美国斯坦福大学历史学教授伊恩·莫里斯是一位训练有素的考古学家,他以其特有的全新角度解释西方文明的兴起,采用定量的方法衡量不同社会的长期表现,为比较不同时代和地点的社会,他还构筑了一套社会发展指数,并对上个冰川世纪结束以来1.5万年的东西方国家进行全方位扫描,时间跨度之大令人震撼。从方法上看,莫里斯的灵感其实源于联合国的人文发展指数(HDI)。莫里斯认为可以从四个 Ian Morris, a professor of history at Stanford University in the United States, is a well-trained archaeologist who explains the rise of Western civilization with a unique and new perspective and uses quantitative methods to measure the long-term performance of different societies. In order to compare different times He also built a set of social development indices and conducted a full-scale scan of the 15,000-year East-West countries that have taken place since the end of the last Ice Age. Methodically, Maurice’s inspiration stems in fact from the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). Morris thinks it can be from four