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" Two maps are side by side. Both depict Africa, Europe, and Asia in a time lapse: As centuries pass in seconds, red splotches emerge like blood stains spreading across continents, signifying the growth of empires. One map is the progression of actual history. The other, a computer&amp;#039;s best guess at how and where on Earth empires should emerge, based on a few key assumptions. To the surprise of Sergey Gavrilets, both simulations are incredibly close. In a study out today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Gavrilets and his colleagues sought to create computer model that could predict the locations where empires would rise based on just three criteria. Despite the simplicity, their model reflected reality with 65 percent accuracy, showing that question of human social evolution could be quantitatively answered. &amp;quot;All hard sciences like physics, chemistry, biology and economics all have an important mathematical component,&amp;quot; he tells PopMech, As an evolutionary biologist, Gavrilets developed models to explain biological process. But eight years ago, he switched focus to human origins, and trying to use mathematics to explain the course of human events. For this study, he worked with Peter Turchin, a evolutionary biology professor at the University of Connecticut. In 2003, Turchin coined the term cliodynamics, an intersection of macrosociology and mathematical modeling. &amp;quot;History, in a sense, is the last science that doesn&amp;#039;t have [math], so there is a group of people who&amp;#039;ve been building foundations to do a quantitative approach to historical events,&amp;quot; Gavrilets says. Spanning three millennia (1500 BCE to 1500 CE), the model used these three criteria to run simulations: the presence of agriculture, the ruggedness of the terrain, and most importantly, the distance from the Steppe geographical area, a belt that extends throughout Eurasia. &amp;quot;It appears that a lot of military technologies were invented in this Steppe area,&amp;quot; Gavrilets says, including combat on horseback and metal weaponry. Nomads in this Steppe area developed war tech to pillage nearby agricultural societies, he says. As centuries pass, these military advancements spread, and play a key role in the rise of new powers.  The computer model begins with 2600 small societies. When a stronger society encounters a weaker one, they assimilate the weaker society&amp;#039;s culture and an empire begins to grow. Run this scenario a couple hundred times over 3000 years, influenced by massive amounts of historical data, and Gavrilets recreates a facsimile of human history in a few hours. The first centuries are almost identical, with early empires forming out of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. The simulation is a slow crawl spreading from this center into Western Europe and Southeast Asia. True history is a little more erratic, with some empires disappearing in one century and reappearing the next. However, the general structure of humanity&amp;#039;s social development remains similar between the two. But is it possible for a computer to account for all the complexities of war? Can it predict the Spartans at Thermopylae or William Wallace at Stirling Bridge? Well, not yet. &amp;quot;When you build a mathematical model of a particular event, you have to simplify,&amp;quot; Gavrilets says. &amp;quot;It was not easy to figure out which factors to include and which to disregard.&amp;quot; For example, the initial model included specific societal hierarchies, but the team realized that this level of detail would make any findings difficult to understand, and there wasn&amp;#039;t enough historical data to compare the model against. &amp;quot;Our models at the current stage are not able to predict a specific event, but we&amp;#039;re looking at general populations,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s how science is done, right? You try to predict general tendencies. Unique events are much more difficult.&amp;quot; With mathematical foundation in place, the team hopes to look at other populations and moments in history. Gavrilets expresses interest exploring civilization trends in pre-Columbian America or analyzing ancient societies in greater detail. &amp;quot;I think it&amp;#039;s one of the most exciting topics and it tells us how we became who we are,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not just evolutionary biology. It&amp;#039;s not just genetics. It&amp;#039;s also our psychology. It&amp;#039;s also our political science, economics, religion, and philosophy.&amp;quot; All these things, he says, science is in the position to answer. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/a9539/can-math-predict-the-rise-and-fall-of-empires-15960155/>