One Thousand and One Conjectures

Gradient error accumulates as √distance between inspection shafts — surveying as a bounded random walk with resets. Falsify: laser-level surveys of Nîmes and Segovia channels.

Successive Gothic campaigns move monotonically toward the thrust-line optimum — iterative structural learning with a measurable decreasing loss. Falsify: dated buttress geometries under limit analysis.

Cathedral heights escalate against rivals within a diocesan radius by roughly fixed increments until the material frontier (Beauvais's collapse sits exactly there). Falsify: height/date/distance panel.

Statue sizes follow competitive-escalation dynamics ending at a resource frontier, predicting the largest unfinished statue lies at the feasibility boundary. Falsify: size chronology plus transport energetics.

Roman camp grid defects behave as crystal dislocations concentrated at terrain stress, and defect density separates marching camps from permanent forts. Falsify: geophysical survey plans.

Dimensional standardization (CV of amphorae and lamps) falls as a power law of cumulative regional output — the learning curve, two millennia early. Falsify: typology metrics vs production estimates.

Ceramic firing temperatures decline during deforestation episodes — kilns as energy-scarcity gauges. Falsify: refiring tests vs pollen/charcoal records.

The recycling fraction in Roman glass (antimony–manganese mixing) rises with political crisis and distance from Levantine furnaces — a business-cycle indicator in silica. Falsify: compositional time series through the 3rd century.

Pre-theoretic builders converged on a diameter-to-length power law near modern acoustic optima — empirical physics before physics. Falsify: measured medieval pipework.

Founding-pitch standards diffuse along rivers and trade routes, forming dialect-like isogloss maps. Falsify: dated bell frequency surveys.

Regional ship lengths avoid resonant pitching in local wave spectra: Baltic and Atlantic wreck length distributions should differ exactly as wave climatology predicts. Falsify: wreck dimension databases.

Viking plank widths and scarf spacing sit at the crack-arrest optimum for oak — naval architecture as fracture mechanics. Falsify: ship-timber metrology plus material testing.

Standard dispersion (cubit rods, brick molds) tightens under strong dynasties and loosens in intermediate periods — measurement variance as a government-strength index. Falsify: museum metrology by period.

3D-scanned step erosion ranks pilgrimage volumes; wear-derived rankings should match offering and indulgence registers. Falsify: scans along the Compostela routes.

Exchequer tally notch geometry encodes redundancy beyond face value — anti-fraud bits in a split physical token. Falsify: metrology of surviving tallies for non-value-bearing regularities.

Cylinder-seal engraving complexity scales with the holder's transaction exposure — forgery cost calibrated to forgery incentive. Falsify: glyptic entropy vs archive roles.

Unopened clay envelope-bullae let us measure ancient audit failure: token–marking mismatch rates should be near zero normally and spike at institutional collapse. Falsify: CT programs on museum bullae.

Joins stream-power hydrology to the fiscal cadastre: the 1086 Domesday survey unwittingly recorded a physics meter, because a mill's render capitalized the hydraulic power of its site; feudal rent should therefore scale with drainage-area-times-slope like an engineering formula.

Joins statistical process control (control charts and capability indices) to Andean ceramics: Inca state pottery was tolerance-controlled output, so dimensional variance is a direct index of administrative reach, tightening toward the capital and loosening down the provincial hierarchy.

Joins process-engineering labor accounting to Viking naval history: the binding constraint on Norse sea power was textile throughput, not shipwrights; a large woolen sail embodied more person-hours than the hull it drove, so fleets could grow only as fast as spinning capacity.

Service-capacity planning meets Greek civic demography: theaters were sized to a fixed service fraction of the citizen body — a percentile capacity rule — making seat counts a fossilized census tighter than any other urban size proxy.