The Neglected Role of Inequality in Explanations of the Collapse of Ancient States

Levitt, M. S.

doi:10.21237/c7clio10142572

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…More generally, data show that while inequality within human civilizations has generally increased from the Stone Age to today [5], significant reductions in inequality have repeatedly occurred, each typically preceded by violent events [4,5,151]. As high inequality becomes unsustainable, it becomes reduced again by wars, social strife and/or revolutions [4].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequality between identity groups and social unrest

Houle

Ruck

Bentley

et al. 2022

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Economic, social and political inequality between different identity groups is an important contributor to violent conflicts within societies. To deepen our understanding of the underlying social dynamics, we develop a mathematical model describing cooperation and conflict in a society composed of multiple factions engaged in economic and political interactions. Our model predicts that growing economic and political inequality tends to lead to the collapse of cooperation between factions that were initially seeking to cooperate. Certain mechanisms can delay this process, including the decoupling of political and economic power through rule of law and allegiance to the state or dominant faction. Counterintuitively, anti-conformity (a social norm for independent action) can also stabilize society, by preventing initial defections from cooperation from cascading through society. However, the availability of certain material resources that can be acquired by the state without cooperation with other factions has the opposite effect. We test several of these predictions using a multivariate statistical analysis of data covering 75 countries worldwide. Using social unrest as a proxy for the breakdown of cooperation in society, we find support for many of the predictions from our theory.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inequality between identity groups and social unrest

Houle

Ruck

Bentley

et al. 2022

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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“…Gold had a different monetary circuit than the other metals, being isolated in its usage and distribution in part due to the inequality (Levitt 2019;Milanovic et al 2017) and stratification of Roman society (Bransbourg 2015), as well as certain general behavioral tendencies (such as Gresham's law [Sparavigna 2014]). Access to gold was tightly regulated by the Roman bureaucracy and various laws were enacted in the fourth and fifth centuries aimed at restricting the giving of gold solely to the imperial household (Guest 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Growth and Decline of the Western Roman Empire: Quantifying the Dynamics of Army Size, Territory, and Coinage

Roman¹,

Palmer²

2019

CDN

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We model the Western Roman Empire from 500 BCE to 500 CE, aiming to understand the interdependent dynamics of army size, conquered territory and the production and debasement of coins within the empire. The relationships are represented through feedback relationships and modelled mathematically via a dynamical system, specified as a set of ordinary differential equations. We analyze the stability of a subsystem and determine that it is neutrally stable. Based on this, we find that to prevent decline, the optimal policy was to stop debasement and reduce the army size and territory during the rule of Marcus Aurelius. Given the nature of the stability of the system and the kind of policies necessary to prevent decline, we argue that a high degree of centralized control was necessary, in line with basic tenets of structural-demographic theory.

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“…Critiques of neo-environmentally deterministic theories of societal transformations have been effectively rehearsed elsewhere, highlighting the complex interplay of social, economic and political factors that shape the responses of societies to ecological problems [ 26 – 34 ]. Frequently, societies already experiencing intrinsic turmoil are more susceptible to environmental stresses, being ill-prepared or lacking adequate leadership to respond effectively to crises [e.g., 30 , 35 , 36 ]. General models of collapse, when applied with broad brush to large regions without consideration of the cultural intricacies operating across a range of spatial scales, commonly fail to address the unequal geographies of vulnerability, resilience and adaptability which can exist even within small geo-political entities [cf.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bucking the trend: Population resilience in a marginal environment

Plunkett

Swindles

2022

PLoS ONE

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Evaluating the impact of environmental changes on past societies is frequently confounded by the difficulty of establishing cause-and-effect at relevant scales of analysis. Commonly, paleoenvironmental records lack the temporal and spatial resolution to link them with historic events, yet there remains a tendency to correlate climate change and cultural transformations on the basis of their seeming synchronicity. Here, we challenge perceptions of societal vulnerability to past environmental change using an integrated paleoenvironmental and land-use history of a remote upland site in the north of Ireland. We present a high-resolution, multi-proxy record that illustrates extended occupation of this marginal locality throughout the climate oscillations of the last millennium. Importantly, historically-dated volcanic ash markers enable us to pinpoint precisely in our record the timing of major national demographic crises such as the Black Death and the European, Irish and Great (Potato) Famines. We find no evidence that climate downturns or demographic collapses had an enduring impact on the use of the uplands: either the community escaped the effects of these events, or population levels recovered rapidly enough (within a generation) to leave no appreciable mark on the palaeoenvironmental record. Our findings serve to illustrate the spatial complexity of human activity that can enable communities to withstand or quickly bounce back from largescale calamities. In neglecting to consider such local-scale variability in social and economic organization, generalized models of societal collapse risk overplaying the vulnerability of populations to long- and short-term ecological stressors to the detriment of identifying the social constraints that influence a population’s response to change.

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The Neglected Role of Inequality in Explanations of the Collapse of Ancient States

Cited by 5 publications

References 30 publications

Inequality between identity groups and social unrest

Inequality between identity groups and social unrest

The Growth and Decline of the Western Roman Empire: Quantifying the Dynamics of Army Size, Territory, and Coinage

Bucking the trend: Population resilience in a marginal environment

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