21 - The Future of the Super-Cancer of the Biosphere

Summary

World population growth has proceeded in two steeper-than-exponential phases, with an intervening standstill from 1– 400 CE. Our interaction model of population, technology, and Earth’s carrying capacity projects to a peak of 11 billion people by 2100. Yet, our impact on Earth’s biosphere may undo our very existence. Then projections in this book, such as a single world state by 4600 CE, become moot. Over 5000 years, the number of states has fallen and top empire sizes have increased exponentially but also in three phases triggered by breakthroughs in message speed: Runner, Rider and Engineer Empires. This approach can lead to a non-Eurocentric periodization of history, with cut-off dates at 3000 BCE, 600 BCE, 600, 1200, and 1800. Various relationships connect world population and top empire and major city sizes, but they have tended to fail since 1800, as the world becomes a single, rapidly interacting system. A distinction of Talkers, Doers, Regulators, and Followers serves to characterize the internal structure of empires. An initial human self-domestication (slavery) seems to be later followed by self-taming. Lists of world history events put the midpoint of history around 1500 CE.