The next picture shows the 7 cycles of war and extinction of civilizations and the weapons that caused them: bronze swords, chariots, iron, coins and mercenary armies, spur cavalry, gunpowder and Nuclear weapons. Each of those evolutions of weapons caused the extinction of civilizations in worldwide ages of War. The weapon’s radiation expands the economic ecosystem to all warrior tribes of the Earth; old civilizations and their elites become extinct by a new military aristocracy with the new weapon. The only anachronism is America, where isolation delays the arrival of iron till its rediscovery by Spanish ‘animetals’, which re-conquer the continent with a vengeance.
Civilizations are super-organisms: they go through 3 ages, as all organisms do. In Complexity, we have spotted a cycle of life and death of civilizations of around 800 years for all the cultures of the Old World, related to the discovery and massive reproduction of new weapons, which accelerates after the Industrial R=evolution in a decametric scale, due to the professional development of machines and its top predator version, weapons. In the graph we can see the wave of weapons and how they intersect and extinguish cultural civilizations based in the eusocial laws of love (the natural tendency of self-similar cells to share energy and information in any super-organism). Those cultures which were immortal before the discovery of hard-metal, die now rhythmically every ±800 years. And finally with the organization ofcompany-mothers of machines, the process accelerates geometrically as all systems of information do, to a mere 80 years, the cycle of Industrial nations…
Abstract:
In the graph, studied in detail in the left side of this page, each of the cycles of life and death of civilizations show the eternal fight between cultures with the memes of life and love, represented by religions of love and social civilizations vs. the cultures of selfish memes – weapons and money.
Unfortunately because iron kills the body of flesh and gold hypnotizes and enslaves the mind, the selfish memes of the ‘tree of metal ‘ have always won history, killing rhythmically the civilizations of gaia, of life and love. Thisduality between cycles of creation and destruction, light and dark ages in history has always been understood by the scientists of history and prophets of love, which have forecast the dawn of civilizations. But as the rhetoric of theanimetal cultures of war and money became more sophisticated with the help of art and in the industrial r=evolution with the help of machines, the memesof love have declined till today, in the age of the singularity perhaps the last age of history the memes of love and those of us who preach them are almost extinct, as democracies become stockracies with the new aristocrats of money, the owners of corporations and religions of love become corrupted into inquisitions (which kill to convert) or gold churches (which consider money the proof of success).
The 800 years cycle of war & weapons.
The study of societies as organisms and the analysis of its life and war cycles have a long tradition in Philosophy of History, since Vico noticed that societies die rhythmically in a dark age of war. Spengler (‘The Decline of the West’ 1918) for the first time used the organic parallel in depth, considering that the collective subconscious of a social organism, its culture, also went through 3±1 ages of art similar to those of a living being: a young age of epic art, an age of classic art and a 3rd, baroque age, prior to the extinction of a civilization. The parallelism between a biological organism made of cells related by networks of energy and information (blood and nervous systems) and a socio-biological organism made of human citizens related by networks of energy (economic systems) and information (cultural systems) is self-evident within the systemic paradigm. And it allows to design with biological, natural laws the most efficient economic and political system that maximizes the survival of its organic cells/citizens. Arnold Toynbee (‘A Study of History’ 1934) did an exhaustive analysis of the demise of civilizations, pointing out to natural and ideological causes, without a clear quantification of those cycles. Such quantification of those life and death cycles of civilizations establishes a long wave of historic death of around ±800 years, when all cultures in the old world become rhythmically destroyed by the massive reproduction of new weapons in an age of climatic change and nomadic invasions. Those dark ages foreseen by Vico, Toynbee and Spengler are: The age of Bronze swords /wars, ±3000 BC; The age of Bronze chariots/wars, ±2000 BC; the age of Iron swords/wars, ±1200 BC; The age of coins & mercenary armies, ±500 BC; The age of spurs & chivalry, 400 AD; The age of gunpowder, 1200-1945 AD. Between those dark ages of warfare, it is possible to fit the parallel life and death of all the civilizations of human history, pointing out to a clear relationship between the massive reproduction of weapons, the ‘germs of historic organisms’ and the death of cultures in ages of war—the sickness produced by those ‘germs’. Unfortunately with the arrival of Industrial machines, the cycle has accelerated according to a decametric scale, to a 72 generational cycle of world wars, as the evolution of weapons becomes now a professional, industrial activity.
