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3.3 million years distilled into one principle: anthropy in the longue durée

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Existing frameworks for analysing social disorder—from world-systems theory to ecological economics—tend to treat spatial, temporal, and social externalities as separate phenomena. Anthropy proposes a unified mechanism: it is the hypothesis that social systems displace disorder rather than resolve it. This paper offers a long-duration stylisation—from stone tools to data centres—to show that anthropy is a structural constant of human social organisation, observable over 3.3 million years. Applying a uniform analytical protocol (order created / disorder displaced / dominant transfer type) to seven historical configurations reveals that the modalities of anthropic transfer migrate as displacement spaces become saturated: from spatial to social, then from social to temporal and cognitive.

Source: Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19433085

Author: Lalut, Stéphane

Language: English

Topic: World Systems and Global Transformations

Subfield: Political Science and International Relations

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

OpenAlex ID: W7150973173

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