Climate stability and low population pressure predict peaceful interactions over 10,000 years of Central Andean history

Weston C. McCool, Kurt M. Wilson, Elizabeth N. Arkush, Daniel A. Contreras, Brian F. Codding · 2025

Read Climate stability and low population pressure predict peaceful interactions over 10,000 years of Central Andean history by Weston C. McCool, Kurt M. Wilson, Elizabeth N. Arkush, Daniel A. Contreras, Brian F. Codding (2025) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-12662215.txt.

Description

Weston McCool and co-authors ask what kept peace in the Central Andes over ten thousand years, in a 2025 study. Much work on conflict asks what sparks violence, and climate change is often cast as a threat. Far less work asks, in a systematic way, what conditions let peace last, above all over very long spans.

Joining ecological theory with machine learning, the team weighed climate, population, and social factors across the long record. Stable climate and low population pressure stood out as strong predictors of peaceful relations, even where farm conditions were not ideal. The authors warn that more volatile climate ahead may strain peace, most of all among farming groups in marginal lands.

Catalog record

CREATORWeston C. McCool, Kurt M. Wilson, Elizabeth N. Arkush, Daniel A. Contreras, Brian F. Codding
YEAR2025
COLLECTIONPAPERS
FORMATTXT
FILE SIZE41 KB
VERSION1.0
LICENSECC BY 4.0
RIGHTSCC BY
SOURCEEurope PMC

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC12662215

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