The historic record is conclusive: the verbal, life-based, social organism of the Neolithic formed a global civilization, which was immortal and generation after generation men remained unchanged. Yet, with the arrival of weapons an extraordinary phenomenon takes place: social organisms start to die rhythmically, when another warrior civilization conquers and colonizes those civilizations. First, their geographical body and human cells are destroyed by warrior hordes. Then, their collective mind, made of art and ethic Gods of verbal thought, dies in an age of angst and baroque, formal styles that signal the 3rd, in-form-ative age and death of a culture.
The evolution of weapons causes an 800 years cycle of death of civilizations extinguished rhythmically by new ‘weapon radiations’, when their discovery and reproduction by warrior hordes starts an age of war in Eurasia, as warriors expand their lethal energy, killing people and erasing human cultures. A radiation is a biological term that explains the sudden, explosive reproduction of a new top predator species that annihilates many previous species, as it spreads all over the world. It is thus the proper name to explain the sudden bursts of violence provoked in bio-history by the discovery of a new weapon. Indeed, the discovery and massive reproduction of those new weapons, carried by hordes of symbiotic warriors that spread throughout the Eurasian continent, causes an 800 years cycle of extinction of civilizations, as those hordes of warriors conquer, kill and erase human cultures. The first of those radiations, bronze, means the end of the ‘classic age of History’, the Neolithic and the beginning of its 3rd informative age, the Age of Metal. Weapons are discovered and then radiate=reproduce in great numbers during a short period of ±100 years of World Wars that destroy the old civilizations. The warrior hordes that control the world with the new weapon start then a new, 800 years cycle of ‘modern civilizations’ in which the new warriors become the higher castes of human, wor(l)d cultures that flourish again after war recedes. So the arrival of new weapons shows the fractal zones of History. The median life of those cultures, 800 years, around ten times the biological life of a Human being (70-80 years), strongly suggest 2 possible causes for those war cycles: the biological rhythms of human life that after 10 generations seem to enter in decadence and the climatic cycles of the Earth, whose periodic ages of hot and cold weather provoke draughts on the steppes, displacing nomads towards valley cultures.
Thus, each of those 800 year cycles is a global civilization, ended by discontinuities of massive war, similar to the World wars that happen now at a faster pace, every 80 years, after a crash of the economic ecosystem, when new ‘energy machines’ used as weapons are discovered. Very few civilizations survive the periodic arrival of massive wars, after the discovery and reproduction of new weapons. Even the American civilizations that were isolated from European warrior masters, at the end died away, when Spaniards and Anglo-Saxons arrived. Then the Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures of Native Americans, some of which survived almost unchanged during thousands of years, were extinguished in a few centuries and even if their genetic races remain, it is self-evident that today Inca, Aztec or North-Indian civilizations have died.
There are 7 cycles of metal-history, since the first bronze armies arrived to Mesopotamia and destroyed the Neolithic paradise, a fact explained in the parables of Genesis, the oldest and most beautiful book about the tragedies of History, ever written by mankind. Let us then consider, the life and death of those civilizations classifying them according to their memes, their collective languages, words or metal, created by the prophets of their cultures. Let us consider them in more detail.
The pendulum law in history.
The study of societies as organisms and the analysis of its life and war cycles have a long tradition in Philosophy of History, since Vico noticed that societies die rhythmically in a dark age of war. Spengler (‘The Decline of the West’ 1918) for the first time used the organic parallel in depth, considering that the collective subconscious of a social organism, its culture, also went through3±1 ages of art similar to those of a living being: a young age of epic art, an age of classic art and a 3rd, baroque age, prior to the extinction of a civilization. The parallelism between a biological organism made of cells related by networks of energy and information (blood and nervous systems) and a socio-biological organism made of human citizens related by networks of energy (economic systems) and information (cultural systems) is self-evident within the systemic paradigm. And it allows to design with biological, natural laws the most efficient economic and political system that maximizes the survival of its organic cells/citizens. Arnold Toynbee (‘A Study of History’ 1934) did an exhaustive analysis of the demise of civilizations, pointing out to natural and ideological causes, without a clear quantification of those cycles. Such quantification of those life and death cycles of civilizations establishes a long wave of historic death of around ±800 years, when all cultures in the old world become rhythmically destroyed by the massive reproduction of new weapons in an age of climatic change and nomadic invasions. Those dark ages foreseen by Vico, Toynbee and Spengler are: The age of Bronze swords /wars, ±3000 BC; The age of Bronze chariots/wars, ±2000 BC; the age of Iron swords/wars, ±1200 BC; The age of coins & mercenary armies, ±500 BC; The age of spurs & chivalry, 400 AD; The age of gunpowder, 1200-1945 AD. The historic record is conclusive: the verbal, life-based, social organism of the Neolithic formed a global civilization, which was immortal and generation after generation men remained unchanged. Yet, with the arrival of weapons an extraordinary phenomenon takes place: social organisms start to die rhythmically, when another warrior civilization conquers and colonizes those civilizations. First, their geographical body and human cells are destroyed by warrior hordes. Then, their collective mind, made of art and ethic Gods of verbal thought, dies in an age of angst and baroque, formal styles that signal the 3rd, in-form-ative age and death of a culture.
