Sure, but that doesn’t change there will be outliers at both ends. And the lower end would likely have far more. So no matter the average, it would be on lower end of the max.
So if an empire and only one lasted to 1000, but others 5 years, or even days. It makes sense that an average around 250 is entirely possible.
if you want to go into statistics, normal average are useless for these things, as many empires last a few years, while others can last thousands. they don’t fall in a normal distribution, you might need a geometric mean.
but also, empire is such a vague term. did the Roman empire fall around the 5 century? or do you count Byzantium as the Roman empire?
Did England start with the Norman invasion? or was it from before and the Normans were just a new dynasty?
it’s something that’s practically impossible to count, what’s an empire? when it started/ended? and on top of that no normal distribution.
I don’t disagree, there isn’t a great way to quantify the data, I’m just making a discussion out of the main comment seemingly missing what an average is by talking about edge cases on the high end. Also their 3 examples, which I assume are the only 3 high end cases. Already have a massive discrepancy.
1000 and the next closest being ~600, it infers that long empires are few and far between.
The actual paper the number comes from (Fate of Empires by John Glubb) is complete bullshit, though. Even the cherry-picked examples it uses, which are limited strictly to the surroundings of the Mediterranean, don’t use any kind of consistent criteria for when an empire starts or ends. He tries to count “Alexander (and his successors)” as one coherent entity and then picks an end year in which all of them had either already collapsed long ago or would not do so for many decades to come. He cuts centuries off of the Roman Empire’s lifespan by just saying that the empire was unstable and getting invaded a lot (and ignoring the Eastern Empire entirely). HIs reckoning of the “Arab Empire” includes three separate caliphates, and the end date isn’t even the actual end of any of them
Other than that, no, it does not attempt to find an average in the sense of a mean lifespan. It actually does argue that 250 years for an empire can be compared to a human living 70 years.
Then it wouldn’t be reasonable to assume the US would collapse right at the average (mean) though. If the majority of empires collapsed at the same age (the mode) it would be different, but the mean tells you very little about when any particular empire will collapse.
The mean number of children per household is a decimal, that doesn’t mean any households have partial children.
these where the first versions of empire that existed on this world and full of equal parts flaws and dumb luck as a result
the modern hybrid euro-colonial versions also have flaws and luck on their side, but, more importantly, they learn and adapt from each other and, as a result, have a pattern that we can now identify.
Of course this is incorrect, go look up an empire and see.
… Roman empire got over 1000 years, Ottoman’s got 623 years, Mongol empire only got 162.
…and Italy, Turkey, and Mongolia are still around, they’re just not empires anymore. They’re Nations.
Mean, median, or mode?
Yes.
I take preference to the “Russian method” cut off the high and low score and mean them.
it isn’t an average, it’s a literal bs made up number
Sure, but that doesn’t change there will be outliers at both ends. And the lower end would likely have far more. So no matter the average, it would be on lower end of the max.
So if an empire and only one lasted to 1000, but others 5 years, or even days. It makes sense that an average around 250 is entirely possible.
if you want to go into statistics, normal average are useless for these things, as many empires last a few years, while others can last thousands. they don’t fall in a normal distribution, you might need a geometric mean.
but also, empire is such a vague term. did the Roman empire fall around the 5 century? or do you count Byzantium as the Roman empire?
Did England start with the Norman invasion? or was it from before and the Normans were just a new dynasty?
it’s something that’s practically impossible to count, what’s an empire? when it started/ended? and on top of that no normal distribution.
I don’t disagree, there isn’t a great way to quantify the data, I’m just making a discussion out of the main comment seemingly missing what an average is by talking about edge cases on the high end. Also their 3 examples, which I assume are the only 3 high end cases. Already have a massive discrepancy.
1000 and the next closest being ~600, it infers that long empires are few and far between.
there’s no average, that number was literally made up for some bs theory of empires.
it isn’t because it’s an “average” it’s literally made it, and it’s impossible to get, as whatever definition of empire will miss so many “empires”.
it’s multiple layers of bs.
No one’s arguing that dude, but that doesn’t mean people can’t point out and talk about someone who missed what an average is as well.
You do know what average means in this context, right? You divide the sum of the empires’ years by the number of empires.
The actual paper the number comes from (Fate of Empires by John Glubb) is complete bullshit, though. Even the cherry-picked examples it uses, which are limited strictly to the surroundings of the Mediterranean, don’t use any kind of consistent criteria for when an empire starts or ends. He tries to count “Alexander (and his successors)” as one coherent entity and then picks an end year in which all of them had either already collapsed long ago or would not do so for many decades to come. He cuts centuries off of the Roman Empire’s lifespan by just saying that the empire was unstable and getting invaded a lot (and ignoring the Eastern Empire entirely). HIs reckoning of the “Arab Empire” includes three separate caliphates, and the end date isn’t even the actual end of any of them
Other than that, no, it does not attempt to find an average in the sense of a mean lifespan. It actually does argue that 250 years for an empire can be compared to a human living 70 years.
Then it wouldn’t be reasonable to assume the US would collapse right at the average (mean) though. If the majority of empires collapsed at the same age (the mode) it would be different, but the mean tells you very little about when any particular empire will collapse.
The mean number of children per household is a decimal, that doesn’t mean any households have partial children.
But if the average hides a huge range of datapoints, it becomes less useful.
these where the first versions of empire that existed on this world and full of equal parts flaws and dumb luck as a result
the modern hybrid euro-colonial versions also have flaws and luck on their side, but, more importantly, they learn and adapt from each other and, as a result, have a pattern that we can now identify.