The Measure of Civilisation by Ian Morris

Author:Ian Morris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2013-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

WAR-MAKING CAPACITY: DISCUSSION

Like social organization, war-making capacity has been a function of energy capture, with quite small changes at the margin of energy capture regularly producing wild swings in war-making capacity (figures 5.17, 5.18).

Figure 5.17. Western energy capture plotted against war-making capacity on a log-linear scale, 14,000 BCE–2000 CE, measured in social development points.

Figure 5.18. Eastern energy capture plotted against war-making capacity on a log-linear scale, 14,000 BCE–2000 CE, measured in social development points.

In East and West alike, after a long period when war-making capacity grew too slowly to be measurable on the index, it then spiked up sharply, rising from 0.01 to 0.08 points in the space of roughly a millennium (between 1800 and 500 BCE in the West and between 1200 and 100 BCE in the East). In both regions, war-making capacity then seems to have pressed against what we might call a military hard ceiling, between 0.08 and 0.12 points, for nearly two thousand years (figure 5.19).

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