Open Dataset

Empire Trajectory Data — Freely Available for Research

The Epoch Institute's empire trajectory dataset covers 94 civilisations across five millennia, from ancient Mesopotamia to the modern era. Each entry includes normalised power scores across six dimensions — territory, military capacity, economic output, administrative coherence, cultural influence, and geopolitical reach — plotted across each empire's full lifespan. The dataset is freely available for academic, educational, and research use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).

How to cite this dataset

The Epoch Institute Research Team (2026). Empire Trajectory Dataset [Data set]. The Epoch Institute. https://the-epoch-institute.org/dataset

CC BY 4.0

You are free to share and adapt this data for any purpose, provided you give appropriate credit to The Epoch Institute.

Sample Data

Five representative entries from across the dataset — spanning regions and eras. Trajectory columns (t_0–t_30) omitted for brevity.

NameRegionStartEndPeakDuration
Akkadian EmpireAncient Near East−2334−2154−2240180
Assyrian EmpireAncient Near East−2025−609−6711,416
Roman EmpireEurope−27476117503
Tang DynastyEast Asia618907700289
Ottoman EmpireMiddle East / Europe129919221683623

Column Definitions

  • name — Empire or civilisation name
  • region — Broad geographic region (15 categories)
  • start_year / end_year — Conventional founding and dissolution dates; negative values indicate BCE
  • peak_year — Year of maximum territorial or institutional power
  • duration — Years from start to end
  • t_0 … t_30 — 31 normalised power-trajectory sample points at equal intervals across the empire's lifespan, scored 0–10