" It has long been suspected that many of those mysterious abandonments were at least partly triggered by ecological problems: people inadvertently destroying the environmental resources on which their societies depended. This suspicion of unintended ecological suicide—ecocide—has been confirmed by discoveries made in recent decades by archaeologists, climatologists, historians, paleontologists, and palynologists (pollen scientists). The processes through which past societies have undermined themselves by damaging their environments fall into eight categories, whose relative importance differs from case to case: deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses), water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased per-capita impact of people.". -- Jared Diamond, Collapse, Viking, 2005.
16. Pattern recognition in the lessons of history
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond
Viking, $29.95
Reviewed by Bill Kovarik
(SEJournal, Spring, 2005)
The massive statues lording over the ghostly plains of Easter Island tell a story, says Jared Diamond. The iron skeletons of our own skyscrapers might tell the same story in a few short generations. It is a story of willful ignorance, of pride in totemic rituals, of limited resources put to the service of a small elite.
It is the story of Collapse, and it is not difficult to understand, walking with Diamond through the ruins of civilizations that died out, the awe and dread that propels his sweeping historical inquiry.
Diamond draws from anthropology, archeology, zoology and history, along with personal experience, to present a compelling but occasionally simplistic argument about choosing alternatives to our own not-so-distant collapse.
A professor of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles, Diamond’s 1998 Pulitzer-winning book Guns, Germs and Steel, asked why Western industrial nations became dominant. Now Collapse asks what environmental and human factors led to the demise of some civilizations.
Diamond doesn’t survey every collapsed civilization. He omits Rome, Greece, Egypt, Sumer and Mohenjo-Daro, among others. Instead, Collapse selectively explores the failures that are known to be at least partly environmental: Easter Island, the Mayans, the Anasazi, the Greenland Vikings, and others.
Diamond also finds that some civilizations choose success. His examples include the sustainable forestry of the Tokugawa shoguns of Japan, the bottom-up management style of ranchers from western Montana, and the cooperative life of Netherlanders who farm polders below sea level.
Perhaps the world’s best known ecological collapse is Easter Island in the remote South Pacific where a barren landscape is dotted with hundreds of mysterious stone statues. Some are 15 to 20 feet tall and weigh around 10 tons, but a few are as large as a five story building and weigh up to 270 tons. Many statues lie in various stages of completion, as if the workmen had suddenly put down their tools and walked away.
Archaeologists have found that the statues consumed dozens of logs to move and lift into place. The pace of statue making was apparently accelerating when the island’s last trees were cut down. But when the trees were gone, wooden boats could no longer be made, and without fishing, agriculture collapsed under human pressure and drought. Evidence from layers of middens (compacted trash heaps) and graveyards shows the change in diet and a descent into chaos and cannibalism. So the islanders logged the last of their trees to build totemic monuments, blindly ignoring their environment until it was far too late.
Another ecological collapse was Greenland’s Norse (Viking) colony. Although they had survived over 400 years, when the climate changed rapidly around 1430, Diamond notes that the Norse apparently refused to learn from the Inuit, whom they considered inferior ‘skraelings.’ Instead they insisted on maintaining European lifestyles with livestock they could not sustain. “Norse society’s structure created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power and the long-term interests of the society as a whole,” Diamond writes. “Much of what the chiefs and clergy valued proved eventually harmful to society,” he says, such as using their few boats to hunt animals with high trading value that would pay for luxury imports. There is some controversy over Diamond’s argument that the Norse could have saved themselves by fishing, but evidence from middens shows a lack of fish in their diets.
In the end, what happened in Greenland is what Diamond fears may happen in years to come: “Ultimately, the chiefs found themselves without followers. The last right they obtained for themselves was the privilege of being the last to starve.”
The recent genocide in Rwanda is another example of ecologically-related collapse, Diamond argues. In the years before the genocide, drought and overworked soil led to a decline in food production and deforestation. While the decision to spark the genocide was made by politicians, one partial reason that it was carried out so thoroughly is that there were too many people trying to live on too little land.
Like many historians and observers, Diamond argues that the problems of the developing world cant be isolated and that the people’s desire to achieve a first world standard of living may be impossible, given the planet’s limited resources. Whether or not they can be accommodated, Diamond insists that we “can no longer get away with advancing our own self-interests at the expense of the interests of others.”
Diamond does not shy away from asking the cosmic questions or seeking an admittedly incomplete set of answers. At times it doesn’t quite come off. For example, toward the end of the book, Diamond presents us with two maps of the world, each with the same 14 nations highlighted (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burundi, Haiti, Iraq, Madagascar, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Rwanda, Indonesia). One map is labeled: “Political Trouble Spots of the World.” The adjacent identical map is labeled: “Environmental Trouble Spots of the World.” Coincidence? Obviously, complete correspondence between all political and environmental problems is simplistic.
