Figuring Out The Past

This is a new book. Condition: Brand New.

What was history's biggest empire? Or the tallest building of the ancient world? What was the average life expectancy in medieval Byzantium? The average wage in Old Kingdom Egypt? Where did scientific writing first emerge? What was the bloodiest ritual human sacrifice ever?

We are used to thinking about history in terms of stories. Yet we understand our own world through data: vast arrays of statistics that reveal the workings of our societies. So, join the radical historians Peter Turchin and Dan Hoyer for a dive into the numbers that reveal the true shape of the past. Drawing on their own Seshat project, a staggeringly ambitious attempt to log each piece of demographic and econometric information that can be reliably estimated for every society that has ever existed, Figuring Out The Past does more than tell the story of the past: it shows you the large-scale patterns.

Book details and technical specifications

Format: Paperback / softback
ISBN13: 9781788161930
Published: November 2022

Number of pages: 272
Width: 126 mm
Height: 196 mm
Depth: 20 mm

Publisher: Profile Books Ltd