Intermittent outbreaks of infectious diseases have had profound and lasting effects on societies throughout history. Those events have powerfully shaped the economic, political, and social aspects of human civilization, with their effects often lasting for centuries. Epidemic outbreaks have defined some of the basic tenets of modern medicine, pushing the scientific community to develop principles of epidemiology, prevention, immunization, and antimicrobial treatments. This chapter outlines some of the most notable outbreaks that took place in human history and are relevant for a better understanding of the rest of the material. Starting with religious texts, which heavily reference plagues, this chapter establishes the fundamentals for our understanding of the scope, social, medical, and psychological impact that some pandemics effected on civilization, including the Black Death (a plague outbreak from the fourteenth century), the Spanish Flu of 1918, and the more recent outbreaks in the twenty-first century, including SARS, Ebola, and Zika.
AI agents have been evaluated in isolation or within small groups, where interactions remain limited in scope and complexity. Large-scale simulations involving many autonomous agents -- reflecting the full spectrum of civilizational processes -- have yet to be explored. Here, we demonstrate how 10 - 1000+ AI agents behave and progress within agent societies. We first introduce the PIANO (Parallel Information Aggregation via Neural Orchestration) architecture, which enables agents to interact with humans and other agents in real-time while maintaining coherence across multiple output streams. We then evaluate agent performance in agent simulations using civilizational benchmarks inspired by human history. These simulations, set within a Minecraft environment, reveal that agents are capable of meaningful progress -- autonomously developing specialized roles, adhering to and changing collective rules, and engaging in cultural and religious transmission. These preliminary results show that agents can achieve significant milestones towards AI civilizations, opening new avenues for large simulations, agentic organizational intelligence, and integrating AI into human civilizations.
The article is devoted to the concept of “civilization state” as a direction in the development of civilizational theory. It analyzes the history of scientific application of the concept of civilization, the content, composition and structure of civilizations, historical and geopolitical determinants of the confrontation between the West and Russia, the deepening of the civilizational confrontation “West - Russia” in the 21st century, the phenomena of “nation state” and “civilization state”, the civilizationally determined trends of transformation of the modern world order. Initially used to describe the social and political life in different countries, at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries civilization theory became an independent scientific direction. Its breakthrough achievement was the understanding of history as a multitude of local civilizations with unique specificity. The analysis of the content, composition and structure of local civilizations, their subsystems and elements united into unique integral conglomerates became a promising direction of civilization research. Historical and geopolitical determinants of the confrontation between the West and Russia, its deepening in the 21st century are explored. Particular attention is paid to “nation states” and “civilization states” as terms widely used in contemporary civilizational theory, reflecting different civilization-determined ways of domestic and foreign policy behavior of the states. Assumptions are formulated about their further coexistence and interaction, upcoming transformations of the world order, and the new stage in the development of civilizational theory.
Light industry is one of the oldest sectors of the world economy, which has developed rapidly under the influence of industrial revolutions, the introduction of technological innovations, the development of trade, increased competition in consumer goods markets and other factors, which formed special areas of the industry with its centers. Global trends and features of the development of light industry are of interest for spatio-temporal analysis necessary for understanding the problems of domestic production. The relevance of the study is due to the need for a scientific analysis of the development of key sectors of the light industry in the context of modern geopolitical and macroeconomic realities in the context of constituent entities and federal districts. Having a relatively small share in the structure of manufacturing, light industry plays an important role in the country’s economy, provides all its spheres with various types of products, and the population with consumer goods. Russia’s modern light industry has complex technological chains, relies on a diverse raw material base, it is focused on the growth of consumer demand, which requires the modernization of production. Radical changes in the sectoral and spatial structure of light industry in the world, as well as import substitution requirements have had a great impact on the state of the industry in the regions of Russia. Geopolitical challenges have shown that it is necessary to make maximum use of the existing potential by creating new production facilities, introducing modern technologies, forming our own raw material bases, and training personnel for the sustainable development of the industry. The post-Soviet crisis slowed down the development of light industry for a long time, but at present it is being renovated and transformed into a creative industry. The retrospective analysis reveals positive dynamics in the development of key sectors of light industry, despite the aggravation of a number of problems. Changes in the sectoral and territorial structure of the industry were identified, a typology of the subjects of the Russian Federation was made up by the share of light industry in the economy of the regions. Measures are proposed to bring the industry to a qualitatively new level of development.
Purpose of the study: Identification of patterns and heterogeneities in the chronological distribution of epigraphic monuments. An attempt to correlate dated material with certain events in the life of the medieval city of Solkhat/Kirim. Detection of chronological markers in the typology and design of lapidary monuments, on the basis of which it will be possible to give a chronological reference for monuments without dating.
