We also want to know whether past collapses hold lessons for us, that might help us deal with our own problems and avoid collapse. Thus, my book includes four sets of studies. Seven chapters discuss some of the clearest, most familiar, most striking examples of past collapses: the ends of Polynesian societies on Henderson and Pitcairn Islands, where everybody either did abandon the island or else ended up dead; the end of the Viking settlements on Greenland, which similarly disappeared completely; the disappearance of Anasazi settlements in desert areas of the U.
My next set of studies concerns three societies that have flourished for several millennia, for over 10, years, and for over 40, years: Tikopia Island, Japan, and Highland New Guinea respectively. While all three of those regions enjoyed environmental advantages, we can also identify policies or conscious decisions that enabled the societies of all three regions to solve the environmental problems that they did encounter. Next come five chapters examining gripping and instructive courses of events in the modern world.
Montana, seemingly the most pristine and underpopulated U. Rwanda, the most densely populated country in Africa, suffered possibly the most ferocious convulsion in late 20th-century African history, when in six million Rwandans killed nearly one million of their fellow Rwandans and drove two million more into exile.
The Caribbean island of Hispaniola is divided between two nations, of which Haiti is the poorest and one of the most overpopulated nations of the New World, while the Dominican Republic is many times more prosperous. Those contrasting outcomes arose to a smaller degree from environmental differences, and to a greater degree from differences of human history. What is there that we can learn from the past that would help us avoid declining or collapsing in the way that so many past societies have?
Obviously the answer to this question is not going to be a single factor. If anyone tells you that there is a single-factor explanation for societal collapses, you know right away that they're an idiot.
This is a complex subject. But how can we make sense out of the complexities of this subject? In analyzing societal collapses, I've arrived at a five-point framework — a checklist of things that I go through to try and understand collapses.
And I'll illustrate that five-point framework by the extinction of the Greenland Norse society. This is a European society with literate records, so we know a good deal about the people and their motivation.
In AD Vikings went out to Greenland, settled Greenland, and around they died out — the society collapsed, and every one of them ended up dead. Why did they all end up dead? Well, in my five-point framework, the first item on the framework is to look for human impacts on the environment: people inadvertently destroying the resource base on which they depend.
And in the case of the Viking Norse, the Vikings inadvertently caused soil erosion and deforestation, which was a particular problem for them because they required forests to make charcoal, to make iron. So they ended up an Iron Age European society, virtually unable to make their own iron.
A second item on my checklist is climate change. Climate can get warmer or colder or dryer or wetter. In the case of the Vikings — in Greenland, the climate got colder in the late s, and especially in the s.
But a cold climate isn't necessarily fatal, because the Inuit — the Eskimos inhabiting Greenland at the same time — did better, rather than worse, with cold climates. So why didn't the Greenland Norse as well? The third thing on my checklist is relations with neighboring friendly societies that may prop up a society. And if that friendly support is pulled away, that may make a society more likely to collapse.
In the case of the Greenland Norse, they had trade with the mother country — Norway — and that trade dwindled: partly because Norway got weaker, partly because of sea ice between Greenland and Norway. The fourth item on my checklist is relations with hostile societies. In the case of Norse Greenland, the hostiles were the Inuit — the Eskimos sharing Greenland — with whom the Norse got off to bad relationships.
And we know that the Inuit killed the Norse and, probably of greater importance, may have blocked access to the outer fjords, on which the Norse depended for seals at a critical time of the year. And then finally, the fifth item on my checklist is the political, economic, social and cultural factors in the society that make it more or less likely that the society will perceive and solve its environmental problems. In the case of the Greenland Norse, cultural factors that made it difficult for them to solve their problems were: their commitments to a Christian society investing heavily in cathedrals; their being a competitive-ranked chiefly society; and their scorn for the Inuit, from whom they refused to learn.
So that's how the five-part framework is relevant to the collapse and eventual extinction of the Greenland Norse. What about a society today? For the past five years, I've been taking my wife and kids to Southwestern Montana, where I worked as a teenager on the hay harvest. And Montana, at first sight, seems like the most pristine environment in the United States. But scratch the surface, and Montana suffers from serious problems.
