What's the big deal?

It's all very well and good to talk about ancient civilizations that faced hard times and collapsed thousands of years ago, but so what?

The fact of the matter is that, unnervingly, quite a few comparisons can be made between conditions at the time of past societal collapses and life today.


Let's be brief:

• Climate - a primary factor involved in the fall of sophisticated societies is changes in climate. As we're all aware in modern society, climate change is a very real and fast approaching threat. (see Kerr (1998) and a more recent evaluation by Cullen et al., (2000))

• Politics - like in the past, political differences at times still lead to conflict. (see Frahm and Feinberg (2013))

• Over-reliance on technology - in the case of the Akkadians, a misguided trust in technologies can lead to destabilization. With ever increasing faith injected into increasingly complex technologies, there are lessons from the past that we should be reminding ourselves of.

• Population pressures - to relate to the Akkadians again, growing populations can cause serious issues especially when they coincide with external forcing factors such as climate. Without proper management, population growth and migration can cause social instability.

• Disease - as will become evident in a few posts time, disease can have devastating impacts on a civilization. Epidemics (e.g. Cholera, Dengue fever, Ebola) can have extremely severe impacts on a population and without effective management can lead to social instability. (see Acuna-Soto et al (2005) who will be discussed in a few posts time)

Source: Wilbur Dawbarn on Cartoon stock

The importance of using examples from the past to avoid the same mistakes again becomes evident when these similarities are added up. With climate change posing such real threats, an increasing global population, political instability and a heavy reliance on technology the pressures facing contemporary life don't seem so different from those facing past civilizations.

This all sounds very doom-and-gloom but it needn't - all I'm saying is that we need to understand reasons behind past societal collapse in order to prevent it happening again to the societies of today. (see Acuna-Soto et al (2005))