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Introduction to the model (the quick two paragraph introduction): The model for the domestication of humanity is based on the two elements which we have the longest running historical record for, economics and worldview. After 2000 we saw a breakthrough in macroeconomic Long Wave modeling via Carlota Perez. Substantive advancement and definition in historical worldview trajectories were provided through DNA mapping via Spencer Wells and in cognitive archeology from David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce. What the model shows is that humanity has always maintained worldview as a survival guide which comprises all of the collective knowledge for a particular period in time. Those survival guides have under gone a cyclical process for update, transmission and refinement relative to the economic epoch. The survival guides cycle is completely intertwined within human economic Long Waves. By plotting both of these constants for the human family, our domestication cycles are revealed. The model should be reviewed as a think piece. Entrance to the standard model for human history. A lengthier introduction to the model follows below. What follows is the synthesis of a ten year long process in what became my proposal for a standard model for human history. What emerged has to be viewed as a think piece at this juncture, as having Googled it at length, I have yet to find any other proposal for a model which spans all of human history inspite of the fact that I found several adjacent models which address or validate elements within the model. The project began as the search for the answer in how to solve a difficult business problem I am faced with everyday at work. The question was how to service the technologies which have been the drivers and at the core of the information age. I have been using the answer to that problem within my industry for years now and therefore I believe it to be correct. En-route to that answer I realized that if the answer which I had found was in fact correct, as it was based on repetitive cycles, then there is by sheer definition a cyclical pattern within human history. At the very dawn of this new millennium, two unique breakthroughs were made in seemingly disparate subject areas which have provided for the first time the data points needed to construct a standard model for human history. In order to construct a model we need two constants which can be compared and measured throughout human history. The first data point came from a refinement in macroeconomic modeling. The second breakthrough resulted from the work done in biology to decode our DNA chains. In order to construct a model we require a start date for the human family based on direct evidence. That data point came from the study of human DNA via the Spencer Wells lead Genographic Project. Utilizing mitochondrial DNA, Wells and his team found that women carry a record in their blood of every generation since their inception. Using this DNA map they calculated that the human family (Homo Sapien Sapiens) began 176,000 years ago. Previously many individuals have made projections as to the inception date for humanity but those projections were guess work founded on inferences and not hard evidence. Archeologists have always sought the "missing link" but the probability that anyone would ever find the very first human was never believed to be probable. Humans have recorded our history from the very start in writing and now we also have warehouses full of the evidence for human history. The 176,000 date from mtDNA gave us what we had always been missing for the construction of a model, an albeit rough but reliable start date. The other crucial data point came to us from a macroeconomic model which describes in high fidelity the repetitive cycles for technological and economic development since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Carlota Perez provided us this in 2002 through her book which is titled Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital. Economics is the study of the cause and effects for the decisions we make which are effectively transactions which constitute economic theory. Macroeconomics is the study for the cause and effects from our collective transactions. Nikolai Kondratiev in the early days of the USSR studied why industrial societies featured much higher tumult than agrarian societies did. He discovered that technology development was the cause for societal upheavals and change. He proposed what he called macroeconomic Long Waves as a model to explain how the changes in technology impacted societies. Kondratiev's Long Wave model is what Carlota Perez refined in her book and as a result of her refinement we were given a model which shows the start and stop dates, along with the durations for the fundamental development cycles for technology which is the fuel which powers every economy. For these two data points to be of any use we require a model which could utilize their significance. The first element of the model is predicated upon human survival. This is exactly what economics measures inspite of the fact that what humans have done for survival has changed considerably over 176,000 years. Though our current economy is tremendously more complex than the ones which preceded it; by sorting the resulting aggregate data allows us to simply the complexity and compare it with previous economic epochs. The second element which is subset of the primary element is worldview. Worldview is nothing more than humanities records for the survival guides which have been constructed, updated and refined in every economic epoch. Humanities survival guides are nothing less than the sum total of human knowledge as it pertains to survival. This has always encompassed science, religion, the arts and history just to name a few of the basic elements which constitute our survival guides. The survival guides are simply the synchronization of human knowledge at certain points in time which address both the seen and unseen forces, in order to keep those forces in balance in order further survival probability. The subjects which exist today are many more in number and are considerably larger and complex than they were when humanity first began to domesticate itself. It is for this reason that that historians have previously and repeatedly walked past these significant mile markers towards the construction of the model. Though worldview and economics may seem as unlikely and disparate subjects, these two subjects are unique in that we have records of them which are significantly longer and much more detailed than anything other than our very DNA itself. The length and detail in recording for these two subjects speak volumes as to the primal significance which economics and worldview have always been for humanity. Worldview is often looked upon with great distain by scientists and peoples holding slightly different values in worldview. Worldview has been seen as allegorical in nature or simply the expressions of hopes and dreams; however, this is only when looking backwards in time. When the worldviews were first created, they were the expression of everything which was of significance for the people who bolted the sum of their knowledge in science and spiritual values into singular records. We should be eminently grateful that our ancestors invested such effort and care in the recording of their worldview for their survival guides. Without these survival guides we would be unable at this point in history to see just how cyclical the domestication of humanity in reality actually was and is. The model plots these two factors (economic epochs and expression of worldview) through the ages in order to show the outline for the model. Looking down at the next layer of the model, we examine how and when worldview has changed through what I have termed Transition Periods. These Transition Periods are the process humanity goes through in formulating the updates and then transmitting the updates. Finally at the very heart of the models are the Long Waves where these waves are plotted along with the incremental mini updates to worldview. The Long Waves change the world perceptibly and these very real changes to the world with which we live are the causes which move individuals at an almost intuitive level to rethink worldview values. I have used basic mathematical ratios to refine the start and stop dates for the economic epochs and transition periods. I have used the ratios as well as a second source to validate that the dates for the evidence inside of the model, which would predict them if one had no real knowledge of the distinct historical events themselves. This will be presented starting with the industrial Long Waves and then moving to transition periods which must be modeled from the agricultural epoch as that is the last completed epoch and one which we know a great deal about. Then we will walk through the economic epochs themselves. As I have time I will add in each of these sections and then add in the documentation for the math, process of logic, adjacent models in other subjects in evolutionary thought and then close with some of the larger philosophical questions which result from the model. For instance the model clearly demonstrates that we are accelerating our technology, economies and world view at exponential rates. If you feel like the world is speeding up, you are very much correct. Extrapolations from the model identify this and taken forward can predict how fast the economic epochs, transition periods and Long Waves will come and go in the future. Finally let me reiterate that though there are very specific dates in the model, these are the result of the ratios and those ratios along with the stop and start dates are very likely inaccurate. That is why you must review this as a think piece. Inspite of the fact that I think those numbers are likely incorrect, I do think that both the interchange between economics and worldview along with the resulting trajectories for human history are very real. They are simply presented here in broad strokes. Entrance to the standard model for human history. Many people feel that quantum physics models and theories are at their core essentially philosophy as well as highly related to other subjects. For this reason I have cross referenced this material in a number of different ways. To aid you in navigation the following links are provided as the fastest way back to the webring entrances:
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Reference Books for the model:
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