Phew! Over the past few months we’ve managed to go through
a fair bit! During this time we’ve looked at a variety of case studies of
civilization collapse from around the world. On our journey we’ve been to Mesopotamia
to meet the Akkadians, to Mesoamerica for our Mayan friends, on to Easter
Island to chill with our Rapa Nui buddies and have stopped off in Cambodia to see the Khmer gang.
During our travels we’ve looked at an assortment of factors
that have led to civilization collapse.
These have included:
- Social: tension, unrest and rebellion, disease
- Political: conflict, invasion, power relations
- Economical: costs and losses, trade
- Religious: the shift in religious authority
- Environmental: drought, deforestation, resource exploitation, rats!
These key factors combine all our case studies together as
they often share more than one similarity. I think from all case studies we’ve
looked at, it’s clear that collapse is never simple. It is important to
consider how all the elements interact. As new evidence emerges older theories
either gain more validity or are shunned. However, when looking at all the
examples covered, I think that environmental change is the greatest threat to
civilizations and in the past has played a pivotal role in collapse. The response to such events can be the nail in the coffin.
To relate back to an article from a previous post, an
article by Wiener (2014) published last year shows the importance of
connectedness of a society for its survival. This Network Theory demonstrates
how the more interconnected the civilization, the easier it’ll be to resolve
issues. If a society is isolated (such as the Rapa Nui on Easter Island) this
can be difficult and the critical stress threshold can be reached quickly, after
which the entire system will collapse.
Most societies today are highly interconnected, which may
act as a buffer against the climate changes that are approaching and help
maintain functioning societies. However we must not rely on this. Lessons can
and must be drawn from the examples of civilization collapse we’ve seen. Today,
societies around the world face the threat from climate change on top of deep
running social, political and religious tensions. If we do not learn from the
mistakes of past societies, many may be heading for a similar fate. We need to
develop an understanding of underlying environmental changes that may lead to
social unrest, economic losses and political instability and we must mitigate
them!
Sadly, for now, this point marks the end of our travels, I hope you've enjoyed reading about the different forces behind collapse.
Until next time!
Source: Auditel
Just discovered your blog here and read most of it today. One major factor you might add here... all these societies - whether isolated or not - were well into negative trophic flows by the time they collapsed. Humans evolved as an ecological keystone species. In the centuries since intensified anther-ecologies developed (resulting in some plant and animal “domestication”) some economic systems stopped generating positive trophic flows. Some did this (deforested too much of there environment, killed off too many other key wildlife species by deliberate eradication of larger predators, or by overfishing or over-hunting ice abundant prey species) to cope with feeding more and more humans. Others did it to survive drought. Most of the spectacular collapses of empires can be traced to unsustainable extensions of predatory expansion undertaken to procure critical stuff that had to be sourced further and further from the epicentre of negativity.. :) See http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol7/iss3/art4/main.html
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