussed on August 20.  For example, historian Fernandez-Armesto (2001) says “all such lists are bunk,” and this would be so from his point of view--that cultural complexity should be judged on the transformation of the environment a culture inherits (an extremely valuable point of view but one that I would not associate with the term civilization, which derives from the concept of city).   It appears to me that anthropologic interest in cultures has shifted away from their “greatness” to individual interesting features.
Given the conventional view of “great ancient civilizations” that was already extant in Childe’s day, I think his list is a rather common-sense way to describe the components of the concept.  Certainly Childe’s list is useful for my question, i.e. that the apparent spatial correspondence of active tectonic boundaries with conventionally defined great ancient civilizations needs quantification where possible.  Such criteria have been used quantitatively by bona fide anthropologists (cf. Morris 2010). I think it would be scientifically irresponsible not to try out a relation between Childe’s list and tectonic position.  Don’t you?
It would be possible for someone better versed than me in the ancient cultures involved to assign partial scores for each Childe-item.  I have not attempted to do this, simply adding whole integers for the cultural attributes for which I have found documentation. 
4. See Woolf (2000).  A more generous treatment is given by Tacitus, who may himself have been from the region of southern Gaul. 
5. May 8, 2014
6.  See for example McClusky 2000
7.  Concerted effort was tribe-by-tribe, so I did not give the Scythians #5.
8. This transect too would illustrate the same general conclusion at any period of antiquity after about 1100 B.C., and any plate-boundary intersection in the entire Ganges drainage would serve.
9. May 8, 2014
10. Perhaps best described by Fernandez-Armesto 2001.
11. June 27, 2014
12. Feb. 14, 2012
13. The transect that pivots at Greece would in the Bronze Age still have to pivot somewhere in that peninsula, Crete, or the southern Aegean.
14. Markoe 2000
15. Fernandez-Armesto 2001.
16. May 8, 2014
17. Feb. 1, 2014
18. June 27, 2014, June 16, 2014, and May 8, 2014
19. July 17, 2013
20. June 3, 2013
21. Aug. 29 and May 10, 2013

References

Barraclough, G., 1978, The Times atlas of world history:  Times Books, London

Childe, V. G., 1950, The urban revolution: The town planning review, v. 21, p. 3-17

Fernandez-Armesto, F., 2001, Civilizations—culture, ambition, and the transformation of nature:  Free Press, New York

Force, E. R. 2008, Tectonic environments of ancient civilizations in the eastern hemisphere:  Geoarchaeology v. 23 p. 644-653.

Force, E. R., and McFadgen, B. G., 2010, Tectonic environments of ancient civilizations: opportunities for archaeoseismological and anthropological studies, in Ancient Earthquakes, M. Sintubin, I. S. Stewart, T. M. Niemi, and E. Altunel, eds.:  Geological Society of America Special Paper 471, p. 21-28.

-----, 2012, Influences of active tectonism on human development—a review and Neolithic example, in Climates, Landscapes, and Civilizations, L. Giosan, D. Q. Fuller, K. Nicoll, R. K. Flad, and P. D. Clift, eds:  American Geophysical Union Monograph 198, p. 195-202

Markoe, G. E., 2000, Phoenicians: University of California Press

McClusky, S. and others, 2000, Global positioning system constraints on plate kinematics and dynamics in the eastern Mediterranean and Caucasus: Journal of Geophysical Research v. 105 B3, 5695-5719.
Morris, I., 2010, Why the west rules—for now:  Ferrar, Strauss, and Giroux, New York.

Scarre, C. and Fagan, B. M., 2007, Ancient civilizations (3rd ed.): Longman, New York.

Starr, C. G., 1991, A history of the ancient world: Oxford University Press

Wood, M., 1985, The world atlas of archaeology: Portland House, New York

Woolf, G., 2000, Becoming Roman—the origins of provincial civilization in Gaul:  Cambridge








Figure 1. Two examples of continental-scale transects across some plate-tectonic boundaries showing cultural complexity in antiquity as quantified in terms listed by Childe (1950).  Superposed transects are normalized to approximate locations of plate boundaries; measurement relative to tectonic boundary is to originating site of each culture where known.  Solid line is for western Asia in the 900-700 B.C. time period; dotted line is the same transect in the late Bronze Age.  Lettered localities for that transect are A Ninevah, B Urartu, and C Cimmerians and Scythians.  The dashed transect is south Asia in the AD 400-600 period, with D Kalinga, E Patna area of Guptan empire, and F the Brahmaputra-Llasa valley of Tibet. 






