Friday essay: how societies evolved into fear-dominated g...

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Ancient ruins in Palmyra, Syria. Russian Defense Ministry Press Service/AAP Friday essay: how societies evolved into fear-dominated goliaths – then collapsed Published: November 27, 2025 7.08pm GMT John Long, Flinders University

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John Long
Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders University

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John Long receives funding from The Australian Research Council

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https://doi.org/10.64628/AA.pajfgwyyp

https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-societies-evolved-into-fear-dominated-goliaths-then-collapsed-263800 https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-societies-evolved-into-fear-dominated-goliaths-then-collapsed-263800 Link copied Share article

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We think of ancient civilisations as operating very differently from the way our economy works today. Yet the Bronze Age Assyrians living in Mesopotamia, around 4,000 to 3,000 years ago, began the basis of modern capitalism, in a region spanning most of modern-day Iraq, eastern Syria and southeastern Turkey. The Assyrian empire was the root of what many scholars would now call “the West”.

Cuneiform writing, the oldest in the world, records evidence of credit, loans and debits as “virtual money” and the rise of elite merchants holding monopolies on trade. They traded Afghanistan tin from the city of Kanesh (in modern Turkey) throughout their empire, working as multinational corporations do today.

The Assyrian business community also had the first businesswomen and female investors. Generous tax breaks were given to merchants who promoted good business. The famous Code of Hammurabi reads like the fine print of a business deal, stating rules for granting credit and imposing taxes and tariffs on trade.

Review: Goliath’s Curse – Luke Kemp (Penguin)

Such claims loom large in Australian existential risk researcher Luke Kemp’s highly provocative, page-turning new book Goliath’s Curse, named after the biblical story (Book of Samuel 1, 17) of the Philistine warrior giant Goliath, killed by young David with his slingshot. Goliath states are ruled by violence or impending threat of it.

This book will reset everything you thought you knew about the rise and fall of ancient to modern civilisations (states) – with seriously worrying implications for understanding our current world political landscape.

Kemp is a senior research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University. His book gives a probing, well-researched account of how states evolved from Paleolithic times into the giant global goliaths of today.

To do this, he draws on new databases, one called MOROS, (Mortality of States), another named Seshat Global History Databank. The latter is the world’s largest resource on global history (named after the Egyptian goddess of knowledge).

In the Guardian this week, Peter Lewis, director of research company Essential, used the book to contextualise new poll results showing “when it comes to Goliath-induced catastrophes, we are on high alert”. For example, 67% of us are concerned about the development of self-aware AI, 62% about social upheaval through rising inequality, and 59% about the catastrophic impacts of climate change.

A 17th-century map of Mesopotamia, which housed the Assyrian empire – and the beginnings of modern capitalism. Breuning Von Buchenbach Hans Jacob - 1612/Picryl

What threat do Goliath states pose?

Goliath states are centralised institutions that impose rules and extract resources from a population within a closed territory. All states in history, on average, last around 326 years, Kemp writes.

The Later Han Dynasty of China lasted only four years. The longest-lasting states, such as the Byzantine Empire of the Mediterranean, extended for a millennium – and the Ghana Empire in Africa lasted 900 years.

Genghis Khan: the Mongol Empire, under the Khans, was one of the largest states that ever existed. Picryl

The largest states that ever existed include the Roman Empire, the Khan’s Mongol empire and the British Empire. The British Empire, which lasted nearly 400 years, was the largest that ever existed. In 1925, it covered 35 million square kilometres – or around a quarter of the world’s total land area.

The Western Roman Empire, which lasted almost 800 years, was around 4.4 million square km in 390 CE, Kemp writes. The Mongol empire under the Khans was the largest land-based contiguous empire, spanning around 24 million square km – yet it was overstretched, with limited ability to control its conquered lands, so only lasted 88 years.