Research materials: The article contains information about more than a hundred dated epigraphic monuments with Arabic inscriptions found at different times on the territory of the Golden Horde city of Solkhat/Kirim and in its environs. The data was collected on the basis of lapidary material stored in museum and private collections, including 26 monuments that are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The information mentioned in the works of Evliya Celebi, domestic researchers of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century was taken into account, the studies of O.N. Akchokrakly, diaries and drawings of U. Bodaninsky, and photographic materials of archaeological expeditions of the 1920s.
Research results: The work presents the distribution of dated monuments over the time period from the second half of the 13th century to the last quarter of the 15th century. Also presented are the results of the chronological distribution for some subtypes of grave monuments and the time frame for the use of the Turkic language on the epigraphic monuments of Solkhat/Kirim.
Auxiliary sciences of history, History of Civilization
The article compares the theoretical foundations of ethno-cultural policy in the Eurasian region.Aim. The goal set by the authors is to compare two approaches in the theory of social dynamics, on the basis of which the ethno-cultural policy of the modern states of the region — Russia (USSR) and China — is based.Tasks. Identification of fundamental differences in the geopolitical strategies developed by the theorists of Eurasianism and Chinese scientists.Methods. In the context of the implementation of this task — a comparison of the methodological foundations of real political projects in the Eurasian space, through logical analysis, differences are established in the theories of geopolitical dynamics proposed in the Eurasian concept and in Chinese science. The method of comparative analysis of ethno-cultural and ethno-economic policies in the Eurasian region of the two most influential powers allows us to conclude that alternative theoretical concepts and their paradigmatic limitations are adequate to real geopolitical processes.Results. The study showed that the concept of Eurasian geocivilization, which was formed as overcoming the limitations of the Slavophile version of Russian civilization in the context of the collapse of traditional approaches in social theory and in the context of historical collisions of the early twentieth century, had a positive potential, partially realized in the policy of the Soviet state. But the conceptual limitations imposed by the inadequate theoretical basis — the theory of civilizations existing at that time — did not allow the formation of a single Eurasian cultural space to be completed. The Eurasian unity represented by the Soviet Union was consolidated by institutional means, but it was not realized as a cultural synthesis. Chinese scientists have proposed an alternative project for the integration of the Eurasian space — the “One Belt — One Road”, which began to be implemented already in the XXI century. This project is based on Marxist theory and concepts of the second half of the twentieth century, complimentary to Marxism or being neo-Marxist.Conclusions. The incompleteness and instability of the Eurasian project in the Soviet version is a consequence of the limitations inherent in the geopolitical theory itself, which does not take into account the positive potential of Marxist theory and social concepts developed in the second half of the twentieth century. Chinese scientists use the scientific potential of Eurasianism in interpreting the Russian mentality and consider the politics of modern Russia through the prism of Eurasian connotations, but Eurasianism as a geopolitical theory, in their opinion, has not passed the test of history. Therefore, Chinese policy in the Eurasian space is based on other theoretical foundations — in addition to classical Marxism, neo-Marxist approaches. The Chinese authors conclude, in this regard, that Russia is still facing the problem of choosing a geopolitical strategy, which in turn is due to the paradigmatic uncertainty of Russian science.
In the early 1920s, J. G. Andersson discovered the Yangshao culture of prehistoric China and, in the name of science, reiterated the age-old postulation that “Chinese culture had a ‘Western’ origin.” In Andersson’s time, archaeology was frequently explained using the framework of diffusionism to understand human prehistory and civilization. To the hyperdiffusionists, civilization was perceived to have originated in the Middle East before it spread elsewhere and acquired regional variations. The archaeological work at Anyang from 1928 onward substantially changed scholars’ understanding of human civilization in general and Chinese civilization in particular. Is Chinese civilization a secondary and derivative one, with its ultimate origin in the Middle East? Should the Chinese civilization be properly comprehended in the singular, referring to the Han civilization only? Is it correct to conceive of the origin of Chinese civilization—and of its central layer, huaxia—from a decentralized perspective? By investigating early archaeological endeavors in China and related historical discourses, this essay shows how human civilization, Chinese civilization and huaxia civilization eventually became decentralized in the scholarly understanding, particularly regarding their origins. In this decentralization of the origins of civilization, the underlying archaeology was driven by both science and politics, both rationalism and nationalism. Archaeology during the Republic of China (1912–49), which had the special mission of reconstructing Chinese national history, was guided by this dual tendency.
