AI and Human-Environment History: Ancient Cultures, Modern Insights

Climate change and growing resource scarcity pose mounting existential threats to the resilience and sustainability of human societies worldwide. These issues are profoundly complex, requiring the development of multidisciplinary strategies that engage a wide spectrum of disciplines, methodologies, and knowledge. Over a century of pioneering archaeological exploration and historical research at the University of Chicago has resulted in the creation of carefully curated cultural, paleoenvironmental, and historical records spanning thousands of years of human history. These rich datasets provide a unique opportunity to contribute finely grained evidence—and a deep-time perspective—to the long and complex history of human-environment interaction. The capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) to deploy multi-modal deep learning models capable of integrating and meaningfully analyzing these diverse and heterogeneous data, meanwhile, offers the exciting prospect of opening new frontiers of knowledge and discovery.

How have infrastructures—across diverse landscapes and historical periods—embodied human-environment interactions and adaptive strategies, and how can AI-powered analyses of the University’s unique datasets reveal these patterns to inform contemporary climate adaptation and sustainability efforts? From aqueducts that carried water across deserts to canals that turned dry plains into fertile fields, infrastructure has always been the foundation of civilization. These human-made systems reveal how societies adapted to drought, floods, migration, and conflict. This project is distinctive because the University of Chicago can combine something no peer institution has at the same scale: world-leading collections of ancient texts and artifacts, including vast digital archives at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, and advanced AI expertise in geospatial modeling, language analysis, and data science. The University of Chicago is uniquely positioned to establish a leading AI research area that encompasses humanistic, social, and natural science disciplinary research. This AI research area has the capacity to productively synergize, cross-pollinate, coalesce, and engage in transformative interdisciplinary research, global socio-climatic modeling, and human-environment history, while offering critical perspectives for policymaking concerning current and future socio-climatic challenges. The stakes are high, and the timing is urgent. Our vision is bold and clear: to lead the world in AI-powered cultural and historical research, turning the study of ancient infrastructures into knowledge that illuminates the past and guides the future.