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Overview of the Standard Historical Model
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What I am proposing in a standard history model should be considered from the perspective of purely a think piece. Review it as one might when you let your mind roam while sitting on the beach staring into the expanse of the sea. I do feel I have made some unique contributions for the industrial era section; therefore, if a think piece is not of interest right now, I recommend the industrial era as that is where my background and expertise could be brought to bear for maximum leverage. Having worked near and at the center of the tornado in technology development has given me a unique vantage point.
If we were discussing the standard model in physics this proposal attempts to go only as far as Newton's model went for gravity at the end of the 17th century. It does not attempt to achieve the relativism which Einstein subsequently brought as an update for the Newtonian model. History is too far behind to make that leap yet despite the fact that Einstein's update for physics is already 100 years old. The analogy to physics works pretty well as the primary factors for gravitation which Newton calculated is the same approach utilized for this construct. Only the four major factors of technology development, economic evolution, historical progression in human worldview and the shifts in human social structures are considered.
The old 80-20 rule was all that NASA required to land men on the moon. The 80% of physics which Newton's model explained was more than accurate enough. There is utility for an 80% model in human history beyond the simple expansion of the aperture in perspective. This model proposes a hierarchical structure for the major factors that have driven humanities evolution. After more than a decade of research I am of the opinion that the factors which have driven humanities evolution are hierarchical and as constant as is the force of gravity which Newton calculated.
There are only two variables for the model which have not been constant for the major factors. The amount of time an economic era takes to run its course has always been decreasing. The Agricultural Era cycled through 17x faster than the prior Hunter-Gatherer era. We have all personally witnessed the acceleration in rate of increase for technology development in just the last 10 years. We are moving faster than the Agricultural Era today in the Industrial Era. With only three economic eras in history the the increase in speed is not yet something we can describe with mathematic precision - yet. However to date the increase has been roughly proportional. The model validates the proportional rate of change increase when we layout the discrete transition periods within each economic era.
Secondarily the addition of new data sets and therefore new factors are added as human societies increase in complexity over time. It is for this reason I have chosen the evolution of worldview to measure and demonstrate how our evolutionary clock is ceaselessly ticking forward. Humanities worldview is the factor for which we have the most evidence and is the best documented factor which has been constant since our human family began to spread out on this planet. Worldview began for our distant ancestors as a small tree which has subsequently grown much larger. The size and complexity should not serve to obfuscate the importance and efficacy in measuring the changes over time for worldview.
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Core factors for the model depicted in hierarchal orbits
In brief the model is predicated on the logic that technology is the major factor which drives each economic era forward. All the other factors orbit around technological innovation. Without the invention of the plow, our worldview and social structures would have changed little over time from that of tribal hunter-gatherer societies. This has been shown time and again when isolated hunter-gatherer tribes have been uncovered. The archeological evidence for hunter-gatherer tribes is astoundingly universal even when these groups did not and could not have come into contact with one another. This is the upshot as to why technology is the core of this model. We will elaborate the techno-economic modelling which further supports this construct. This is just a quick summary overview of the model.
Technology serves to make the world increasingly smaller. It enlarges our contact with other groups and their thinking. It is the collision in worldviews which forces worldview to move forward and go through an update process. As worldview is updated our social structures begin to change as updates in worldview decreases the age old rigidity for our inherited social structures.
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The three economic eras history has witnessed are the Hunter-Gatherer, Agricultural and Industrial Eras. As the Hunter-Gatherer economic era was 166,000 years in length while the Agricultural one was less than 10,000 years, it is safe to say that economic eras are accelerating. While the Hunter-Gatherer era only left behind cave paintings and stone sculptures as their equivalent writing systems, that era can only be used comparitively in the later phases. It is only later in that era where the evidence mounts that allows us to check the development in worldview factors against other assumptions in the model.
In the following figure I have depicted the three eras as a kind of evolutionary clock. The size of each clock is not to scale – they are shown as simply smaller (not 17 times smaller). Each era is divided up into five discrete repeating periods in the evolution of worldview. As the acceleration has been proportional the transition periods are represented symmetrically. The legend has the dating for those who want to know what years each transition period references.
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Evolutionary worldview factor periods within the three economic eras
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I used the history from the evolution of worldview in the agricultural era to produce a standard template. The template contains five distinct periods for Transition Periods common to every era. Within each economic era are five Transition Periods for worldview which have distinctly different impacts on worldview.
The five worldview transition periods common the each economic era
The first Transition period is the Inherited period for worldview. This period covers roughly 39% of an era. Worldview is completely inherited from the previous economic era. A new economic era features a totally unchanged worldview. This idea was conceived by David Lewis-Williams, Professor emeritus of cognitive archeology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He is the author of the Mind in the Cave and Inside the Neolithic Mind where he refined and built the case for this logic.
The second transition period is experienced in the new economic era via the changes which the core technologies have wrought in the living environment and it is termed the Impact period. This period covers roughly 21% of an economic era. Worldview begins to slowly change and form hybrids of old and new worldview as a result of the impacts from the technology changes within the economic era. The economic era moves from a tenuous foothold from the Inherited transition period to one during the Impact period where confidence rises rapidly that the technology is now usable for many different areas in the economy and is now sustainable in the long term. This confidence is the platform which enables updated thinking relative to worldview. Since the technology enables greater communication, this sudden increase in exchange acts as the agent to begin to move the update forward.
The third Transition period I have termed the Update period in worldview evolution is the actual time in history where the worldview finally starts to go through the process of the major update. This period covers roughly 19% of an era. Karl Jasper's was the philosopher who coined the term Axial Age, in the 1930s, to denote the period in time between 800BCE and 200BCE, when the foundations in thinking for the current major religions came into existence. The Axial Age is the hallmark for the update transition period for worldview within the economic era. The one Jasper's referred to was within the agricultural era which became the foundation for the survival guides contained all the major religions today. In the Far East: Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism and in the West: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
The fourth Transition period is termed the Transmission period. The period denotes that the update to worldview is now going through the process of codification in core ideas and is transmitted throughout society. It is God's law becoming man's law. This period covers roughly 16% of an era. Humanities some total of knowledge in every subject is integrated into what becomes the new survival guide for societies moving through that particular economic era.
Finally there is an Undercurrent period following the Transmission period which serves to create the basic building blocks and resources required to fuel the next economic era. This period covers roughly 5% of an era. Technological thinking is suppressed during this period as the recently completed codification in law negates social structures from accepting or even examining the new thinking in light of the lengthy historic process which it took to arrive at the update and traverse the Transmission stage in the first place. The undercurrents period is very short. The friction between the divergence between worldview and the suppressed scientific ideas advance the boiling cauldron to quickly overflow. In a historical instant the next economic era literally explodes onto the scene seemingly from nowhere.
Utilizing the Agricultural Eras history as the basis for the models template, the transition periods are described in additional detail in the following chart.
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The Agricultural Eras Worldview Transition Periods
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With the understanding of what worldview transition periods are lets move onto applying them with more current history that more people are familiar with.
Next stop the worldview transition periods as evolutionary clocks.
Onto the Evolutionary Clock or Index for the model
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