A new study out of the Complexity Science Hub concludes that social disintegration and violent conflict played a crucial role in shaping the population dynamics of early farming societies in Neolithic Europe
Change of heart
I confess that until recently I thought that such societies were quite resilient and not susceptible to social disintegration and collapse. There is no state or nobles to rebel against and, in any case, what’s there to ‘collapse’?
Peter Turchin, a project leader at the Complexity Science Hub
Computer simulations
In the top graph, simulated populations under climate variation and no inter-group conflict (in red) are compared to population distributions from observed radiocarbon data (in grey). There is no match. The bottom graph shows simulated populations under inter-group conflict and climate variation (in red), compared to population distribution from observed radiocarbon data (in grey), with a good match between the two. ©Complexity Science Hub