'Globalisation may have been prehistoric practice'

Ancient civilisations engaged in globalisation more than previously believed, according to a study which suggests that an integrated global economy is not a recent phenomenon and may have benefited societies for ages.

The researchers from University of Central Florida in the US found that societies often experienced booms and busts simultaneously, a process known as synchrony.

They used radiocarbon dating and historical records to measure energy consumption through a period of history ranging from about 10,000 to 400 years ago, a time frame that encompasses a large portion of the current Holocene era.

The greater the energy consumption, the more likely a society was booming with population and political and economic activity.

Some of the areas examined included the western US, the British Isles, Australia and northern Chile.

The radiocarbon dates came from preserved organic items such as seeds, animal bones and burned wood from ancient trash deposits at these sites.

Radiocarbon dating measures the radioactive decay of the atom carbon-14 from organic matter to find the organic matter's age.

The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggest that early globalisation was possibly a strategy for societies to grow through migration, trade and conflict with other, distant societies when a society's carrying capacity began to be overloaded.

It is especially important to study societies' resilience, or ability to recover from a disaster, over the long term, and radiocarbon dating is a useful tool for this assessment, researchers said.

The rise and fall of societies seems to be an inherent part of civilisation.

"Our data stop at 400 years ago, and there has been a huge change from organic economies to fossil fuel economies," said Jacopo A Baggio, an assistant professor at University of Central Florida.

"However, similar synchronisation trends continue today even more given the interdependencies of our societies," said Baggio.

The study suggests the process of societies creating connections and becoming interdependent, known as globalisation, also played out among human society millennia ago.

"If every culture was unique, you would expect to see no synchrony, or harmony, across human records of energy consumption," said Jacob Freeman, an assistant professor at Utah State University in the US.

Although interconnectedness has advantages for societies, there can be downfalls as well, said Erick Robinson, a postdoctoral assistant research scientist at the University of Wyoming in the US.

"The more tightly connected and interdependent we become, the more vulnerable we are to a major social or ecological crisis in another country spreading to our country," Robinson said.