Journal of Social Computing 2022, 3(1): 57-74 https://doi.org/10.23919/JSC.2021.0016

Open Access | Issue | Published: 14 February 2022

Explosive Expansion, Sociotechnical Diversity, and Fragile Sovereignty in the Domain of the Inka

Show Author's Information Hide Author's Information Steven A. Wernke^¹(

)

1 Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA

Keywords:

technology, social complexity, Andes, data ontology, imperialism, fragility

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Wernke SA. Explosive Expansion, Sociotechnical Diversity, and Fragile Sovereignty in the Domain of the Inka. Journal of Social Computing, 2022, 3(1): 57-74. https://doi.org/10.23919/JSC.2021.0016

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Abstract

Societies of the late prehispanic Andes—the Inkas principal among them—have long figured as “exceptions to the rule” in social evolutionary schemata, in large measure because they seemingly lacked key technological hallmarks of complex societies found in other world regions, despite their observed large scale and complex, hierarchical political and economic formations. Such presumed absences are encoded in the Seshat Global History Databank, a large global comparative diachronic database recording many dimensions of human societies. Analyses derived from the current version of the Seshat database necessarily reproduce these supposed absences, as they inhere in its data ontology, structure, and registry. Nonetheless, patterns observed in the dataset provide a means for identifying processes acting on and through Andean peoples and the complex political formations they elaborated. Specifically, this paper evaluates a proposed information processing threshold model of social evolution, which suggests that social dynamics are driven first by processes related to social scale, and then by a phase of dynamics in which further scalar increases are only possible through innovations in information processing. The Andean region appears to violate this model because the Seshat database records writing and other information processing technologies as absent in the case of the Inka empire. The author argues that the dynamics of the Andean region are actually consistent with the information threshold model, but the data as constituted do not capture the relevant variables. The Inkas elaborated sophisticated information processing on par with counterparts in other world regions, but through radically distinct forms and pathways, including the Andean khipu (knotted string registries), decimal administration, and a colossal logistical and administrative infrastructural apparatus. This interwoven bundle of technologies and institutions constituted an information revolution that surpassed the information threshold and enabled explosive Inka imperial expansion, even as it produced certain vulnerabilities and fragile sovereignty.

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Explosive Expansion, Sociotechnical Diversity, and Fragile Sovereignty in the Domain of the Inka

Show Author's information Hide Author's Information Steven A. Wernke^¹(

)

1 Department of Anthropology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235, USA

Abstract

Keywords: technology, social complexity, Andes, data ontology, imperialism, fragility

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Publication history

Received: 05 August 2021

Revised: 12 October 2021

Accepted: 13 October 2021

Published: 14 February 2022

Issue date: March 2022

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgment

This paper was written with the support of a faculty fellowship from the Vanderbilt University Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities. I am most grateful to Tim Kohler and David Wolpert, organizers of the Santa Fe Institute Virtual Working Group “Evolution of collective computational abilities of (pre)historic societies” for their gracious invitation to participate in a stimulating series of discussions. Special thanks are due to Darcy Bird for coordinating a smoothly run virtual meeting. Gabriela Oré Menéndez assisted in compiling and digitizing the Inka road system in the map figure in this article. I thank the anonymous reviewers of the draft manuscript, who provided constructive feedback and additional references. Though my thinking benefitted tremendously from my interactions with the Santa Fe working group, any errors and shortcomings in this paper are solely my own.

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