18 - Empire Shapes, Languages, and Reigns

Summary

Continental empire shapes on the map tend to be elongated, almost one-and-a-half times wider east–west than north–south. They extend along the same climate zone. A sea-centered empire has formed only around the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas: Rome and Sweden. Roman empire borders largely fit a simple rule: 400 kilometers inland and 2200 km from Rome. Languages of the earliest states and empires have left descendants only in China. Sumerian and Coptic no longer are spoken. Greek remains local. Only Latin has branched out. English may continue. Or not. Scripts affect empire sizes. Logograms unite people with different spoken languages, while alphabetic script serves to divide them. Flexional polysyllabic languages, where slight changes in pronunciation matter (like begin, began, begun), need phonetic script. Monosyllabic tonal languages find phonetic script difficult and are better off using logograms. Hence, China was bound to be less splintered than the West. Average duration of reigns has been 19 years for hereditary monarchs and 7 for nonhereditary rulers. Average duration of dynasties has been 200 years.