Goliath states are dominated by fear and violence, or the threat of it. They have existed since the ancient Egyptians, Kemp writes, and continue to play a major role in the current world political map.

Current Goliath states include most countries whose military plays a significant role in their trading or acquisition of resources: either directly (by military threat of invasion) or by implied means (such as the threat of nuclear war, or the use of military strength as a deterrent). The United States, Russia, China – and even Australia and Norway – are Goliath states by Kemp’s definition.

Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington. Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AAP

The power struggles of all human history come from manipulation of four forms of power, he writes. These are decision-making, control through threats and violence, control of resources, and control of information.

Wealth inequality acts a prime driver of societal collapse. Elon Musk’s recent trillion-dollar pay deal is a prime example of humanity reaching a new peak of inequality.

Rising inequality makes war more likely

Inequality within states is driven by what Kemp calls “Goliath Fuel”, based on extraction of wealth and resources from the masses to the elite few. It requires three things.

First, lootable resources (such as grain, metals or domesticated animals). Second, a contained geographical area with well-defined barriers (land between seas, mountains, deserts and rivers). And third, a new or advanced kind of weapon (bronze swords, long bows, gunpowder, nuclear missiles).

Goliath Fuel makes Goliath states larger and more powerful, often with the accumulated power and wealth transferring down family lines, as with royal families or powerful dictatorships. (One example is North Korea, whose fuel in recent decades has been its transferable wealth to dictator family members built up from trade, particularly in weapons to Russia, and its formidable army with its nuclear arsenal.)

The definitions of territorial boundaries for states have changed radically with time. Ancient states were mostly closed off by natural land boundaries (mountains, seas, desert, rivers). As empires grew, lands were bounded by walls or natural territories. Today, with modern technologies, states are enclosed by laws, passports and advanced mass surveillance systems.

A 2019 test of military weapon systems in North Korea. Kcna Via Kns/AAP

Kemp says that as inequalities rise, so does the likelihood of wars. Democracy is on the wane today: 5.7 billion people (71% of Earth’s population) now live in an autocracy. About 42 currently democratic countries are becoming more autocratic (as measured by 60 variables, including fairness of elections, independence of the media, and equal access to the state’s resources).

The 2025 V-Dem Democracy Report shows that the share of the world’s population living in “autocratising” countries rose 31% within the past decade, going from 7% in 2004 to 38% in 2024. (It’s produced by the V-Dem Institute, which produces the largest global dataset on democracy.)

Kemp points out how the US is rapidly becoming “more autocratic”:

The democracy and public services we often take for granted as being the natural condition of states are an historical aberration. One that is slowly being undone as the world drifts back to the historical default of greater inequality, autocracy, and extraction of wealth and power by elites.

The V-Dem report identified the US as undergoing the “fastest evolving episode of autocratization [it] has been through in modern history”. President Donald Trump, it reported, is “testing the limits of executive power” at an “unprecedented scale”.

Collapse?

Twenty years ago, Jared Diamond’s internationally bestselling book Collapse also discussed the decline of certain states.

It selected case studies of some ancient civilisations (or, states) to show how they collapsed due to environmental degradation, power struggles or colonial empires taking over by introducing diseases, or overpowering them with superior weapons.

Jared Diamond. Lloyd Jones/AAP

Diamond identified two crucial choices that determined whether past societies failed or survived: long-term thinking, and reconsidering core values.

I asked Diamond via email about the probability of societal collapse happening soon. “I rate the chances of a global collapse within the next century as somewhere between 49% and 51%,” he told me.

Kemp’s book is at odds with some of the findings in Collapse, though some of these disagreements might be seen as different sides of the same coin. Diamond told me “much more information has accumulated” since his book was published in 2005. “Nevertheless, numerous archaeologists/anthropologists still cling to the belief that traditional societies before the arrival of the Europeans were stable and environmentally benign.”

That belief, he says, is popular “even for Easter Island, despite its being the best documented and most complete pre-European decline: complete deforestation, and extinction of almost all native tree species”.

