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Phase 5 · Jul 2026

Phase 5: Agriculture & Cities

Chain Reaction of Energy Surplus

Core Question

Why did agriculture trigger civilization?

/// Reading List

Against the Grain (James C. Scott)
The Art of Not Being Governed (James C. Scott)
The Dawn of Everything (Graeber & Wengrow)
Triumph of the City (Edward Glaeser)
Guns, Germs, and Steel (Jared Diamond)
1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Eric H. Cline)
The Origins of Political Order (Francis Fukuyama)
The Collapse of Complex Societies (Joseph Tainter)
The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jane Jacobs)
Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Douglass North)

/// Interactive Works 10

5-0

Settlement Tradeoff

Interactive Experience
Done

If you knew settlement meant more disease, longer hours, and worse nutrition — would you still settle down?

Canvas 2D SVG Radar Time Series
Enter Experience
5-1

Grain vs Tuber

Interactive Experience
Done

Why do states love wheat but not tubers? Why was the earliest writing a ledger?

Canvas 2D DOM Drag JSON-driven
Enter Experience
5-2

Escape Map

Interactive Experience
Done

Hill peoples are not 'backward' — they actively chose not to be governed.

SVG Map Time Slider GeoJSON
Enter Experience
5-3

Social Form Explorer

Interactive Experience
Done

Complex cities ≠ hierarchical states. Çatalhöyük: 8,000 people, no king, for 1,500 years.

D3.js Scatter SVG Map Canvas Animation
Enter Experience
5-4

Agglomeration Engine

Interactive Experience
Done

Why does doubling a city's size yield 20% more patents? What is Silicon Valley's true secret?

Canvas 2D D3.js Scatter Bettencourt Scaling
Enter Experience
5-5

City DNA

Interactive Experience
Done

Manhattan, Houston, SF — same demand, three outcomes. Why do Dharavi residents 'choose' the slum?

CSS Grid Sliders Jacobs Score
Enter Experience
5-6

Bronze Age Network

Interactive Experience
Done

'Globalization' existed 3,300 years ago. One Afghan mine cut off → the entire Mediterranean collapsed.

Canvas Force Graph Cascade BFS
Enter Experience
5-7

Collapse Lab

Interactive Experience
Done

Within 1177 BCE: Hittites fall, Mycenae collapses, writing vanishes for 400 years. Collapse has no single cause.

Canvas 2D Non-linear sim JSON presets
Enter Experience
5-8

Grain → State → Land

Interactive Experience
Done

From Sumerian ledgers to modern land titles — writing, taxation, and property are one causal chain.

SVG Timeline Decision Tree
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5-9

Domus Energy

Interactive Experience
Done

Sun → photosynthesis → grain → granary → bureaucracy — the chain through which the state steals energy from the sun.

Canvas 2D Sankey D3.js
Enter Experience
Phase 4: Language Phase 6: Knowledge & Institutions