The evolution of weapons causes an 800 years cycle of death of civilizations extinguished rhythmically by new ‘weapon radiations’, when their discovery and reproduction by warrior hordes starts an age of war in Eurasia, as warriors expand their lethal energy, killing people and erasing human cultures. A radiation is a biological term that explains the sudden, explosive reproduction of a new top predator species that annihilates many previous species, as it spreads all over the world. It is thus the proper name to explain the sudden bursts of violence provoked in bio-history by the discovery of a new weapon. Indeed, the discovery and massive reproduction of those new weapons, carried by hordes of symbiotic warriors that spread throughout the Eurasian continent, causes an 800 years cycle of extinction of civilizations, as those hordes of warriors conquer, kill and erase human cultures. The first of those radiations, bronze, means the end of the ‘classic age of History’, the Neolithic and the beginning of its 3rd informative age, the Age of Metal. Weapons are discovered and then radiate=reproduce in great numbers during a short period of ±100 years of World Wars that destroy the old civilizations. The warrior hordes that control the world with the new weapon start then a new, 800 years cycle of ‘modern civilizations’ in which the new warriors become the higher castes of human, wor(l)d cultures that flourish again after war recedes. So the arrival of new weapons shows the fractal zones of History. The median life of those cultures, 800 years, around ten times the biological life of a Human being (70-80 years), strongly suggest 2 possible causes for those war cycles: the biological rhythms of human life that after 10 generations seem to enter in decadence and the climatic cycles of the Earth, whose periodic ages of hot and cold weather provoke draughts on the steppes, displacing nomads towards valley cultures.
Thus, each of those 800 year cycles is a global civilization, ended by discontinuities of massive war, similar to the World wars that happen now at a faster pace, every 80 years, after a crash of the economic ecosystem, when new ‘energy machines’ used as weapons are discovered. Very few civilizations survive the periodic arrival of massive wars, after the discovery and reproduction of new weapons. Even the American civilizations that were isolated from European warrior masters, at the end died away, when Spaniards and Anglo-Saxons arrived. Then the Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures of Native Americans, some of which survived almost unchanged during thousands of years, were extinguished in a few centuries and even if their genetic races remain, it is self-evident that today Inca, Aztec or North-Indian civilizations have died.
There are three ages in all those civilizations associated to radiations of weapons, represented in the graph by a bell curve: birth of the weapon and elite-caste of the civilization; expansion of those weapons, and final extinction by other metal weapon and horde of warriors. The old weapons then might continue, but within the elite caste of the civilization, that our curves show, they will be rare and considered obsolete.
Let us consider those great cycles of War and its civilizations in the Historic record:
Bronze Age: Lineal Bronze starts the first empires recorded in History. In ±2850 BC: the first Bronze sword armies appear, taking to power, God-pharaohs and Semite Lugals. Egypt becomes unified. History registers the first Mesopotamian Empires. We consider the arrival of Bronze, probably in Egypt, the beginning of the Paradox of History [Max. metal Goods=Minimal human goods]. Rhetoric, epic art to the service of power starts also with palaces and tombs, such as the pyramids. And yet for most humans life did not improve, as they were enslaved by warriors and worked in those huge monuments to the arrogance of man. In fact in those cultures where bronze weapons arrived latter, human goods, and sensorial pleasures develop more.
