Toward Asimov's Psychohistory
What happens when you feed 10,000 years of civilizational data to a machine learning model? It finds patterns—but not laws.
The Seshat Global History Databank is an international research project that systematically codes historical and archaeological data—administrative hierarchy, military technology, religious practices—across hundreds of societies spanning 10,000 years. I trained a Random Forest classifier to find patterns in civilizational duration, though duration is an imperfect proxy for stability.
Important: This is exploratory analysis, not confirmatory prediction. Cross-validation shows AUC ~0.67 with high variance (0.51-0.76). Temporal holdout (LOEO) drops to 0.57—the model learns era-specific patterns, not universal laws. I'm working toward more rigorous methods.
What the Model Learned
Five findings from training a Random Forest on 256 polities across 10,000 years
Complexity alone explains nothing
The Tainter hypothesis needed context to work
I started with Joseph Tainter's classic argument: complex societies should be more fragile. The first model using only complexity features hit 0.505 AUC — literally a coin flip. Complexity matters, but only in combination with era and other factors.
The complexity curse reversed over time
What killed Ancient polities helped Early Modern ones survive
In the Ancient world (pre-500 BCE), each unit of hierarchy reduced expected duration by ~159 years. By the Early Modern period, the relationship flipped — complexity slightly helped. Writing, institutions, trade networks changed the rules.
Religion outweighs military
Religious variables account for 27% of model decisions
Religious institutionalization shows stabilizing effects. Ideology scores matter for fine-grained distinctions. Moralizing religion shows mixed effects — possibly reflecting rigidity or schism risk. The relationship is nonlinear: more isn't always better.
Warfare unlocked the signal
Adding military features improved classification by 28%
The model went from coin-flip (0.505) to meaningful signal (0.648 AUC) when warfare variables were added. Cavalry, armor, and fortifications moderate how complexity associates with duration.
The Classical sweet spot
500 BCE – 500 CE shows unique dynamics across all analyses
Rome, Han China, Persia — the Classical era consistently emerges as exceptional. Warfare moderation peaks here (+0.634 effect). Complex societies with strong militaries outlasted their simpler neighbors. Something about that combination, in that moment, worked.
Want the full methodology and analysis?
Or ask questions directly
Try Research Assistant BotBeta