From the presentation by Peter Turchin, the Founding Editor and Overall Coordinator of Seshat Databank, at the annual American Historical Association meeting in Denver, CO; January 2017. Colorado Convention Center Writing in 1999 in Perspectives on History Robert Darnton, who was the

“I think that quantifying things that don’t have units is rarely fruitful” wrote on Twitter @UnlearningEcon (this was in the context of our discussion of Dani Rodrik’s Economics Rules). The following exchange went like this: @Peter_Turchin: “But where do units come from? It̵

As many of you know, currently the Seshat Databank project is focused on collecting data for all polities (states, empires, chiefdoms, archaeologically known cultures, etc) that intersected 30 geographic points (NGAs, standing for Natural Geographic Areas) depicted here: So far I have

Over the previous weekend the Seshat project ran a workshop on Cretan history and archaeology. We met in Villa Ariadne that the first excavator of Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans, built for himself right next to the Knossos Palace. Several times during the workshop the discussion among the