Kevin Feeney

TL;DR: Analysis of records from 414 societies that span the past 10,000 years from 30 regions around the world reveals that moralizing gods follow—rather than precede—large increases in social complexity.

TL;DR: A database of historical and archaeological information from 30 regions around the world over the last 10,000 years revealed that characteristics, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems, show strong evolutionary relationships with each other and that complexity of a society across different world regions can be meaningfully measured using a single principal component of variation.

TL;DR: Seshat: The Global History Databank as mentioned in this paper is a large-scale dataset of historical and archaeological information about past human societies that has not been systematically organized and, therefore, remains inaccessible for empirically testing theories about cultural evolution and historical dynamics.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that parallel cultural developments between 800 and 200 BCE in what is today China, Greece, India, Iran, and Israel-Palestine constitute the global historical tu...

TL;DR: It is argued that PBM systems offer great potential in this domain due to the complexity of management arrangements, but since these communities lack any single trusted administrative hierarchy, a centralised solution to policy engineering and management is not possible.