TY - JOUR AU - Turchin, Peter AU - Adams, Jonathan M. AU - Hall, Thomas D. PY - 2006/08/26 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - East-West Orientation of Historical Empires and Modern States JF - Journal of World-Systems Research JA - JWSR VL - 12 IS - 2 SE - General Section DO - 10.5195/jwsr.2006.369 UR - https://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/jwsr/article/view/369 SP - 219-229 AB - Jared Diamond (1997) hypothesized that if environment is important in limiting the spread of cultures, cultural units would also tend to extend more broadly along lines of latitude than along lines of longitude. We test this hypothesis by studying the range shapes of (a) historical empires and (b) modern states. Our analysis of the 62 largest empires in history supports this conjecture: there is a statistically significant tendency to expand more east-west than north-south. Modern states also show this trend, although the results are not statistically significant. ER -