Does Progress always move in a straight line?

Is progress inevitable? Will progress continue forever?

Apr 18, 2024

I have an obsession with the concept of Progress. It is an extraordinarily useful and flexible concept. It enables us to understand our present world and our recent past. It is also a valuable concept for where we should be trying to head in the future.

For those who are not familiar with my work, in my book series and this Substack column, I use the following working definition of progress:
“the sustained improvement in the material standard of living of a large group of people over a long period of time.”

In particular, I focus on changes to the standard of living that are rapid enough and sustained enough that one person could notice positive changes within their lifetime.

Unfortunately, some people misunderstand what I mean by progress and assume that I mean something different. In particular, they think that acknowledging the existence of progress means that:

progress was inevitable, and
progress must continue forever.

I must admit that I am not sure why so many people jump to that conclusion, but it seems to be a fairly widespread assumption.

So let me dispel a few misunderstandings with a few bold statements:

For the vast majority of human history, there was no progress. This was largely due to fundamental geographical constraints on food production, and elites expropriated what little food surplus was created.
Even after progress evolved, few societies experienced it until the last 30 years.
Human material progress was not inevitable. I believe that it was unlikely, perhaps even a freak accident.
That is why I believe that advanced technological civilizations on other planets are far less common than many people believe. It is possible (though unlikely) that we are the only one in the universe.
Future progress is also not inevitable. It depends on us maintaining the Five Keys to Progress in at least one large nation.
The maintenance of the Five Keys to Progress in the United States is particularly important because that nation has been a driving force in global progress since 1870. Its role has been particularly important since 1945 and 1990.
Many, perhaps most, political ideologies seem to want to deliberately assault the Five Keys to Progress and How Progress Works. If they succeed, they will destroy progress.
Past progress does not mean that the end state will be a good one. I believe that the extinction of our species is almost a foregone conclusion, although it is unlikely to occur within our lifetimes. We could also establish a very dystopic world in the medium term or even possibly in the near term.

Having said all the above, I do not mean to imply that human societies were stagnant until the advent of modern progress. Far from it.

While the modern era is best explained by the concept of Progress, the pre-modern era was best explained by the concept of Cultural Evolution. I plan future posts on the topic, but for now, I would suggest listening to or watching my book summaries of the two most important books on the subject:

Not By Genes Alone by Richerson & Boyd
The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Boyd (who built on their theory)

If you prefer to read, I would recommend my book summaries on the topic.

I do not want to go into great detail here, but a short-hand definition is:

Progress = societal change that leads to the increased material standard of living of the masses.

Cultural Evolution = societal change that does not lead to the increased material standard of living of the masses.

So the real topic of this post is: “Does Cultural Evolution lead to a straight line?” but I think my title is just a bit more “click-batey” so I went ahead with it. In other words, can we look at one society in history and see a clear progression tending in a certain direction?

Some of the following is an excerpt from my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement. You can purchase discounted copies of my book at my website, or pay full prize at Amazon.

Take a look at the graphic above. It is my attempt to condense all of human history into one graphic. If this is the first time that you have seen this graphic, I would recommend reading my first post on the topic. The graphic combines three critical concepts to understand how humans created progress out of poverty:

Society Type (essentially how a society acquires enough food to eat; see a previous post explaining this concept).
Biome (essentially the dominant vegetation in any one geographical area; see a previous post explaining this concept).
Enabling Technologies (key technologies that enable societies to transition from one Society Type to another; these technologies typically are related to food and energy).

Back to our question: “Does Cultural Evolution lead to a straight line?”

At first glance at this graphic, the answer appears to be “Yes.” The general trend has been for new society types to evolve and each one led to an acceleration in the rate of technological innovation.

Societies gradually become more complex

Starting at the white box labeled “Apes & Early Hominids” at the bottom of the graphic, it is possible to trace a weaving line up through:

Apes & Early Hominids (at the bottom of the graphic)
Hunter-Gatherer societies
Horticultural societies
Agrarian societies
Commercial societies
Industrial societies (at the top of the graphic)

Each of the above society types tends to have:

more efficient food production systems
higher populations
higher population density
larger, more complex, and more differentiated:
- technologies,
- skills, and
- social organizations
- economic structure
- political structure
higher rates of innovation

Similarities to biological evolution

This pattern is remarkably similar to what Andrew Bourke noticed about biological evolution. In his book, Principles of Social Evolution, Andrew Bourke lists the major transitions of biological evolution (a summary of this book). Each transition involved the combination of simple objects to create more complex objects that are fundamentally different from their constituent parts:

Organic molecules combining to form replicating nucleic acid molecules.
Replicating nucleic acid molecules combining to form chromosomes.
Very simple organisms combining to form single-celled organisms.
Single-celled organisms combining to form multi-celled organisms.
Multi-celled organisms combining to form social organizations (i.e. flocks of birds, herds of mammals, and schools of fish).