For example in the Indus without metal abundance, the quality of housing was the highest in old civilizations. Then it plummets after Aryan charioteers invade India. Aryans only improve architecture in “palaces” and “death tombs”. Also in Egypt, only as the initial wave of warriors recedes, we see the end of Pyramid construction, and a higher quality of life for the common people (VI dynasty). Tombs now are smaller, full of lively drawings of animals and farmers; and priests regain power over warrior kings, promoting the reproduction of food, and human goods.
Chariot Radiation (Wheels of bronze). It is the age of the Middle Empire, in classic historiography. The first wave starts around ±2000 BC: A World wide invasion of Indo-Europeans with chariots from the northern planes destroy all civilizations. It is the extinctive phase of Sumerian cultures, when Genesis is written, and the parable of the tree of science, understood by the most intelligent verbal artists of the age. Charioteer Hordes conquer Sumer and Akkad. The first Hittites empires appear. In Egypt it signifies the end of the old empire and the beginning of the Middle Kingdom.
A clear prove of the Paradox of History, of the fact that where less weapons there are, better is life, is Crete: There the charioteers cannot arrive due to geographical conditions (a sea island). So in Crete there is a continuity of a culture based on human goods, that makes of Crete the richest, most sophisticated civilization of the west in this age.
The same radiation of Charioteer Hordes will erase the Eastern cultures. From 1500 till 1000 BC. in the first Veda Period, nomadic chariot Aryans and its “sacred cows” conquer India, impose a brutal metal-racism (castes), against Neolithic Goddesses, women, and the poor. The old culture survives longer in the South.
Charioteers also found the Shia dynasty in China, degrading and partially assimilating the Tao culture of the living Universe proper of Neolithic China. In China, the chariot arrives perhaps, after transferring its weapons to Mongolian tribes (about 1500 BC, Shang dynasty). The depth and richness of the Neolithic (fully grown and densely populating the South by the V millennia BC), allows the Tao-Neolithic culture of the sentient Universe to survive partially. But the Ch’in dynasty and its radiation of iron weapons forbids all non-technological books under death penalty about 300 BC. Then the wisdom of Taoism that understood so well the dual nature of the Organic Universe, and its Yin-Yang beings will be lost at philosophical level. Though it will inform the basic arts of classic China.
China proves again that less metal allows more complex human thought. China alone among Eurasian nations preserves the dual linguistic essence of the human wor[l]d: a verbal language, and a visual expression of the game of Energy-Information on its writing words. But in the west, verbal thought is simplified in Cananean civilizations, coming from Egypt (Hycsos?), with a proto-alphabet that reduces writing to a few verbal symbols.
Iron Radiation (about 1200 BC). The Germanic people (Celtic hordes) start mass production of iron swords. Again the chain reaction of war and destruction starts, with warrior waves that move west to Iberia and east to Greece and Asia. Its is the age of the Great Invasions of “People of the Sea”. Ramses II and III fight invaders but can’t prevent the collapse of the Middle Empire in Egypt. Also the Hittite Empire collapses. Hittites flee and teach Assyrians the use of iron.
In 1150; the Dorians destroy Micenas. And again where the Dorians do not arrive, (Peninsular Athens, coastal Turkey) the Greek civilization of Cretan tradition flourishes and gives birth to the best cultures of the Iron discontinuum.
Coin Age (600 BC – 400 AD). Around 560 BC coins are discovered and mercenary armies increase the professionality of war. “Bellum ipse aleat’, said the Romans who achieved this feat.
Around 539-525 BC. the Persians destroy the Assyrian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian Empires, but copy their systems of military repression. As a consequence of better cavalry grounds, and iron metallurgy, from now onmetal history displaces its center of gravity from verbal Empires on the crescent fertile ruled by Semite [S]words and Go[l]ds (Assur, God of war; Baal Go[l]d of trade) towards Northern Aryan tribes (Rome, Master of war; Greece master of “Coins”). The dominance of the social Wor[l]d is substituted by the dominance of the individualistic I=eye. Good and Evil, verbal values, are substituted by beauty and ugliness, which are values of light perception.
