Dynamical structure of social map in ancient China

The emergent processes driving the history are a product of complex interactions among enormous amounts of individuals. To characterize these processes, we reconstruct social maps of cities over a millennium through social associations of more than 14600 elites in ancient China. In specific, the social relations between cities are established by the social associations of elites of their inhabitants. We calculate the topological measures to quantify the structural properties of the social maps. Different centrality measures are introduced to identify the social centers, which evolve dynamically. The deviation between social and political centers implies the existence of de-imperialization, which occurred almost between the 11th and 12th centuries. Significantly, the community structure clustered with the social interconnections relates to the geographic distribution. Closer geographic distances are associated with stronger social strengths between two cities. Finally, the social maps show that ancient China’s landscape of culture and politics undergo a metamorphosis from the single-center mode to the multi-center mode.