Unilineal evolution

This apparent natural progression in level of complexity is exactly why the early anthropologists and sociologists believed in the “unilineal evolution of societies.” For example, most Enlightenment thinkers and 19th Century thinkers believed that all societies started as Hunter-Gatherers, then at some point transitioned into Herding societies, and then at a later date, they transitioned into Agricultural societies.

Adam Smith and some thinkers within the Scottish Enlightenment added a fourth type of society, Commercial societies, to explain the transition going on at that time. Adam Smith thought all societies would transition through all the other society types until they inevitably transitioned into modern Commercial societies. In fact, Adam Smith's classic work, The Wealth of Nations, came directly out of his desire to understand how Commercial societies function.

Later in the 19^th Century, thinkers such as Henry Home, Edward Burnett Taylor, Lewis Henry Morgan developed more complex versions of the theory. In the 20^th Century, Julian Seward and Gerhard Lenski further developed the concept. At one time, Society Type was a dominant paradigm in anthropology and sociology, but it has lost favor within those fields.

But it is not a linear progression

Notice, however, that these transitions take place on the global level, but they do not all take place in the same geographical area:

The transition from Early Hominids to Hunter-Gatherer societies took place in the Savannah biome (either Eastern Africa or Southern Africa to be exact).
The transition from Hunter-Gatherer societies to Horticultural societies took place in the Mediterranean biome (the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East to be exact).
The transition from Horticultural societies to Agrarian societies took place in the Riverine biome (the Tigrus-Euphrates river basin to be exact).
The transition from Agrarian societies to Commercial societies took place in the Temperate Forest biome (the Medieval city/states in Northern Italy to be exact).
The transition from Commercial societies to Industrial societies took place in a different location (Britain to be exact).

Now the fact that each transition took place in different geographical locations does not prove that one geographical region couldn't have made all the transitions without assistance from abroad, but the importance of biomes suggests that it was at the very least unlikely. It seems very unlikely that one region could have gone through all five transitions. Just as important, the time delays between each transition are all very lengthy:

The Hunter-Gatherer society remained the most complex society type (except the relatively rare Fishing societies) for at least 90,000 years and probably significantly longer!
After the invention of agriculture, the Horticultural society remained the most complex society type for 4500 years.
Afterwards, the Agrarian society remained the most complex society type for over 4000 years.
Finally, the Commercial society remained the most complex society type for about 600 years.
Industrial societies have been the most complex society type for almost 200 years.

Now it is important to note that during these long periods, these societies were ongoing cultural change and technological innovation, so they were not static. Just as important, migrants from these relatively advanced society types spread their means of food production to new ecoregions until they filled in all natural environments where the society type could support itself.

If you look at it from the perspective of specific biomes, we can see thousands of years of relative stability. The seven biomes on the left-hand side of the above graphic were relatively untouched by societal change. Societies in those biomes were effectively trapped in Hunter-Gatherer or Herding societies (plus a few isolated Fishing societies) for tens of thousands of years. Meanwhile, the middle three biomes were effectively trapped in Horticultural societies for up to 10,000 years.

So most societies experienced relative stagnation with no hope of progressive change.

Map with the Temperate Forest (yellow) and Mediterranean (rust) biomes highlighted

History is dominated by a few regions

Now take a look at the right-hand side of the “Overview of World History” graphic above. All the most complex society types were concentrated in just three biomes. It should not be a surprise that recorded history was almost completely isolated to the:

Temperate Forest biome
Mediterranean biome
Riverine biome.

And those biomes were almost exclusively concentrated in the Northern Temperate latitudes. Ecoregions with those biomes in the Southern Hemisphere were very small and isolated, so their impact on history was minimal until very recently.

Once the steel plow was invented in the 1830s, however, the Temperate Grasslands of the world became some of the largest and most productive agricultural regions in the world. But none of this would have been possible without the evolution of Agrarian and Commercial societies in other regions.

Same map but with Temperate Grasslands biomes in dark brown

So what are we to make of all this?

Virtually all of human history had very little change within one generation, and what little change there was was restricted to about 10-20% of the land mass.

Progress was even more limited

When we shift to material progress (by which I mean increased material standard of living for the masses), the impact was even more limited. The societies that actually experienced progress change were:

Extremely limited before the Industrial Revolution. Only a few tiny Commercial societies experienced anything like material progress.
Largely restricted to Europe and North America until quite recently.
Only became a global trend since 1991.

Most likely, this is the best of all possible outcomes. The most likely alternative was that material progress would have happened nowhere.

So no, progress (and societal change) does not move in a straight line, nor was it inevitable.

From Poverty to Progress