Extracting geographic information from historical texts presents unique challenges. To address these challenges, this study leverages generative large language models (LLMs) to extract historical toponyms and their corresponding location references from texts. The coordinates of the extracted toponyms are then identified by a historical geocoder, which also calculates their maximum error distances based on the location references, indicating the degree of uncertainty. Both the extraction and geocoding processes are integrated into a novel tool named 'His-Geo' (https://github.com/yukiyuqichen/His-Geo). To evaluate the results, this study also curates a manually annotated dataset, the Early China Historical Geographic Corpus (CHGC-Early), filling the gap in the absence of geographic data for early China in existing gazetteers and providing a benchmark dataset for training and evaluating approaches for tasks related to geographic information extraction from premodern Chinese texts. The evaluation results show a satisfactory 0.831 F1 score for the GPT-4o model, demonstrating the remarkable capability of generative large language models in extracting geographic information from lengthy, unstructured texts that encompass diverse and sometimes conflicting views.

Kinship is an important issue in history studies. The kinship database is the key resource to analyze the structure, succession, and evolution of families. However, one kinship could be expressed by different words, and one kinship word may be vague and ambiguous in natural languages, especially in pre-modern Chinese. As in the well-known China Biographical Database, which contains 484,066 kinship instances, there are more than 400 kinship words. Thus, the relations extracted from history texts cannot be directly used to build family networks. In this article, we put forward a novel method to normalize kinship relations by three basic relations: father-descendant, mother-descendant, and husband-wife, as well as the gender of each person. All types of kinships are normalized to these three basic relations. In this way, we identified 178,390 basic kinship relations to fully describe the original 462,147 unambiguous kinship instances, while finding 3,989 inconsistencies and inferring 5,805 missing persons. Then, we generate 29,423 families by basic kinship relations and analyze the properties of families, such as their sizes, depths, and intermarriages across families. This type of family analysis had been almost impossible prior to normalizing kinship relations. Therefore, this technique enables improved family database construction and deeper quantitative analysis.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Our target article empirically tested the Big Gods Hypothesis which proposes that beliefs in moralizing supernatural punishment (MSP) contributed to the evolution of socio-political complexity (SPC) in world history. We tested this hypothesis using a suite of measures of MSP, SPC, and other potential evolutionary drivers coded in Seshat: Global History Databank. Our analyses indi-cate that intensity of warfare and productivity of agriculture were major drivers in the evolution of both SPC and MSP. The correlation between social complexity and moralizing religion resulted from shared evolutionary drivers, rather than from direct causal relationships between these two variables. Most commentaries on the target article broadly accept our conclusions, but some argue that alternative measures might be used in future studies before the Big Gods Hypothesis can be conclusively rejected. In this response, we argue that while some of these alternative measures should be developed, they are closely related to the ones we have already adopted. Thus, it seems unlikely that further research will give rise to substantially di ff erent outcomes. A particularly fruitful aspect of the discussion is that it illustrates both the pitfalls and productive a ff or-dances of transdisciplinary research that seeks to bridge the “ two cultures ” of the humanities and sciences. Our target article has

The causes, consequences, and timing of the rise of moralizing religions in world history have been the focus of intense debate. Progress has been limited by the availability of quantitative data to test competing theories, by divergent ideas regarding both predictor and outcomes variables, and by differences of opinion over methodology. To address all these problems, we utilize Seshat: Global History Databank, a large storehouse of information designed to test theories concerning the evolutionary drivers of social complexity in world history. In addition to the Big Gods hypothesis, which proposes that moralizing religion contributed to the success of increasingly large-scale complex societies, we consider the role of warfare, animal husbandry, and agricultural productivity in the rise of moralizing religions. Using a broad range of new measures of belief in moralizing supernatural punishment, we find strong support for previous research showing that such beliefs did not drive the rise of social complexity in world history. By contrast, our analyses indicate that intergroup warfare, supported by resource availability, played the most significant role in the evolution of both social complexity and moralizing religions. Thus, the correlation between social complexity and moralizing religion would seem to result from shared evolutionary drivers, rather than from strong direct causal relationships between these two variables. The data, methods, and results presented in this paper have been made publicly available online for others to inspect and critique, allowing additional analyses to be run and alternative assumptions to be tested, prior to peer review and publication.

