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Modern scholarly attitudes to the phenomenon of restricted knowledge in ancient Egypt have been affected by political and ideological issues of the present more strongly than have some other domains of the subject. It should be asked what its significance and position in ancient society and ideology was. From the Old Kingdom onward clear cases can be found of elite display of access to restricted knowledge coupled with concealment of its content. Such knowledge includes inititation into and performance of priestly roles. The title Hry-sStA 'keeper of secrets' is a general designation for people with such privileges. A major relevant domain is the solar cult, in which the king is presented as having exclusive understanding, some of which is related to magic for a slightly broader elite group. In social terms, access to knowledge is displayed in terms of meritocracy and in relation to elite hierarchies. Decorum, focused on religion and royal-divine ideology, is closely integrated with the restriction of knowledge. Hierarchy and decorum are the organizing principles in Egypt of the nearly universal restriction of knowledge. Patterns of development in such knowledge that can be discerned for the Old to New kingdoms could perhaps be extended to the first millennium.

The ancient Egyptian language possesses 4 basic color terms; painting uses 7 and later 9 polychrome colors. These sets correspond to Stages Ilia, V, and VII (incomplete) of the Berlin and Kay encoding sequence for language, and support the theory of 11 "basic perceptual color categories." The categories are probably available only through progressive differentiation. The use of color in pictorial representation fits an "active" rather than a "response" model for this expansion. The separation of color use and color terminology has significant cognitive implications.

This paper examines the nature of the U.S. Military Assistance Program (MAP) to Latin America and the historical development of the Military Assistance Program in the hemisphere. It further analyzes this program with regard to the two major criticisms levelled at it:(1)that Military Assistance Programs have perpetuated "militarism" in the form of military coups and strong-man military regimes; and(2)that Military Assistance Programs have encouraged large military forces where they are not needed.Changes in U.S. policy toward Latin America are noted as they affect MAP—i.e., the shift in U.S. policy from one of fostering hemispheric defense to one of promoting internal security and economic development. Finally, an assessment of the impact of this change in U.S. military assistance policy forms the conclusion of this paper.

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as "Seshat: Global History Databank." We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history.

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as "Seshat: Global History Databank." We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history. ; This work was supported by a John Templeton Foundation Grant (to the Evolution Institute) entitled "Axial-Age Religions and the Z-Curve of Human Egalitarianism," a Tricoastal Foundation Grant (to the Evolution Institute) entitled "The Deep Roots of the Modern World: The Cultural Evolution of Economic Growth and Political Stability," Economic and Social Research Council Large Grant REF RES-060-25-0085 entitled "Ritual, Community, and Conflict," an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Grant 694986, and Grant 644055 from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (ALIGNED; www.aligned-project.eu). T.E.C. is supported by funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement 716212). ; Peer Reviewed

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