Over the last few years, a number of archaeological discoveries have been made that have raised questions and opened up possibly new understanding of the ancient history of Bangladesh. The findings at Wari-Bateshwar point to the possibility of a city-based civilization in the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta dating back to 4,000 BC. Another new discovery, which is being actively studied, is the possible existence of a branch of the Silk Road going through Bangladesh. A theoretical framework is required to guide an investigation as well as to acquire and interpret data. This paper explores a framework based on the existence of a southern branch of the Silk Road going through Bangladesh; and then goes on to study the impact that the existence of this route could have had on the history of Bangladesh and, in particular, on the advent of Islam.

The history of China is briefly reviewed to ascertain the features that are common to the various dynasties. Our study shows that China has repeatedly gone through a historical phase of fragmentation and a historical phase of unification. In our view, the single most important factor in the unity, stability and longevity of a dynasty is the system for determining the succession of the emperor. Given the vastly changed circumstances of the present era, we discuss the relevance of China's historical pattern of fragmentation and unification. The contemporary rise of China is shown to follow a pattern that is similar to the case of many previous dynasties. A few tentative predictions are made about the future course of China. An appendix provides a brief summary of the history of China since its first unification in 221 BC.

In earlier centuries kings and governments employed astrologists to help them take the best decisions. Present-day governments no longer employ astrologists but still have no clear analytical tool to replace them. Over the past two decades we have developed a methodology for the scientific investigation of recurrent historical events. It consists in two steps. (i) Identification and comparison of historical episodes driven by a common mechanism. (ii) Under the reasonable assumption that what has happened several times in the past is likely to happen again, one then derives testable predictions. This of course is nothing other than the protocol used in experimental science when exploring new phenomena. We believe such a tool can give decision makers much better insight ...

The expression "wage transition" refers to the fact that over the past three decades in almost all developed economies wage increases have leveled off. There has been a widening divergence and decoupling between wages on the one hand and GDP per capita on the other hand. Yet, in China wages and GDP per capita climbed in sync (at least up to now). In the first part of the paper we present comparative statistical evidence which measures the extent of the wage transition effect. In a second part we consider the reasons of this phenomenon, in particular we explain how the transfers of labor from low productivity sectors (such as agriculture) to high productivity sectors (such as manufacturing) are the driver of productivity growth, particularly through their synergetic effects. Although rural flight represents only one of these effects, it is certainly the most visible because of the geographical relocation that it implies; it is also the most well-defined statistically. Moreover, it will be seen that it is a good indicator of the overall productivity and attractiveness of the non-agricultural sector. Because this model accounts fairly well for the observed evolution in industrialized countries, we use it to predict the rate of Chinese economic growth in coming decades. Our forecast for the average annual growth of real wages ranges from 4% to 6% depending on how well China will control offshoring and the development of its healthcare sector.