Understanding changes over time in the spatial distribution of diverse religious institutions, whether done as a local study or as a national study, faces certain problems. Foremost amongst these is the inconsistency of the historical records found in local gazetteers. For some areas we have extensive records, but other areas limit themselves to state-recognized sites. Second is the relative lack of geographical specificity in giving the locations of institutions. Third is the frequent absence of dates and uncertainty about historical continuity. Using geospatial analysis to investigate a 15th-century record of religious sites from one prefecture, Jinhua 金華, in southeastern China, this chapter explores ways of deriving larger significances from the data as it is given in the historical record.

Named entity information in Chinese local gazetteers supports extending the Chinese Biographical Database (CBDB) project. Instead of using regular expressions method and manual work to tag biographical information using LoGaRT, we propose an automatic deep learning method that uses tagged data to train a Bi-LSTM-CRF model that can then be applied to an untagged dataset without manual work. This method can not only dramatically improve tagging efficiency, but also overcome the shortcomings of regular expression in named entity justification by utilizing semantic information. Moreover, we employ the advanced pre-trained language model, BERT, to encode our word vectors and further improve performance. This method has performed very well on our local gazetteers dataset and extracted data for CBDB. This experiment can also support our further work on unstructured, narrative historical data and demonstrates the applicability of deep learning methods to ancient Chinese texts.

Lü Zuqian's Compacts Peter Bol The compacts that Lü Zuqian wrote out for his students1 are interesting in their own right and for their differences with the better-known rules that Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) later prepared for his White Deer Grotto Academy (Bailudong shuyuan 白鹿洞書院). Lü and Zhu had a history going back to about 1160 and lasting until Lü's death in 1181. The translation that follows is meant in the first place to make Lü's work available, supplemented by the White Deer Grotto rules for contrast.2 Lü's rules are also a compact (guiyue 規約) that bind the students to him and to each other. Here Hoyt Tillman's use of the term "fellowship" to describe the followers of the Learning of the Way (Daoxue 道學) is particularly apt.3 Lü is creating a fellowship, in which family background and political status are not supposed to get in the way of how the tongzhi 同志—men of like mind or brethren—interact. The only ranking Lü allows within this fellowship is by age. When Lü Zuqian began to teach in Wuzhou 婺州 in Liangzhe East circuit 兩浙東路 (modern Jinhua 金華, Zhejiang), his local connections were not strong. His grandfather Lü Bengzhong 呂弸中 (1090–1146) had been given a house in Jinhua as a refugee from the north but spent much of his time in service.4 The family also began a graveyard at Mingzhao Mountain 明招山 in Wuyi 武義 county for the descendants of Bengzhong's father, Lü Haowen 呂好問 (1064–1131).5 The family was illustrious. Haowen's grandfather [End Page 417] Gongzhu 呂公著 (1018–1089) was descended from chief councilors and was a chief councilor himself in 1085–1089, leading the repeal of the New Policies together with Sima Guang 司馬光 (1019–1086).6 Through a combination of examination degrees and hereditary privilege the Lüs had been able to make government service the family business; Lü Zuqian had received official rank after his grandfather Bengzhong's death in 1148, when he was only twelve.7 Lü was born in Guangxi, where his father had been living with his father-inlaw, the Fiscal Intendant; he spent a few years in Wuzhou before 1163, when he passed not only the jinshi 進士 examination but also the special "Broad Learning and Magnificent Writing" (boxue hongci 博學宏) examination for outstanding literary talent. He returned to Wuzhou in 1166 to mourn his mother's death and began teaching at Mingzhao Mountain the next year.8 Lü met with students at Mingzhao in Wuyi, and in Jinhua city, off and on between 1167 and 1174 (when he dismissed the students because his father-inlaw had been named Prefect of Wuzhou), in 1175, and from 1179 to his death in 1181. During this time Lü briefly held a nearby prefectural teaching post, traveled frequently, and served for about three years at court. Lü drew up his first compact in 1168 and kept adding to them until 1173, soon requiring that the brethren sign a statement of commitment.9 The Lize Academy (Lize shuyuan 麗澤書院) was established in his memory over two decades after his death; his compacts refer to his teaching site as the Lize Hall (Lize tang 麗澤堂).10 When drawing up his regulations for his White Deer Grotto Academy in 1180, Zhu Xi contrasted his approach to that of others: [End Page 418] In recent times there are regulations in schools. Their expectations of students are very shallow indeed, and their methods are not necessarily the ideas of the ancients. Therefore we do not reproduce [such regulations] for application to this hall, but simply select the salient features of how the sages and worthies taught people to learn.11 近世於學有規，其待學者已淺矣，而其法又未必古人之意也。故今不復以施於此堂，而特取凡聖賢所以教人學之大端。 This criticism could easily be applied to Lü's compacts, although he did expect students to study the Classics and keep a study journal to record their doubts for later discussion. But his compacts are concerned with something Zhu Xi does not address: his students' lives as literati, as shi 士. Lü's rules tell them how (not) to relate to their kin, to local government, to past teachers, and to local people they may know. In effect, he has created a community compact, the idea of which was known among advocates of the...