Going through the same checklist: human environmental impacts? Yes, acute in Montana. Toxic problems from mine waste have caused damage of billions of dollars. Problems from weeds, weed control, cost Montana nearly million dollars a year. Did you visit all of the regions discussed in the book? How many years did you spend traveling and researching? Of all the places you visited in the course of your research, which moved you the most?
Which frightened you the most? I visited most of the regions: all except the Pitcairn Islands, Rwanda, and China. I worked on this book for six years and worked especially intensely on it for the last two and a half years. All of the places that I visited moved me, and all of them frightened me.
Start earning points for buying books! Uplift Native American Stories. Share: Share on Facebook. Add to Cart. What inspired you to write this book? Did you conceive of Collapse and Guns, Germs, and Steel as companion volumes from the start—or did the idea for Collapse surface only after Guns was finished? Details, yes; main thrusts of my argument, no. Do you think Diamond is vulnerable to the charge of crying wolf in Collapse?
If not, why not? How does his argument and approach differ from alarmist environmentalists? The middle of the road is often a tough place to be—since it opens one to attacks from either side.
How successful is Diamond in staking out this position? How does he balance or fail to balance environmental concerns with business realities? Diamond describes Tikopia as a kind of island paradise where natives saved their environment through eco-friendly gardening and devised a kind of rudimentary democratic system of government.
Yet Tikopians also practiced infanticide and abortion to limit population growth. What does this say about our ability to judge the morality of past societies? Can one must one? What view of human nature do you think underlies Collapse?
Where do you think Diamond would stand on the nature vs. How important are leaders in determining the ecological success or failure of a civilization?
To what extent did bad leadership contribute to or cause the collapses Diamond talks about? What about in our own culture—do you think progress will come from enlightened leadership or rather from grassroots activism? Some critics feel that Guns, Germs, and Steel is more successful than Collapse because it is more tightly organized. Others praise Collapse because the issues it wrestles with hit so close to home.
If you have read both books, how would you compare them in terms of structure, central thesis, and relevance to the world today? Which did you enjoy reading more and why?
If the United States does collapse, how do you think it will happen? Which example of civilizational collapse described in the book do you find most compelling and why? Which image or passage in the book made the most powerful impression on you? Yet how can we ethically deny Third World countries the comforts and advantages that we in the First World enjoy?
In your opinion, what should our leaders do to lessen or resolve looming conflicts over resources between First and Third World countries? Diamond reveals that while writing the book he found himself lurching between hope and despair.
What emotions did Collapse inspire in you? Did you come away depressed, cautiously hopeful, or did you have an entirely different reaction?
Within the Aegean, those hallmarks of civilization arose first on Crete because of its numerous geographic advantages. Its excellent harbours and position at the mouth of the Aegean Sea enabled islanders to trade widely with the nearby Greek and Anatolian mainlands and smaller Aegean islands, and with distant Cyprus, Egypt, the Black Sea, the Levant and Italy. Similar to Britain and Japan, Crete was close enough to mainlands to profit from them, but far enough away to be safe from invasion for many centuries.
Crete's soils, good for agriculture but poor in metals, nourished a large population that was motivated to trade. The mountainous landscape was dissected enough to spur state formation through competing polities, but not so dissected as to prevent unification.
Crete was big enough to dominate the Aegean for a long time, but too small to avoid eventually being conquered by Greek mainlanders, the Myceneans, around BC.
Late Bronze Age civilization collapsed spectacularly throughout the eastern Mediterranean in the early twelfth century BC , for reasons that are still debated. One theory of the cause posits a domino-like collapse of the Mediterranean's interconnected states. If so, the manner of the Bronze Age's end could shed light on risks to today's world, such as the milder, domino-like collapse of the globally interconnected financial systems in — Some researchers query the interpretation of past societal demises, preferring a positive message about human nature.
How do we characterize people who live today in the aftermath of empires? How are urgent climatic and environmental issues today similar to those faced by our ancestors? On the book's other theme of empire expansion, the authors seem uncomfortable with the glaring fact that it is Europeans, not Native Australians or Americans or Africans, who have expanded over the globe in the past years. The essays often depict non-Western societies as virtuous and Western societies as evil-doers.
This goal is laudable. However, in forcing all of history into their framework, they resort to errors and implausible extremes.
0コメント