[T]here are important recurring patterns... throughout... human history over the past ten thousand years. - Peter Turchin

It became clear... through quantitative historical analysis that [throughout time] complex societies everywhere are affected by recurrent and, to a... degree, predictable waves of political instability, brought about by the same basic set of forces...

Historical data indicate that periods of enhanced instability and internal warfare usually extend for many years, with the median length... 10–15 years range.

I began my career... as an ecologist... studying the population dynamics of beetles, butterflies, mice, and deer. ...I embraced the turn of the field to complexity science, which mixes computer modeling with Big Data analytics to answer such questions as... why many animal populations go through boom-and-bust cycles. By the late 1990s... I began to consider how the same... approach could be brought to the study of human societies. A quarter of a century later, my colleagues... and I have built out a flourishing field... (from Clio... the... Greek mythological muse of history, and dynamics, the science of change)...