In the last 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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