The article studies the history of a small timber-harvesting colony that was created in the times of the GULAG labor camps, outlived the period of being a political colony, and was transformed into a museum, the Museum of the History of Political Repression Perm–36, in the 1990s. Based on the analysis of publications of the 1990s–2000s, an attempt was made to recreate the history of comprehension of the era of political repression using the example of a certain museum. From the active study of the topic in the early 1990s and establishment of a public museum with support from the Perm Oblast administration, Perm–36 moved on to undergo severe criticism from the local and federal press, deprivation of financing and administrative support and, finally, rather rough dismissal of the museum administration and appointment of top managers from the Ministry of Culture. The public museum had a powerful creative and scientific potential that allowed it to develop, implement new forms of work, and attract the international museum and human rights community, but, unfortunately, the State Memorial Museum of the History of Political Repression Perm–36 has become an ordinary regional museum in fact. In the first years of being a state museum (2015–16), the administration of Perm-36 tried to revise the directions of work of the public museum. This was expressed in its attempts to justify the authorities and the cruel laws of the time when the colony existed and to find some incriminating evidence against its political prisoners. New exhibitions of the museum (e.g. “Broken by windfalls”) highlighted the state’s need for the prisoners’ work, in particular in harvesting timber needed for the reconstruction of war-ravaged cities, the successes in mechanization of camp production, and so on. The public outcry forced the leadership of the museum to adjust its course. Now, according to the development concept adopted in 2019, the activities of the reserve museum are aimed at preserving the memory of victims of political repression in order to prevent such tragedies in the future. The state museum Perm–36 continues to open new exhibitions and expositions that tell the story of the colony through the stories of people from the GULAG camps, dissidents, and human rights activists. However, the activities of the state memorial museum, which is deprived of public initiative and creative potential of the first directors, cannot yet rise to the level of international recognition and significance that its predecessor, the public museum, used to have.
History of Civilization, History (General) and history of Europe
The present manuscript among its purposes, raises arguments that, with a critical approach, aim to dilute the myths that for centuries have risen above the colonization of Afro-descendant thought in the original Caribbean; where the love of divinity was used as an instrument of dominance over the Puerto Rican bonhomy of colonial Puerto Rico. It is a documentary article with bibliographic design, where the state of the art is sought to be developed on mysticism, ambiguity, and the impact that even in contemporary times generate sui generis religious practices, in which the bibliographic method was applied with a focus interpretive and documentation, as a technique used in the auscultation of the files selected for this purpose. After a deep discussion, it was possible to reflect on the socio-cultural and human encounters and disagreements, which in the formation of a Christian religious arch, took place in the Caribbean during the last 100 years; the above gave the researcher an epistemological, axiological and ontological seedbed; where they were able to germinate great diversity of ideas about it, thus flourishing different epistemic awards, with support for the development of the epoché. Finally, some conclusions could be generated that, by way of reflection, account for the great scientific interest held by spiritual consultations, diversity of cults and the influence of Eurocentrism in Central America, from the 16th and 17th centuries, where colonization was approached From thought from Christianization, phenomena arise that point to the liberation of the popular ideological.
The West is known to have had interest in Islam since the 18th century through the transformative effect of the methods developed to examine religious sources within the framework of this interest in Islamic studies. Revealing the academic background and historical, ideological, psychological, religious, political and socio-cultural factors that have led orientalists working in the field of Islamic sciences is important for this field. This study will reveal in the context of Goldziher’s method for evaluating hadiths how Orientalists had been influenced by the culture and civilization they emerged from and how these influences directed their studies on Islam. Studies that have drawn attention to how Goldziher adopted his method for evaluating hadiths and took inspiration from Hegel’s philosophy of history prepared the intellectual background for the writing of this article. The study will first point out Goldziher’s postition within the Orientalist tradition and then present his method for dating hadiths alongside his Muhammedanische Studien, which is considered the most important work upon which Goldhizer based his method. Hegel’s philosophy of history will be explained in terms of the subject of the study, followed by a look into how Hegel’s philosophy of history affected Goldziher’s method for evaluating hadiths.
