AI-generated conjecture · below the evidence/publication boundary

Tribute travels light

Status: Prior

Status is derived only from the shepherd-authored triage/prediction data above -- community submissions and claims are a separate overlay and can never change it (see the participation panel below).

This is a proposed connection between two domains, generated by a language model. It is not an article and not evidence: it sits below the evidence/publication boundary. A quantitative prediction and a named kill-dataset are attached (when registered) so the claim stays falsifiable rather than merely evocative.

Claim (verbatim)

Tribute travels light. Joins transport-cost linear programming to the Codex Mendoza: the Aztec tribute assignment approximates the solution of a value-per-porter-load optimization, so distance from Tenochtitlan should predict the value density of what a province owed.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Across the tributary provinces of the Codex Mendoza, the rank correlation between porter-days from Tenochtitlan (tlameme load about 23 kg, 21-28 km per day) and the share of a province's tribute value carried in high value-per-kg goods (gold dust, greenstone, feathers, cacao, fine mantles) is at least +0.5; bulk staples (maize, beans, chia, amaranth) are owed almost exclusively by provinces within about 4 porter-days (~100 km); and provinces beyond 300 km owe under 5% of their tribute value in staples.

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: the Codex Mendoza tribute matrix quantified with standard unit-weight and exchange-value tables, joined to route distances. Distance-flat staple shares, or a value-density correlation under +0.2, kills it.

Provenance

Run: Fresh agent generation · model: claude-fable-5

Generated by a fresh Fable-tier instance at maximum effort with generation-first blindness (no repo reads, no searches, no DB queries); title list supplied at launch, titles only, no verdicts or dossiers seen; prompt pre-committed in docs/GOAL_CONJECTURES_BATCH2_20260705.md (7e55eb8). Novelty unverified by construction.

Novelty / leakage triage

Leaked (already exists in the literature)

The core claim is established descriptive scholarship: Codex Mendoza summaries state directly that nearer provinces paid bulk staples and distant provinces paid high-value low-bulk goods, and Hassig's 'Trade, Tribute, and Transportation' (1985) is the standing transport-cost political economy of exactly this system. The rank-correlation quantification with porter-day thresholds was not located, but the connection is textbook.

Hassig 1985, 'Trade, Tribute, and Transportation' (Univ. of Oklahoma Press) — The transport-cost tribute economics

Predictions

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