On July 23, the prestigious journal *Nature Communications* published an article titled “Emerging capitalism and sociocultural niche construction in early modern Greece,” authored by a team of researchers led by Prof. Adam Izdebski from the Institute of Advanced Studies. Prof. Izdebski’s team worked with a unique historical source—Ottoman (Turkish) tax registers from early modern Greece (15th–16th centuries), containing detailed information on the population and agriculture in hundreds of villages over successive decades. An analysis supported by machine learning showed that, under the intense pressure of rapidly growing markets and a centralized fiscal apparatus, rural communities rapidly abandoned traditional methods of shaping the natural environment and adopted ecological strategies aimed at maximizing profit. According to the authors, this demonstrates the very early influence of European capitalism on the formation of the human ecological niche.
Nature Communications is one of the leading multidisciplinary open-access scientific journals, published by Nature Portfolio. It presents groundbreaking research findings from various fields of the natural sciences, such as chemistry, physics, Earth sciences, biology and medicine.
We are very proud that the results of research conducted by our scientists are being recognized and featured in such prestigious publications. We warmly congratulate Prof. Adam Izdebski on this achievement!
Link to the article: Emerging capitalism and sociocultural niche construction in early modern Greece | Nature Communications