While the general point may be well taken, Diamond’s willingness to be detailed and accurate in most particulars and yet simplistic and sweeping in others must irritate academic historians. Still, if the collapse of civilization is looming in a few decades, as Diamond believes, it’s probably more important to make lessons of the past accessible than it is to please the “dry-as-dust” school of history.
Its no surprise that Diamond’s lessons are controversial. Gregg Easterbrook took Diamond to task for “drastic oversimplification” in Guns Germs and Steel and had the same problem with Collapse. But after all, that is the point of broad, sweeping histories – to collapse detail into recognizable patterns. For example, 19th century Whig historians took a proprietary view of progress towards democracy; Oswald Spangler responded in 1922 with his Decline of the West; Arnold Toynbee highlighted creative responses to challenges in his massive 1934-1961 Study of History; and Barbara Tuchman described arrogance at the heart of politics in her 1984 book, March of Folly.
Diamond is sailing the same seas in our own time, and we might see him as something of a modern Ulysses, steering a course between Pollyanna and a Cassandra instead of Scilla and Charybdis. His navigation is straightforward and cargo hold is loaded to the gunnels with insight. He is fully conscious of the limitations of sweeping history and the need to attempt it in any event. And he says plainly what Tennyson’s Ulysses said in poetry: Come my friends; ‘Tis not too late to seek a better world.
This book will be discussed for many years. Put it at the top of your summer reading list.
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OTHER REVIEWS
“All of this helps us to understand the United States - its Hummers, its military overkill, its iPods, its Star Wars technology, its fundamentalism and its obscene consumption while millions starve in slums. After reading Collapse, it's easy to comprehend how a civilization declines, self-destructing even as it peaks.” -- BRIAN BRETT, CanWest News Service
Collapse comes at a pregnant moment for the historians, anthropologists and policy analysts who study the decline of civilizations. --- DAN VERGANO, USA Today
Collapse … and State of Fear, Michael Crichton's lurid thriller… are literary and scientific polar opposites” – LA Times
Many of the civilizations facing collapse had early warning signs, which they chose to ignore. Years after there was broad scientific consensus on global warming, President Bush (no scientist himself) tried to cast doubt on it; when the National Academy of Sciences came to the only conclusion it could, reaffirming the conclusions of the international scientific community, he could no longer give that reason; he simply chose to do nothing. Detroit and the oil companies, of course, benefit from the current system, even if the world loses. This kind of situation, where particular interests prevail over the general interests, is one of the principal explanations identified by Diamond for collapses. – JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ, Boston Globe
Environmentalists will probably snatch up this book for affirmation of all they hold dear. They may come away disappointed. Diamond doesn't always blame greed and short-sightedness for the bad decisions. Sometimes, the downside is beyond human control -- climate change, for example. And sometimes, corporations star as Diamond's good guys -- Chevron in New Guinea, for example. Nor does Diamond write off every potentially bad situation. He usually finds grounds for optimism, although Haiti is a challenge. -- HARRY LEVINS, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The one advantage we have over the Vikings is our awareness of their fate. While they had little idea they were heading down a road to extinction, we do. It's not much to pin our hopes on, frankly, but from the pages of this superb but terrifying book, it would seem to be just about all that we've got. – ROBIN MCKIE The Observer, London
Lots of people are buying this book and picking up the message that our society, like some ancient ones, faces environmental disaster if we don't act. Mr. Diamond is a naturalistic determinist who discounts the role of ideas in culture and draws sweeping conclusions, but his credentials and the book's scientific, historical gloss suggest it will influence policy debates. – WORLD magazine (from a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God)
We may be rich but so were the Mayan elite; wealth is no bulwark against disaster. In fact it may encourage a kind of wilful blindness. – Mark Butler, Saturday New South Wales
The parallels could hardly be clearer: we are cutting down forests, destroying soils, eliminating fisheries, overusing water, poisoning the air and changing the climate with greater impact than ever before. Each of these on its own would present the world with a major challenge. Instead, we are facing all these time bombs at once.-- MARK LYNAS, New Statesman
Diamond offers a five-point framework describing the dynamics of collapse (and revival). Included are inadvertent environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, the decline of trade with other groups, and the political culture that determines a society's response to a crisis. Throughout, he brings many ancient societies to life, from those that expired, such as the Norse of Greenland, to those that skirted disaster, like the highland people of New Guinea… Collapse is a magisterial effort packed with insight and written with clarity and enthusiasm. It's also the deal of the year -- the equivalent of a year's college course by an engaging, brilliant professor, all for the price of a book. – CHRISTOPHER FARRELL, Business Week