Periodic Behaviour of Human Societies and Climatic Cycles

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana (1863 - 1952)

The goal of my exhaustive research since the 1980s has been to establish that there has been a discernible pattern to the growth of diverse world cultures over millennia, which make history dynamic in the present day. A secondary aim is to find a pattern in the evolution of capitalism that will be of benefit in the future. In my previous book, Ebbs and Flows of Ancient Empires, I outlined a template of cultural behaviour that had been followed by ancient dominant cultures 2500 BC–AD 1400. There were definite cycles of dominant, just, and prosperous cultures. Late in the period, there were signs of democracy in Greek Athens and the Roman Republic that did not survive military imperialism. That phase in human history was too early to discuss an actual capitalist system, even if some of the seeds had already been sown.

The period of history covered in this book, AD 1400–2100, will present the framework of history in order to identify the dominant culture over global geographic regions in any given period of time. I do not offer any apology that my understanding of dominant cultures might be different from that of some historical scholars. It appears to me from literary research that each academic scholar has produced his or her version of the truth, gleaned from records with more emphasis on historical figures and events filtered through the prevailing culture of the author.

I define culture as being a natural way of life in which activities, distinctive to a particular society, are unconsciously accepted by the people in that society as normal behaviour. Eating raw fish is natural in the Japanese culture, as is drinking fermented mare's milk in the Mongolian culture. Neither of these actions is natural in the American culture, where eating a huge slab of meat, undercooked from the rear end of a castrated bull, is commonplace. The Australian barbecue of the slab of meat is also natural in the southern continent but is basically alien to the English weather and culture which was dominant in the world when the Australian culture was born.

This book would be of no use to practical men if it were only a chronological history of historical cultures, without presenting lessons that can be learned to advantage from that history, in the present day and for the future. I hope to demonstrate in this book the possibility that a dominant culture, whether that of city/state, nation, or corporation, produces similar phases of behaviour throughout the long course of time.

There is also the possibility that societies of men have been stimulated into action by natural phenomena, in particular, changes in climate. There have been great prehistoric cataclysms, like the volcanic eruption that destroyed the Cretan island of Thera c1628 BC, that have caused huge disruptions to human society. The movement of Scandinavian tribes south around the sixth and seventh centuries BC was apparently due to a mini-ice age which made life above the Arctic Circle intolerable. Cold weather stimulated the migration of Cimbrians from Jutland circa 120 BC. The Germanic tribes moved south and west circa AD 400, again due to a severe cold climate which froze the Rhine.

I shall examine in this chapter whether climatic and some natural phenomena occur in cycles, as Earth travels through space in conjunction with other cosmic bodies in a largely cyclic motion. I shall use the research of a radical academic, Dr Raymond H Wheeler, who theorised that major climatic change throughout history has been cyclical, with a major effect on man's behaviour.

Cycles

In my previous book, using the academically accepted chronology, I assumed that the Egyptian Middle Kingdom reached its height c1950 BC. Babylon peaked under Hammurabi c.1750 BC (near the time of the Hyksos invasion of Egypt). The Minoan Middle Kingdom peaked c.1550, in the same era as the Hyksos were expelled. The Egyptian New Kingdom declined from c.1380. The Assyrian Middle Kingdom lapsed into uncivilised behaviour, even by ancient measures, c.1120 BC, and the New Kingdom peaked c.620. A Phoenician peak c.950 BC (similar to the Hebrew zenith) suggested a possible pattern of recurring peaks of civilisations at two-hundred-year intervals.

When I was earlier researching the theory that ancient oriental philosophy could be combined with modern occidental technology for strategic financial warfare, I discovered many long-cycle theories by scholars. As long ago as 1100 BC, the ancient Etruscans spoke of the Great Year, which they estimated at 1,100 Earth years. They were not far wrong, when their cycle came to an end c.87 BC. Such reckoning would presuppose an end to the civilisation after the Etruscans as c.AD1013AD, which was, in fact, the era when invading Vikings and their Norman descendants dominated southern Italy. The next major civilisation in the Etruscan cycle would be due for termination c.2113.

The German philosopher, Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West, 1918), maintained that there was a definite cycle of cultures that lasted approximately 1,500 years. Spengler theorised that the pattern formed a curved sloping "S" formation (an angled sine curve), in which the early part of the rise was slow (springtime, about five hundred years), the full, often rapid growth (summer and autumn, about eight hundred years), then the last period in which growth was frozen (winter, about four hundred years). Spengler and his American interpreter, Edwin F. Dakin (Today and Destiny, c.1940), identified the period AD 1800– 2000 as the early part of the winter phase of the current cycle, in which money and democracy would dominate western culture. On their reckoning, the third millennium AD, which has now commenced, should see a rise of "Caesarism" (oligarchic dictatorships) and fading of liberal democracy.

Confucian scholars have been aware of cycles for millennia. From ancient figures, Dr J S Lee, (The Periodic Recurrence of Internecine Wars in China, 1931), suggested that two complete and one incomplete eight-hundred-year periods of Chinese history since 221 BC show striking parallelism in their periods of peace and disorder. Towards the end of the cycle, rivalry between North and South would be intensified, causing a change of dynasty from North to South. The next cyclical change is due early in the third millennium, and, if on schedule, political affairs would suggest that Shanghai or the claimed southern province of Taiwan will be involved. Such a major change would need to be triggered by a major crisis, which might well have a financial origin.

Well before Confucius, the Chinese believed that all natural phenomena could be governed by the rhythmic alternation of the fundamental forces of yin and yang, in which time flows through beneficial and adverse...