1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910350288903321

Autore

Guo Rongxing

Titolo

Human-Earth System Dynamics : Implications to Civilizations / / by Rongxing Guo

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Singapore : , : Springer Singapore : , : Imprint : Springer, , 2019

ISBN

981-13-0547-1

Edizione

[1st ed. 2019.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (XVIII, 199 p. 13 illus.)

Disciplina

304.2

Soggetti

Human geography

World history

Historiography

Human Geography

World History, Global and Transnational History

Historiography and Method

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- Win-Stay, Lose-Shift: A Survival Rule -- Human Thermodynamics and Culture (I) -- Human Thermodynamics and Culture (II) -- Environment Matters, But Not the Way You Think -- Civilization as Responses to Cyclical Challenges -- Let the Floods Come More Violent -- Glossary.

Sommario/riassunto

This book explores the factors and mechanisms that may have influenced the dynamic behaviors of earliest civilizations, focusing on both environmental (geographic) factors on which traditional historic analyses are based and human (behavioral) factors on which anthropological analyses are usually based. It also resurrects a number of common ancestral terms to help readers understand the complicated process of human and cultural evolution around the globe. Specifically, in almost all indigenous languages, the words ‘wa’ and any variants of it were originally associated with the sound of crying of – and certainly were selected as the common ancestral word with the meanings of “house, home, homeland, motherland, and so on” by – early humans living in different parts of the world. This book provides many neglected but still crucial environmental and biological clues about the



rise and fall of civilizations – ones that have largely resulted from mankind’s long-lasting “Win-Stay Lose-Shift” games throughout the world. The narratives and findings presented at this book are unexpected but reasonable – and are what every student of anthropology or history needs to know and doesn't get in the usual text. “Professor Guo explores the dynamics of civilizations from the beginnings to our perplexingly complex world. There are lots of thought-provoking ideas here on the rise and decline of civilizations and nations... Anyone wishing to understand global developments should give this book serious consideration.” ----John Komlos, University of Munich, Germany, and Duke University, USA “It is interesting to see a Chinese perspective on the questions of deep history that have engaged Jared Diamond, Yuval Harari and David Christian. Guo argues that understanding cyclical threats has been the key to human progress, which is driven by the dialectic of material privation and human ingenuity.” ----Peter Rutland, Wesleyan University, USA.