Many empires and societies have come and gone before in history!
In my opinion, one of the biggest contributors the demise of empires or once successful societies over time is political and economic stagnation combined with overconfidence plus arrogance (e.g. ancient China). It appears the articles below do not really reflect this aspect very well.
The postulated "growing economic inequality" hypothesis as a trigger or mechanism is quite dubious if applied to Western open liberal societies!
The parallels drawn here between human aging and aging societies are also rather dubious. These two aging processes better should not be conflated!
How biased and prejudiced were these authors? Too much!
"“As our society enters a climate and ecological crisis [????] of our own making [????] the evidence that it is getting less resilient just increases the systemic and existential risks we are facing,”"
"Societies and political structures, like the humans they serve, appear to become more fragile as they age, according to an analysis of hundreds of pre-modern societies. The study, which holds implications for the modern world, provides the first quantitative support for the theory that the resilience of political states decreases over time.
Triggers of societal collapse have been well studied and vary from conquest and coups to earthquakes and droughts. This new study shows that pre-modern states faced a steeply increasing risk of collapse within the first two centuries after they formed. The research identifies several mechanisms that could drive these aging effects. Some of the mechanisms, like environmental degradation and growing economic inequality, are still at work today. ...
In this study, the researchers looked at this question from a new angle, by analyzing longevity in 324 pre-modern states spanning five millennia. ...
Triggers of societal collapse have been well studied and vary from conquest and coups to earthquakes and droughts. This new study shows that pre-modern states faced a steeply increasing risk of collapse within the first two centuries after they formed. The research identifies several mechanisms that could drive these aging effects. Some of the mechanisms, like environmental degradation and growing economic inequality, are still at work today. ...
In this study, the researchers looked at this question from a new angle, by analyzing longevity in 324 pre-modern states spanning five millennia. ...
In humans, the risk of dying doubles approximately every 6-7 years after infancy. As that exponential process compounds with great age, few people survive more than 100 years. The authors show that it works differently for states. Their risk of termination rises steeply over the first two centuries but then levels off, allowing a few to persist much longer than usual.
They found a similar pattern all over the world from European pre-modern societies to early civilizations in the Americas to Chinese dynasties. ..."
From the significance and abstract:
"Significance
Humans become increasingly fragile as they age. We show that something similar may happen to states, although for states, the risk of termination levels off as they grow older, allowing some to persist for millennia. Proximate causes of their demise such as conquest, coups, earthquakes, and droughts are easy to spot and have received significant attention. However, our results suggest that unraveling what shapes resilience to such events is equally important if we are to understand state longevity and collapse. Risk of termination rises over the first 200 y, inviting a search for mechanisms that can undermine resilience at this timescale.
Abstract
How states and great powers rise and fall is an intriguing enigma of human history. Are there any patterns? Do polities become more vulnerable over time as they age? We analyze longevity in hundreds of premodern states using survival analysis to help provide initial insights into these questions. This approach is commonly used to study the risk of death in biological organisms or failure in mechanical systems. The results reveal that the risk of state termination increased steeply over approximately the first two centuries after formation and stabilized thereafter. This provides the first quantitative support for the hypothesis that the resilience of political states decreases over time. Potential mechanisms that could drive such declining resilience include environmental degradation, increasing complexity, growing inequality, and extractive institutions. While the cases are from premodern times, such dynamics and drivers of vulnerability may remain relevant today."
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