Figure 2.--Locations of originating sites of 13 prominent ancient civilizations relative to various aspects of the southern boundary of the Eurasian plate (after Force, 2008; Force and McFadgen 2010). Civilizations (and sites) shown are 1—Roman (Rome), 2—Etruscan (Tarquinii-Veii), 3—Greek (Corinth) and Mycenaean (Mycenae), 4—Minoan (Knossos-Phaestos), 5 and 6—West Asian (Tyre and Jerusalem), 7—Assyrian (Ninevah), 8—Mesopotamian (Ur-Uruk), 9—Persian (Susa-Pasargadae), 10—Indus (Mohenjodaro), 11—Aryan India (Hastinapura), 12—Egyptian (Memphis), and 13—Chinese (Zhengzhou).


Saturday, February 1, 2014

A tendency toward stasis in tectonically quiescent ancient civilizations

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498514279/Impact-of-Tectonic-Activity-on-Ancient-Civilizations-Recurrent-Shakeups-Tenacity-Resilience-and-Change

This post has been revised and incorporated in a published book as of August 2015 (link above)


A tendency toward stasis in tectonically quiescent ancient civilizations

Eric R. Force (eforce@email.arizona.edu)

In other posts I have addressed different ways to quantify the apparent spatial relation of active tectonic boundaries with "great ancient civilizations"—i.e. great cultural complexity.  The transect approach brought with it some clues to the meaning of the spatial relation, as viewed from a continental-scale perspective. There is another way to consider and quantify this relation and it too carries some clues to the dynamics of the relation—actually a converse approach, the lack of dynamics for civilizations in quiescent tectonic settings.
            The descriptions of ancient civilizations in previous posts have noted the static character of some of them.  Many authors have commented on this phenomenon—the ability of some ancient civilizations to maintain essentially the same character and the same trappings, even the same catch-phrases, for thousands of years (2).  This property of stasis is difficult to quantify except by this length of time that a civilization remains essentially the same.
            In most cases the length of duration of civilizations can be given within a few hundred years or less.  Of course a beginning date is commonly approximate; all attributes may not emerge at once and we may not know what each date is.  Ending dates are commonly more exact but the result of a large variety of causes, some internal but some external, with limited implication on the vitality of the civilization.  So the precision of a civilization’s duration may be greater than the hypothetical accuracy of measures of its stasis.
            Other questions intrude also; some situations might seem ambiguous.  For example, some long-lived ancient civilizations were subject to repeated invasions from outside, each founding a new ruling dynasty.  Egypt, China, and Mesopotamia are prominent examples.  In all three, the invaders did not cause important cultural discontinuities; matters eventually returned to normal even while the invaders were still in power.  The conventional way of treating these situations is to bring them under the umbrella of a single civilization, and for our present purposes this would seem appropriate, as stasis has been maintained.
Far more debatable are cases where a new civilization arises where a previous one had been, especially where the newcomers revere aspects of their predecessors (as with Mycenaean  re later classical Greek civilizations), and cases where an advanced culture is forced to migrate (as with the Phoenicians and Carthage). In these cases I’m inclined to separate the entities as most aspects of stasis are destroyed. 
With these qualifications in mind, let’s ask whether civilization longevity is related in any way to distance from active tectonic boundaries.  The data form table 1. For this purpose I have retained my 2008 separation of Assyrian and other ancient Mesopotamian civilizations (3).  I have also added four ancient cultures that are very complex but generally omitted from lists of “great ancient civilizations” in order to increase the number of cases to seventeen.
            The resulting plot (figure 1) strongly suggests some relationship. Since the distance measurement varies over several orders of magnitude, a logarithmic scale for distance is plotted (4) against scalar values of duration.  Plotted this way, the points suggest a linear relation, although with considerable scatter, as might be expected from a proxy variable, especially one subject to the vagaries of history. The line easily survives tests of statistical significance, however, (5) and seems to intersect the distance axis at about 10 km. And it’s gratifying to see that all the ancient civilizations can be treated as a single population with no exceptions.
            It appears that civilizations that are little-related to active tectonism have a tendency to persist as distinctive entities for long time periods. But what should we conclude about the shorter-lived civilizations?  Since they acquired the characteristics of “great ancient civilizations” in shorter time periods—in some cases much shorter—we could conclude that they were more dynamic.  But the shorter-lived civilizations most commonly met their end in being conquered by another great ancient civilization (6), in a sort of whole-cultural analogue to the game of leapfrog.  In other words their whole cultural environments were more dynamic.  Either way, or both ways, we have an indication of more dynamic cultures in the more active tectonic environments. 
            The longer-lived ancient civilizations in more quiescent tectonic environments commonly acquired their essential character in a relatively short time at their beginnings, and simply kept that character through a long middle age or a senescent period.  Takeovers were by far less complex cultures that transferred headquarters to the conquered civilization and eventually acquired its essential character, permitting cultural stasis.  Thus this converse case of tectonic inactivity is also a cultural phenomenon.
            It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that active tectonic environments serve to force the pace of change in cultures that find themselves there; it’s as if they were taking stimulants.  This conclusion from this posting is consistent with entirely independent evidence presented in previous ones.  A summary of this evidence and suggestions for further researches indicated by nagging questions are in other posts (7). 
           
