3 ms·

What surprised me was the number of battles fought in Europe. It appeared to be the most violent place on the map. Is this because of a bias in the collection o

by jostmey 11y ago

What surprised me was the number of battles fought in Europe. It appeared to be the most violent place on the map. Is this because of a bias in the collection of the data, or is this representative of Human history?

ross-life 11y ago
To me it seems like Human history. European countries (and their various incantations from the past) spent hundreds upon hundreds of years competing and fighting with each other other everything imaginable. They even spent large chunks of that fighting themselves in the numerous civil wars each country had. But if you look into Middle East or Asia history, they went through approximatively similar periods. Perhaps more of European history was recorded/found?
rntz 11y ago
Both. There's a massive bias in our historical records towards Europe. But Europe has also seen a lot of wars.
jcranmer 11y ago
There is listed just one "battle" in the Americas for all of time through 1500, the Tikal-Calamakul wars. This is a poor representation even of the wars we know occurred, let alone all the stuff we don't know happened due to the lack of writing systems. This data set appears to not be a particularly well-curated dataset, and it looks to my (non-expert) eyes to have an intrinsically high bias towards high detail of some key Western European conflicts even beyond the general bias imparted by the fact that histories of Europe tend to be the most well-curated and accessible if you're an English speaker.
- dalke 11y ago
  I agree. Here's a list of battles which took place in New Mexico (where I used to live) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_fought_in_New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_fought_in_New_... . The 1540 Battle of Hawikku, which is in the time period you mentioned, is missing, as are the other NM battles until the mid-1800s.

3 ms·

What surprised me was the number of battles fought in Europe. It appeared to be the most violent place on the map. Is this because of a bias in the collection o

by jostmey 11y ago

ross-life 11y ago
To me it seems like Human history. European countries (and their various incantations from the past) spent hundreds upon hundreds of years competing and fighting with each other other everything imaginable. They even spent large chunks of that fighting themselves in the numerous civil wars each country had. But if you look into Middle East or Asia history, they went through approximatively similar periods. Perhaps more of European history was recorded/found?
rntz 11y ago
Both. There's a massive bias in our historical records towards Europe. But Europe has also seen a lot of wars.
jcranmer 11y ago
There is listed just one "battle" in the Americas for all of time through 1500, the Tikal-Calamakul wars. This is a poor representation even of the wars we know occurred, let alone all the stuff we don't know happened due to the lack of writing systems. This data set appears to not be a particularly well-curated dataset, and it looks to my (non-expert) eyes to have an intrinsically high bias towards high detail of some key Western European conflicts even beyond the general bias imparted by the fact that histories of Europe tend to be the most well-curated and accessible if you're an English speaker.
- dalke 11y ago
  I agree. Here's a list of battles which took place in New Mexico (where I used to live) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_fought_in_New_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_fought_in_New_... . The 1540 Battle of Hawikku, which is in the time period you mentioned, is missing, as are the other NM battles until the mid-1800s.