Inner Asia played an essential catalytic role in the history of human and social dynamics in Eurasia. This system produced the largest territorial polity to emerge in the evolution of civilizations (the Mongol Empire of the 13th and 14th centuries) as well as the largest-scale economy (the Silk Road network) before present-day globalization. This project will address fundamental questions in theory, methodology, and data concerning human and social dynamic responses to social and environmental challenges in Inner Asia and the Eurasian world system over the past 4,500 years. The interdisciplinary team includes expertise from the social sciences and computational sciences, including political science and international relations, archaeology, cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, economics, applied mathematics, and computer science. This project also includes international collaborations with experts on Inner Asian archaeology and ethnography as well as European experts on computational models of empire dynamics and Silk Road network simulations. The researchers will use diachronic data from written sources and from three archaeological projects situated along a north-south transect spanning the Mongolian steppe zone as well as object-oriented, agent-based computer models that build upon and extend extant computational social science models to generate the emergence of multi-scale networks over space and time.
The new concepts, models, and data integrated by an computational theory that builds on earlier theories of social evolution will advance basic understanding of human and social dynamics by synergizing disciplines and themes that normally do not interact: anthropological archaeology, political economy, and computer science. Results from this project will have multiple broader impacts in areas of surviving severe social challenges faced by contemporary human communities, such as global change, terrorist violence, or cultural conflicts. These are domains where collective action responses and intelligent organizational coordination are essential for human and social survival on multiple scales. Teaching impacts will include interdisciplinary scientific frameworks that exploit disciplinary excellence and computational models for generating emergent social complexity. Social computer simulations also are expected to provide innovative and insightful experimental laboratories. Possibilities will exits for shared training opportunities for U.S. and Mongolian students. An exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History will reach millions of visitors on an annual basis, with guided student tours by project leaders. An award resulting from the FY 2005 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) supports this project. All NSF directorates and offices are involved in the coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards.