The 19th century in the Ottoman Empire was marked by the introduction of the Tanzimat reforms that sought to reorganize and modernize the state. Education was pivotal in this process as it was thought that the introduction of new teaching methods and curricula would support the modernization of the Empire. The effects of the reforms were felt in Cyprus too with the opening of new schools or the reform of existing ones. With the advent of the British though, both Christians and Moslems in the island started investing in education. As a result, in a few years many more schools opened, and the numbers of students increased. In this paper we will try to analyze the structure of the Moslem and Christian education in Cyprus in the 19th century before the transfer of the island to Britain in 1878. To do that we will first look at the Ottoman educational institutions to see how this was reflected in Cyprus. Then, we will look at the Christian schools and examine the role of the church in the founding and running of schools. In this way we shall attempt to reconstruct the educational map of Cyprus in the 19th century. When in 1878 the British take over the administration of the island from the Ottoman Empire, both communities invest in education while the British, too, take steps in the modernization of the educational system. At the same time, the first newspapers appear in Cyprus the first books are also printed. This changes drastically the way Cypriots read and write.
The aim of the research is the reconstruction of the biographical world of Kateryna Mykhailivna Antonovych and actualizing her figure in the scientific domestic discourse. The research methodology is based on strategies and scientific approaches of interdisciplinarity, which are provided via an array of methods namely source analysis, historical and biographical reconstruction, culturological criticism. Scientific novelty is found in reconstructing Kateryna Antonovych's biographical world as a personal cultural space, which appears as the embodiment of her self-presentations and the crossroads of self-identifications. The diversity of the biographical world is revealed through the actualization of personal memories in a variety of contexts of the epoch, challenges of emigration, cultural transformations. Kateryna Antonovych's archival autobiographical documents, together with memoirs published in exile, bring us closer to understanding her character, worldviews, artistic and aesthetic preferences. These documents show how the concepts-symbols "places of generations" and "memorable places" provide a convenient mechanism for reconstructing the compositional model of the biographical world. It is noted that talking about herself, family and her surroundings, Kateryna Antonovych captures the key events of her life, that mark her priorities of self-identification, namely being the representative of the Serebriakov / Antonovуch family and a painter. Conclusions. The reconstruction of Kateryna Antonovych's biographical world shows a system of identities formed under the influence of family traditions, Ukrainian intellectual environment, intergenerational solidarity, as well as art trends and cultural spaces of Kharkiv, Kyiv, St. Petersburg, Munich, Prague and other European art centres. "Places of generations" - ancestry, family houses, family stories and traditions are the embodiment of moral and ideological imperatives of Kateryna Antonovych. At the same time cultural loci in her autobiographical perception points to especially important "memorable places" on the way to mastering artistic skills and self-realization.
از ویژگیهای هنر ایران در دوران باستان، توجّه به زیبایی، استیلیزه و ساده و هندسی شدن نقوش، پیوند نزدیک به زندگی، پیوستگی انواع هنرها باهم، و سبک تزیینی آن بوده است. هنر تزیینی ایران در نهایت وضوح و شدّت تأثیر بوده، چنانکه میتوان آن را «هنر نقش مطلق» خواند، یعنی هنری که میتواند مانند موسیقی و معماری تلقی شود و فارغ از زمان و مکان و محتوا تأثیرگذار باشد. دوران ساسانی، دورۀ اوج هنر باستانی ایران بود. کشورگشاییها، روابط تجاری و سیاسی، رواج آیین مهرپرستی در خارج از مرزهای ایران و تا اروپا، همه سبب اشاعه و گسترش هنر ایران و تأثیر بر کشورهای دیگر شدند. به کارگیری هنرمندان ایرانی توسط اعراب بعد از ظهور اسلام و گسترش این دین در سرزمینهای بسیار، عامل دیگری در بردن هنر ایرانی به آن مناطق شد. اشکال و نمادهای هنر باستانی ایران گاهاً دین و آیینهای دیگر ادغام شد، یا به وام گرفته شد و انطباق یافت، یا تغییر مصداق داده و یا مورد تقلید قرار گرفتند.
In the article through the analysis of the epistolary heritage of prominent Ukrainian and Russian philologist, literary critic, folklorist, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and the Academy of Sciences of the USSR V. P. Adrianova-Peretts the partaking of the scientist in the Ukrainian scientific life, the contribution to the development of Ukrainian science and the cooperation with Ukrainian scientists is reflected. The source of the study was the correspondence of V. P. Adrianova-Peretts with Ukrainian scientists O. I. Biletskyi, V. V. Danylov, I. F. Yerofeiev, A. M. Loboda, A. R. Mazurkevych, V. I. Maslov, S. I. Maslov, L. Ye. Makhnovets, O. A. Nazarevskyi, P. M. Popov, Ye. I. Chepur, M. V. Sharleman, S. O. Shchehlova, and the correspondence of V. M. Peretts with S. O. Yefremov and A. Yu. Krymskyi, which is deposited in the fonds of the Institute of Archival Science and the Institute of Manuscript of V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, and the Central State Archive of Literature and Arts of Ukraine.