{
 "source": "scribes-advantage/river-flow-framework.md + stolen-river-scores-and-placement.md + river-flow-statistical-validation.md. Snapshot 2026-09-15. Pre-modern literacy is scholarly estimate unless noted.",
 "status": "Working ledger. Hard numbers only where GREEN. 5% knowledge-producer baseline is a modeling assumption, not a measurement.",
 "engine": {
  "volume": "Total population at a snapshot = theoretical river volume. Every living person is a potential scribe.",
  "discharge": "Scribe ratio (literate / total, then active producer / literate) = actual flow.",
  "treasure": "Surplus. People create it; writing lets it compound instead of evaporating.",
  "dams": "What bars the carriers: slavery pumps the river to someone else's field; gender and caste are gates set by birth; serfdom, law and credentialing gate the rest. The stolen-river score is additive to potential, not a replacement.",
  "destruction": [
   "Population killed?",
   "Institution destroyed?",
   "Knowledge (records) destroyed?"
  ],
  "clawMarks": "Chapter 5. Genetic invoice of scribal sorting. Double-edged. Not universities."
 },
 "timeline": [
  {
   "year": -3000,
   "label": "3000 BCE",
   "pop": "15M",
   "literacy": "0.03%",
   "literate": "5,000",
   "dams": "Friction (writing just invented)",
   "confidence": "GREEN/YELLOW"
  },
  {
   "year": -1200,
   "label": "1200 BCE",
   "pop": "75M",
   "literacy": "0.5%",
   "literate": "375,000",
   "dams": "Friction, gender, class",
   "confidence": "YELLOW"
  },
  {
   "year": -500,
   "label": "500 BCE",
   "pop": "150M",
   "literacy": "2%",
   "literate": "3M",
   "dams": "Gender, slavery, class",
   "confidence": "YELLOW"
  },
  {
   "year": 1,
   "label": "1 CE",
   "pop": "250M",
   "literacy": "5%",
   "literate": "12.5M",
   "dams": "Gender, slavery, caste",
   "confidence": "YELLOW"
  },
  {
   "year": 500,
   "label": "500 CE",
   "pop": "220M",
   "literacy": "2%",
   "literate": "4.4M",
   "dams": "Collapse, gender, feudalism",
   "confidence": "YELLOW"
  },
  {
   "year": 1000,
   "label": "1000 CE",
   "pop": "300M",
   "literacy": "4%",
   "literate": "12M",
   "dams": "Gender, feudalism, caste",
   "confidence": "YELLOW"
  },
  {
   "year": 1450,
   "label": "1450 CE",
   "pop": "425M",
   "literacy": "8%",
   "literate": "34M",
   "dams": "Gender, slavery, caste",
   "confidence": "YELLOW"
  },
  {
   "year": 1700,
   "label": "1700 CE",
   "pop": "640M",
   "literacy": "12%",
   "literate": "77M",
   "dams": "Gender, slavery at peak, caste",
   "confidence": "GREEN/YELLOW"
  },
  {
   "year": 1820,
   "label": "1820 CE",
   "pop": "1.04B",
   "literacy": "12%",
   "literate": "125M",
   "dams": "Gender, slavery, colonialism",
   "confidence": "GREEN"
  },
  {
   "year": 1900,
   "label": "1900 CE",
   "pop": "1.65B",
   "literacy": "21%",
   "literate": "346M",
   "dams": "Gender improving, colonialism",
   "confidence": "GREEN"
  },
  {
   "year": 1950,
   "label": "1950 CE",
   "pop": "2.5B",
   "literacy": "36%",
   "literate": "900M",
   "dams": "Gender narrowing, poverty",
   "confidence": "GREEN"
  },
  {
   "year": 2000,
   "label": "2000 CE",
   "pop": "6.1B",
   "literacy": "81%",
   "literate": "4.9B",
   "dams": "Poverty, regional exclusion",
   "confidence": "GREEN"
  },
  {
   "year": 2026,
   "label": "2026 CE",
   "pop": "8.2B",
   "literacy": "87%",
   "literate": "7.1B",
   "dams": "Poverty, quality gap, engagement",
   "confidence": "GREEN"
  }
 ],
 "anchors": [
  {
   "name": "Harris 1989, Rome",
   "claim": "Maximum ~10% could read at some level",
   "confidence": "GREEN"
  },
  {
   "name": "Buringh & Van Zanden 2009",
   "claim": "European manuscript production ~1%/yr, 6th–18th c.; 20M manuscripts vs 200M printed books in the 16th c.",
