Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth (Peter Turchin)

The prolific Peter Turchin offers another attempt to quantify and mathematize history. It's not bad, and it's fairly interesting, but it's not nearly as successful as his more famous "Ages of Discord."

The written version of this review can be found here:

https://theworthyhouse.com/2021/04/20/ultrasociety-how-10000-years-of-war-made-humans-the-greatest-cooperators-on-earth-peter-turchin/

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This and all Worthy House narrations are offered with accurate closed captions (not auto-generated).

"Peter Turchin leads a recent academic movement to quantify and mathematize human history. That is, instead of analyzing history thematically, or engaging in broad analysis of happenings and trends, he aims to use processed data to prove hypothesized truths about our collective past. Turchin calls this new science cliodynamics (after the Muse of history), and I thought this effort was largely successful in his 'Ages of Discord,' in which the focus was cycles of stability and instability. I think the effort much less successful in 'Ultrasociety,' which tries to explain all of human history as inevitable cultural evolution towards cooperation, but still, it’s an interesting, if bumpy, ride."