HeyJaredCliodynamica by Peter Turchin
Ancient history and today's politics through the lens of Cliodynamics ("history as science"). Recent books: End Times (2023), The Great Holocene Transformation (2025).
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 13
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- Sep 27, 2026
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- Jul 11, 2026
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What Came First in Human Evolution: Intelligence or Culture? (opens the original)
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I read Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens soon after its publication. Despite the hype I found it quite boring. I didn’t learn anything new from the book (and what new I saw was mostly wrong, as others have commented). The intellectual infrastructure of Sapiens was very much 20th century, failing to profit from the insights brought by the new discipline of Cultural Evolution. So, I didn’t bother ana
Túpac Amaru II’s Rebellion according to Structural Demographic Theory (opens the original)
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Sophomore Lynnfield High School, MA, USAThe rebellion of Túpac Amaru II, occurring in 1780–1783 in the southern Cusco region and the Real Audiencia of Charcas in the Viceroyalty of Peru, present-day Peru and Bolivia and stretching into Ecuador and Argentina, was the largest revolt in colonial Spanish American history. Its first and most prominent phase, occurring in 1780–1781, was led by José Gabriel Condorcanqui, who adopted the name “Túpac Amaru II” to underscore his ancestral connection to Tú
More on the War over War (opens the original)
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Long-time readers of this blog (and its precursor) know that I write about warfare a lot. This is not because I am a warmonger in any shape or form. Unlike some, I don’t think that war is good for anything. Competition between societies, on the other hand, is necessary, but it’s most productive when it doesn’t involve killing people (more on this in my book, Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth). One of the most important ultimate goals driving my r
Cliodynamics and AI: the mid-2026 update (opens the original)
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We live in interesting times. As I see it, there are two major forces shaping our present and future. The first one is that most of the world is in polycrisis. But we’ve been there before. Previous wave of instability, the Age of Revolutions, I think, provides us with a pretty good idea of how to survive the current wave.Subscribe nowThe second force, technological evolution, is much more concerning. I am most worried, and we all should worry, about
Eight Centuries of Wages in Britain II (opens the original)
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Part I analyzed wage dynamics in Britain during the pre-industrial period. Now let’s take a look at the post-1700 period for which, thanks to MeasuringWorth, we have both wages and GDPpc. Thus, the analysis below focuses on relative wage, giving us a direct estimate of the wealth pump. I will also compare the operation of wealth pumps in Britain and USA, which yields fascinating results on similarities and differences.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.co
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