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Cliodynamics

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About

Cliodynamics is a transdisciplinary area of research integrating historical macrosociology, cultural and social evolution, economic history/cliometrics, mathematical modeling of long-term social processes, and the construction and analysis of historical databases. Cliodynamics: The Journal of Quantitative History and Cultural Evolution is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal that publishes original articles advancing the state of theoretical knowledge in this transdisciplinary area. In the broadest sense, this theoretical knowledge includes general principles that explain the functioning, dynamics, and evolution of historical societies and specific models, usually formulated as mathematical equations or computer algorithms. Cliodynamics also has empirical content that deals with discovering general historical patterns, determining empirical adequacy of key assumptions made by models, and testing theoretical predictions with data from actual historical societies. A mature, or ‘developed theory’ thus integrates models with data; the main goal of Cliodynamics is to facilitate progress towards such theory in history and cultural evolution.

This journal is available for sharing and reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 International License which means that all content is freely available without charge to users and their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.

Cliodynamics is a member of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Scopus.

Volume 12, 2021

Reports

Human social complexity was significantly lower during climate cooling events of the past 10 millennia

Human civilizations depend on the climate. Changes in climate affect the production of food and other resources that support populations and their economies. We asked whether the millennium-scale climate cooling events identified by Gerard Bond predicted social complexity in the Seshat cross-cultural database. The results show that social complexity was significantly lower during the coldest two centuries of Bond cooling events. Reductions in complexity are evident in regions north of the tropics adjacent to the Atlantic or Arctic, particularly in North Africa, Europe, and Central Eurasia.

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