Evolution of written language technology and not state building causes positive economic growth

Abstract

Creativity means the formation or discovery of something that is new, surprising and valuable (true, meaningful, beautiful, useful). Products of creativity include innovations, economic goods, and institutions underlying economic growth. It has previously been shown that creativity in all domains is based on selectionist mechanisms dependent on discrete representation such as the alphabet. Using historical data on energy capture as a proxy for economic growth, this paper shows that positive economic growth the last 11,000 years was significantly associated with the sophistication of information technology and literacy rate, but not state or society organization (despotic, non-despotic or anarchic).