This is a study of changes in kinship and scholarly association in Wuzhou, a prefecture in the middle of Zhejiang province. The geographic extent of literati kinship connections became increasingly local from the twelfth century on, but paradoxically the kinship connections across the prefecture declined as well. However, at the same time, cross-prefecture scholarly connections among literati increased, becoming the new foundation for literati group solidarity.

Publishers lists some 350 published works (many of them collections of primary sources) in the three language-groups listed above. Wang uses her archival and published sources to make original, insightful, even brilliant arguments that, while clearly located within recognizable lineages of empirical social, cultural, and legal historiography, also extend that historiography in innovative and important ways. Wang writes vigorous yet nuanced jargon-free narrative and analytical prose. She knows how to tell a story. Her writing in this book will undoubtedly appeal to both scholars and laymen.

This article introduces the Seshat: Global History Databank, its potential, and its methodology. Seshat is a databank containing vast amounts of quantitative data buttressed by qualitative nuance for a large sample of historical and archaeological polities. The sample is global in scope and covers the period from the Neolithic Revolution to the Industrial Revolution. Seshat allows scholars to capture dynamic processes and to test theories about the co-evolution (or not) of social scale and complexity, agriculture, warfare, religion, and any number of such Big Questions. Seshat is rapidly becoming a massive resource for innovative cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary research. Seshat is part of a growing trend to use comparative historical data on a large scale and contributes as such to a growing consilience between the humanities and social sciences. Seshat is underpinned by a robust and transparent workflow to ensure the ever growing dataset is of high quality.

Census in Schools Program by census.gov, page 2 Ask Dr. de Blij by Dr. Harm de Blij, page 3 ARTICLES AND OPINIONS Eritrea: Forever a Part of Me by Lucy Negash, page 4 Exploring Global Climate Change: Knowledge and Misconceptions in K - 16 Students by Jacklyn Welsheimer & Mark Francek, page 6 Risk Perception and Climate Change by Christina Grunert & Professor Dr. Alexander Siegmund, page 12 Harvard Revisited: Geography' Return as GIS by Dr. Wendy Guan & Dr. Peter K. Bol, page 14 Geography Action! 2009: Help Students See Europe in New Ways by Anne Pollard Haywood, page 19 LESSON PLANS, GEOGRAPHY NEWS Reading Our World Very Last First Time THE GEOGRAPHY-LITERACY TASK FORCE, Marty Mater. Introduction by Elizabeth R. Hinde, page 20 Get the Discussion Started: Photos to Stimulate Thought by Ed Grode, page 24 Coloring Page: St. Basil's Cathedral by Benjamin Primis, page 26 Oh, the Places You'll Go: Places Collectors, Peak Baggers, and Letterboxes by Thomas A. Wikle, page 28 Forest-Student Interface in Geography Pedagogy by Dr. Kavita Arora, page 33 BOOK REVIEWS Book Review: The Geography of Bliss Reviewed by Kathryn Jones Verna, page 41 Book Review: Say You're One of Them Reviewed by Trill Dreistadt, page 44 Book Reviews: Wangari's Trees of Peace, page 45, and Unbowed page 46 Reviewed by Jan Smith