In the age of Iron, the Greeks introduced coins which ended the dominance of bartering in trade (verbal, Semite traditions), and started digital accountancy. The higher complexity of coins and iron will prove irresistible. It is the expansive age of Indo-European empires, that now use metal species in a far more efficient manner to impose restrictions of Freedom to the people, taxed in coins, and levied to serve the armies of the metal master. Systems of “total” war, that only Assyria had essayed before, now become natural to entire empires, which summon up all the previous metal-advances (horses, iron, mathematical war analysis), into the Total Army, with infantry (Phalanx), cavalry, war machines and logistics (Macedonian and Roman Empires).The Roman cycle is accurate; 798 years between the fall of Rome to the iron Gauls, and the fall of Rome to the stirrup barbarians in 410.
Rome is fundamental to understand the Western World, since it is the origin of all myths and alibis for further Warrior empires, that could seize power, pretending to reinstall a new Rome. Rome is the parallel to Assur, the master of war of the Verbal, Bronze age. Because gold-iron races die, but its products and its rituals continue, there is in fact a continuity of rituals from Assur to Persia, to Macedonian empires, to Roman, to European empires. So much for racial superiority: the race dies in wars and Holocausts. The product, the iron weapon, stays. It gave origin to European ideologies, rituals and icons of warrior and trader civilizations from Britain to Nazi Germany, from Imperial eagles to civil architecture.
Cavalry Age. The Middle Ages. Stirrup=horse Radiation. (400 AD, 1200 AD).The Huns, Nomad warriors able to shoot with arrow bows while galloping, thanks to the stirrup -discovered probably in Korea- and the Germans who add iron protections, annihilate the Roman-Christian Empire of Human Goods, plummeting once more the standards of life of mankind. Around 317-589, the Huns break China between North and South into sixteen warrior kingdoms, controlled by Huns and Turks. In 430 History registers the invasion of India by the White Huns. Their civilization is built around the “horse man” that sees himself “higher” than the rest of humans, just because he is mounted into his horse… So much human arrogance. Barbarians crass the level of Human Goods of Roman Europe, but slowly they become converted to social love by the Christian Oikoumene religion.
The verbal age of Christianity, once the Aryans are “civilized”, returns to Europe (High middle age) in a society based on ethics. In Italy and Spain, priests of Islam and Christ had more power, that its warrior allies, and allowed a new age of human goods and art. They initiate the Renaissance, and the culture of Al-Andalus, the summit of the two main religions of mankind, Islam and Christianity. Both flourish before the radiation of gunpowder, annihilates this re-birth of human sensory, ethical, and artistic cultures. Those final days of social religions left the great cathedrals, optimistic buildings full of light, looking upwards to God, built by the collective effort of the people that, unlike the Romanic churches no longer fear the violence of barbarians. Gothic cathedrals seem to confirm a wealthy mode of life in the lower Middle Ageswith less wars. Population doubles in Europe; cities grow. In the Eastern World the old cultures of the sentient Universe (Taoism and Buddhism) reach a new apogee (Gupta, Song empires).
Gunpowder Age (1200 AD, 1945). Unfortunately the Chinese Taoists discover gunpowder. Mongols learn its technique in the assault of Beijing, spreading its use to the western world. In 1204 the looting of Byzantium by the Venetians opens the East to Italians who soon will have the first cannons, the “lombardas”. In 1222 the Mongols defeat the Russians in Kalka and invade Germany. Soon gunpowder is known to German people. In 1258 Hulagu massacres Baghdad. It is the end of the Muslim Empire. In Europe the gunpowder wave soon explodes into massive civil wars, of which the 100 years war, is the most well known. It brings poverty, and scarcity of Human Goods, that provoke massive famines and allows the expansion of the black Pest, that multiplies death among Human beings.
Sub-wave. Reproductive Phase T/2 (about 1600). In the very middle point of the 800 years radiation, appears Ballistics (science) and companies of Gunboat Reproduction. The gunpowder radiation becomes a professional system of reproduction of weapons by company-mothers, and scientific fathers, that create the present world of machines of war. Europe becomes top predator of the World, by perfecting cannon balls, and inventing in order to measure their trajectories the science of Ballistics, later called physics (Galileo). Companies of Gunboats create new Empires (British-French Empires), that massacre or enslave 80% of mankind (the third world).
The Modern Age: Computers=Metal-minds
In 1945 the last cycle starts, the cycle of computer-researched weapons, that brings first Atomic weapons, based in pure light energy. It is a new threshold of weapons evolution that opens for the first time in History the possibility of the extinction of our species by massive explosions of atomic weapons. Or development of robotics. It is the human baroque.