Kemp argues Easter Island (Rapanui) societies were at their peak when Europeans arrived in the 1860s and began taking a large proportion of the population away as slaves, or infected them with debilitating diseases.

He attributes Rapa Nui’s collapse to genocide, rather than Diamond’s interpretation as ecocide.

Luke Kemp attibutes the collapse of Rapa Nui (or Easter Island) to genocide, rather than Jared Diamond’s interpretation as ecocide. Karen Schwarz/AAP

Empires and collapse

Kemp shows that as Goliath states expanded by acquiring other states, they became empires.

The authoritarian impulse of their political rulers was often triggered in their neighbouring states as a way to keep pace in the “arms race”. For example, during the Cold War between the US and Russia, other countries raced to acquire nuclear weapons at the same time. Today, there are nine states with nuclear arsenals and around 10,000 stockpiled nuclear weapons.

The modern “Silicon Goliath” is defined as the state where the lootable resources are not grains, metals or domestic animals, but data, fossil fuels and commodities. The walls containing the state are now monitored electronically, and the main weapons that can be monopolised are nuclear missiles and killer robots (including armed autonomous drones).

A NATO exercise tests ready-to-use counter-drone systems. Filip Singer/AAP

The Silicon Goliath feeds on data it obtains illegally or unethically (without permissions or paying fees to the creators). This, writes Kemp, means artificial intelligence programs and influence can be monetised as a modern lootable resource.

One of the book’s most interesting observations is the archaeological evidence it provides that humans did not evolve a natural tendency for violence. Instead, violence is associated with the rise of increasingly unequal societies.

Violent interactions become more widespread as cities develop and expand. Archaeologists examined 3,539 skeletons found in the Early to Middle Bronze age in Mesopotamia and found a dramatic increase in violent traumas due to increasing urbanisation.

This book is unique in its tone and style. It presents facts wrapped in an engaging set of narratives. The futuristic predictions and discussions are solidly backed up by comparative data from the newly developed databases and extensive references to authoritative publications.

While the endgame message is grim, we all know what’s coming – though many chose to deny the facts. Like Frankenstein’s monster, Goliath states are human-made creations, mostly out of individual control.

‘Death Star’ syndrome

Kemp describes our current world as entering the “Death Star” Syndrome. This is a reference to Star Wars’ ultimate weapon, wielded by the Empire. It destroys planets – yet can be destroyed by one special targeted attack to its weakest point.

While we appear to be growing increasingly robust, the Earth is becoming far more fragile and vulnerable to collapse than we think.

We humans can be incredibly intelligent and find solutions to most of the world’s problems. But the act of implementing such solutions always comes down to politics.

Politics runs by a hierarchical power network, where in all cases there is some degree of inequality as to who gets what they want. The very wealthy can employ lobbyists to effect political change; the poor cannot.

And while we can vote for the parties we hope will effect change, often they sidestep the major issues we voted them in to address and run their own agendas. A prime example is taking place in the US, where Donald J. Trump was voted in recently mainly due to poor economic conditions.

In the last few weeks, the White House cancelled the SNAP food vouchers for 42 million US citizens who needed them, even after the Supreme Court ruled against the action.

A new hope?

The glimmer of hope at the end of the book comes from two factors.

To slay the Goliath state, we must use both knowledge and technology – both of which have evolved enormously over the past two decades. Kemp touts them as our best hope, if used properly, for avoiding either an apocalyptic nuclear war or terminal environmental collapse.

It will require more of us to vote against the apocalypse, to trust and rely on expert knowledge (not politicians’ opinions), and to work to expand and refine democracy as the principal way states around the world are governed.

Most importantly, we must work together to keep opposing domination by Goliath states – which will, by their nature, always seek to control peaceful states.

Goliath’s Curse is a must-read for anyone concerned with the current state of the world.