Emerging capitalism and sociocultural niche construction in early modern Greece

Abstract Sociocultural niche construction is a key mechanism behind the current planetary crisis. Its causal drivers in past societies remain poorly understood due to a lack of data and modeling complexities. Here, we apply a Bayesian machine learning algorithm to a geospatial quantitative dataset compiled from 15 th −16 th c. CE Ottoman taxation registers, to explore shifts in drivers of land use choices in village communities in southern Greece. Greek and Albanian communities living within the same landscape experienced a transition from unstable political conditions and limited commodification of agriculture to lasting peace, intense market integration and state fiscal pressure, characteristic for early European capitalism. We found that prior to this economic transformation, ethno-cultural identities (Greek or Albanian) played an important role in local ecological niche construction. However, within two human generations (50 years), village communities shifted away from relying on ethnic identities in their ecological choices and their strategies became strongly connected to the investment potential of each village community and the environmental characteristics of their surroundings. Thus, our analysis demonstrates that the pressures of early modern socio-economic systems necessitated highly adaptive behavior from local communities that reduced the ecological significance of traditional identities.