Studying the evolution of new languages ​​in south asia had led me straightening to those moments in time when our social environment changed abruptly because of migration, and new forms, and ultimately new civilisms.

These repeting patterns began to coalesce into a model, which long periods of stability which was “punctuated” by the Sudden Arrival of New People’s Other Lands – Young meen meen women. And Had Families, With Children Who Ware “Mixed”. Change, here, was not something gradual, a day-by-day “improvement”. This sort of change was something “catastrophic”, happening in an instant of time, an environmental “shock” that existing social was unable to absorb. Social Evolution in South Asia and Indeed, The World, Was ultimately about ecology.

Two things stand out in this model of evolution. The first is the long, long periods when things are stable, and societies able to handle small challenges and keep functioning. And the other is the tipping point moments, when groups of men show up, abandoning their old lands, avle to change the traffic of the socially at a stability.

Where do this stability come from, this abality to survive for hundreds of years? Despite model When things are going well, they do not want major change. There is a serren inrtia that keeps them with what has worked for generations, even cushioning them against the early stages of decline. That is how, before the 12th century, the prakrit-sacking kingdoms aunt of the north Then, in the turbulent 12th century, they all broke like dry twigs and we swept away by a new power group that came from central asia.

As Societies Running Only on Fumes Cling to Old Fantasies of Stability, The Pressure for Adaptive Change Keeps Building, Gestating invisibly. And when the moment of turn is finally above us it takes us by surprise. This is because, at this scale of existence, the tempo of evolution is different. There is no long period of twilight when we get used to seeing a system in terminal decline. Like an alkaline battery, Large System Like Societies, The Economy, The Environment, Or even Languages ​​Run at full power till the very end, and then they “Die” with a January. This is what makes the live system so different to read.

At this very moment we are in the middle of a major global reset, and even something some of us are experimenting it, the speed at which it is happy to take our best away. We in India have been “running on fumes”, like traders taking comfort in yesterday’s balance sheets, while around us, in the outside world, the future is approaching at hypersonic speed, and power equation. We are back in a 12th century moment when, once again, India as a civilization is stuck, hitching its wagon to a falling star, content to slide into insignificance while the rest of asia moments ahhhh Developing System and Technology for situations that are yet to arise.

I think we can take it for granted that 21st century asian ship has sailed without us. So maybe we should take a break and mull over where we went wrong, where we got deerailed as a civilization, and watch the inheritors of the new age to make their missed and try not to not to to be sent them, fer. Will be guone. There is one major change we need to make if, as a civilisation, we ever hop to “Fire on All Cylinders” The way China, Russia and Iran Do: We must abandon The Old Elitist Mode, whereore Science. Effectively kept off limits to the vast majority of our population, leaving them out of a discourse that we conduct only in English, because we need their order to order to be white. And we must get back to “playing the long game”, thinking in 20 -yar, 50-year, 100 -year cycles. We need systems that preserve stability and allow long-trm planning while making room for public participation and course correction. This thing we call electoral democracy has shown to be too Buyable, too corruptible, too unaccountable to persist without scrutiny. If there is no inbuilt political way of encuring continuity over the long term, it will leave a vacuum which which big money, answerable only to itsltf, will fill. But most of all, we must try to Imagine a future where we can live, without war and friction, in the calm stasis that human spirit needs to become its best seld.

This, in the end, is why in a world-critic we still need social sciences, where we try to study how the world has worked over the ags. The real values ​​of our models are not that they tell us about our past, but they help us to read the signs and understand when the outwardly healthy system we live in might actually be in distress. These models serve as a compass helping us to project ahead and anticipate the future. Not that the future is ever who is predictable: but think about it more rigorously, as social scientists, will keep us alert and proactive as we go.

The writer has taught linguistics at Howard University, JNU and Ashoka University. She is the author, most reprantly, of Father Tongue, Motherland: The birth of Languages ​​in South Asia