   "confidence": "GREEN"
  },
  {
   "name": "slavevoyages.org",
   "claim": "10–15 million transported transatlantic",
   "confidence": "GREEN"
  },
  {
   "name": "OWID / UNESCO",
   "claim": "World literacy ~12% in 1820 → ~87% now; 56× literate population 1820–2020",
   "confidence": "GREEN"
  },
  {
   "name": "Hsieh, Hurst, Jones & Klenow 2019",
   "claim": "Between twenty and forty percent of American economic growth from 1960 to 2010 came from letting women and minorities into professions that had been closed to them (Ch 17).",
   "confidence": "GREEN"
  },
  {
   "name": "Emancipation Manifesto 1861",
   "claim": "More than 23 million privately owned Russian serfs freed; ~38% of the empire. State peasants are a separate 1866 lock.",
   "confidence": "GREEN"
  }
 ],
 "thefts": [
  {
   "id": "pumped",
   "name": "Pumped out",
   "case": "Transatlantic slave trade / Africa",
   "chapter": 9,
   "hard": "10–15 million transported (slavevoyages). Anti-literacy laws: VA 1819, NC 1830, AL 1832, SC 1834.",
   "estimate": "If Manning's missing half is in range, 1850 snapshot is 2.5–5 million potential scribes at a 5% baseline. Do not multiply by generations.",
   "retired": "~80 million across 16 generations — stock counted as flow."
  },
  {
   "id": "siphoned",
   "name": "Siphoned",
   "case": "Ottoman devshirme / Balkans",
   "chapter": 9,
   "hard": "Structural: boys removed, converted, trained, placed at the center of the empire.",
   "estimate": "Commonly cited 200,000–300,000 cumulative, 15th–17th c. Transfer between caves, not a subtraction from the species."
  },
  {
   "id": "locked",
   "name": "Locked to the dirt",
   "case": "Russian serfs 1861",
   "chapter": 9,
   "hard": ">23 million privately owned serfs freed. ~38% of population.",
   "estimate": "~1.15 million potential scribes in that generation at 5%. State peasants not in the 23 million. Thin leak: serf intelligentsia. Do not score ~10 million as a body count."
  },
  {
   "id": "sealed",
   "name": "Sealed circuit",
   "case": "Hurrem / Ottoman harem",
   "chapter": 15,
   "hard": "Hurrem manumitted and married Suleiman, 1534. Sultanate of Women 1533–1656. Medrese admits no women.",
   "estimate": "A few hundred literate women in the palace; the empire's female half gated out. Knowledge compounds inside and is forbidden to become general."
  },
  {
   "id": "gender",
   "name": "Gender gate",
   "case": "Half the river",
   "chapter": 15,
   "hard": "OWID 1820: male literacy ~17%, female ~5%. World pop ~1.04B → ~62 million missing female knowledge-producers at the male rate. Accounting identity, not a 5% model.",
   "estimate": "Slope of the break is mid-20th century, not a straight 1850 to 2000 doubling. South Korea: at liberation most Korean women could not read; by 2008 the official count put female literacy at 97.6 percent (Ch 18)."
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "Population: HYDE 3.2 (Klein Goldewijk et al., 2017); Maddison Project Database 2020; Our World in Data",
  "Literacy (ancient): Harris, Ancient Literacy (1989); Baines, Literacy and Ancient Egyptian Society (1983)",
  "Literacy (medieval): Buringh & Van Zanden, Charting the Rise of the West, JEH 2009",
  "Literacy (modern): Our World in Data (Roser & Ortiz-Ospina); UNESCO Institute for Statistics",
  "Slave trade: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (slavevoyages.org); Manning, African Population 1650–1950 (1990)",
  "Gender: Hsieh, Hurst, Jones & Klenow, Econometrica 2019; UNESCO World's Women",
  "Serfs: Emancipation Manifesto 1861; privately owned vs state peasants 1866",
  "Ottoman press: Hebrew printing Istanbul 1493; Müteferrika Arabic-script press 1727 (already in Ch 12)"
 ]
}