Notes

1. April 2, 2014 and Mar. 4, 2014

2. Examples--Fagan 2004 (see especially p. 382, 433, 470), Machinist 1986, Braudel 1998-2001.  Fagan points out that differences in tendencies toward stasis vs. dynamism exists in more-complex cultures of all sorts, and it would be interesting to see whether this dichotomy corresponds to tectonic environments generally.  I can see that a few examples--the Lapita people, the Maori, the tribes of the NW coasts of North America--seem promising in this regard.

3. The status of Assyria relative to Mesopotamia is complex (May 8, 2014), but for this purpose keeping Assyria separate is desirable as it increases the number of cases, unlike my post of April 2, 2014 which gives random distribution the benefit of the doubt. 

4.  That is, the importance of a 1-km difference decreases with distance.  A good but somewhat curved line results if scalar values are used on both axes.

5.The relation seems to take the form:  civilization duration proportional to the log of distance (minus10 kilometers) from the pertinent plate boundary.  The plot for 17 sites (fig. 1) has an R-squared variance of .5877 (fairly large), but an F significance (via the test ANOVA) of 0.00021 (i.e. an association of the variables is statistically supported at much better than 95% confidence, which would correspond to an F significance of 0.05). I would not care to suggest, however, that the intersection of the line with the distance axis at 10 km implies that a civilization built within 10 km of a plate boundary would last less than a year.

6. The Mycenaeans and the Indus-Saraswati civilizations may be exceptions, and of course the Romans being the last ancient civilization are an exception by definition.

7. Aug. 29, May 10, and Apr. 13, 2013 respectively





Table 1.--Distance-duration data for ancient old-world civilizations, from previous postings. Distances are from originating sites.

Civilization (or component)
Dates
Duration (yrs)
Approximate distance (km) from plate boundary
Carthaginian
530-146 BC
  384
    10
Etruscan
800-100 BC
  700
  155
Roman
510 BC-AD 565
1075
  130
Mycenaean
1600-1150 BC
  450
    25
Greek
800-197 BC
  603
    10
Minoan
2200-1450 BC
  750
    60
Trojan
2300-1200 BC
1100
    20
Hittite
1750-1200 BC
  550
  110
Phoenician
1400-585 BC
  815
    40
Hebrew
1100-334 BC
  766
    15
Assyrian
1814-612 BC
1202
  100
Mesopotamian
3200-550 BC
2650
  195
Persian (Achaemenid)
550-331 BC
  219
    33
Indus
2550-1750 BC
  800
    90
Aryan
1500 BC-AD 414
1914
  100
Egyptian
3100-31 BC
3069
  400
Chinese
1500 BC-AD 1800
3300
1500




Figure 1 (from Force 2008)



References

Braudel, F., (written 1969, published in French 1998) 2001, The Mediterranean in the ancient world:  Penguin, London, 408 p. (translated by Sian Reynolds)

Fagan, B. M., 2004, People of the earth (11th ed.):  Prentice-Hall.

Force, E. R., 2008, Tectonic environments of ancient civilizations in the eastern hemisphere:  Geoarchaeology v. 23, p. 644-653

Machinist, P, 1986, On self-consciousness in Mesopotamia,  In The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations, edited by S. N. Eisenstadt, 183-202. SUNY Press, Albany