Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
I read Jared Diamond’s New York Times best-selling book, Collapse. Collapse broke down the many ways societies choose to fail or succeed into four major parts. The author Jared Diamond defines a collapse as, “a drastic decrease in human population size and/ or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time (Diamond,2005, p.3).” Diamond begins the book by going into detail about the Bitterroot Valley of Montana. He was familiar with the surroundings of a farm that his family and friends lived on in this area, including the Hulu and the Hirschy families. In this chapter, he described many of the issues that have occurred here such as the dangerous effects
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I am going to categorize a group of places that had similar reasons of failure instead of success. These places include: Polynesians of Pitcairn Island, Anasazi, and Maya. They all collapsed due to either environmental damage, climate change, loss of trade partners, or hostile neighbors. The Polynesians were lacking high-quality stone and the other islands around didn’t have enough stone to support a large population, so they were lacking drinking water, food other than seafood, and a few other resources which makes it hard to believe that they even survived if they did (Diamond,2005, p.127). By A.D. 1500, trade had stopped and for awhile and they survived by replacing the stone that was traded with items like shells of giant clam, or by using fishhooks out of purse shell since they weren’t receiving the rocks that they needed when the trade ended (p.131). After the trade ended, the results were very devastating for the inhabitants of Pitcairn and Henderson because eventually no one was left alive on those islands (p.133). This section of the book shows that without the economic and social part of society such as working together with others to trade, the society will most likely end up
The prologue of the book clearly lays out Diamond thesis. He explains that past societies have collapsed based on five factors: human induced environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, and society’s response to environmental problems. He also explains how is wrote this book in a scientific manner using the “comparative method”, comparing natural situations differing with respect to the variable of interest. There is a slight flaw in this though. Showing these correlations between different societies,...
...t Bowl. Unfortunately the circumstances in the Great Plains all came to a head resulting in a horrific ten years for citizens of the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl caused government and people to look at farming practices and to evaluate their output. These policies resulted in overproduction of crops causing the prices to fall. The conclusion of World War I and countries that stopped importing foods added to the pain the farmers were already feeling. Yet with the establishment of government policies such as the Federal Relief Administration and the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act and with drought coming to an end, the Dust Bowl came to an end. The American people knew that they needed to do everything that was possible to end the Dust Bow. Tom Joad, the lead character in The Grapes Wrath best sums it up “ I know this... a man got to do what he got to do.”
The book Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond, starts off with Yali’s question about why some places are more developed and have more resources compared to others. The essence of this book is based on Diamond’s thesis, he claimed: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples ' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves"(Diamond 25). Diamond tries to explain the cultural development of few societies at different places in the world. One of the question he described most vividly is about “Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are, rather than in some other way? For instance, why weren 't Native Americans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians
As America tumbled skyward into the 1930s, the country also stumbled earthward into a cataclysmic depression. Farmers all across the country mewled out in agony as huge swarms of flinging dust particles flew amok and disfigured cropland. The dust squirmed itself into houses, barns, and the lungs of innocent people, infecting them with what came to be known as a dust pneumonia. Farmers suffered harshly from the annihilation of their farms due to the soil flying about. It impaired animals, crops, houses, and their families’ health. Horrifically timed, this explosion of catastrophic grime helped the Great Depression terminate America economically; proving the storm to be the wickedest environmental crisis to strike North America. This was the squall that gave the American 1930s the nickname the “Dirty Thirties”, the dust bowl had emerged was not to evaporate until about ten years later. The dust bowl is simplest described as an agricultural nightmare, wreaking havoc from 1930 to 1941on plantations of Midwest America. Ironically, the very people who suffered from the gale caused this calamity onto themselves. The cause of the bowl is blamed to be large scale famers overproducing too many crops, stripping the topsoil of farmland. Not all the weight of the blame rested on overproduction of course, but also a combination of drought, torrid temperatures, and trivial, yet vitally significant prairie fires also played roles in causing the bowl. These events caused the soil to become frail, loose, and subject to passing winds above the land, creating one colossal horde of dust. Clearly, the cause of the dust bowl was overproduction and various factors, resulting in demolished farmland all across North America, proved the dust bo...
During the Great Depression, or the “dirty thirties”, the land had changed and definitely not for the better seeing that “severe drought and high winds degraded [the] farmland” (Gale, 2008). Although it was not nature’s fault for the Dust Bowl; the “years of overproduction and poor farming techniques had stripped the land of protective topsoil and left it vulnerable” to all patterns of western weather (Gale, 2008).
History provides the opportunity to explore the origins of a topic or problem. The information from Agriculture and rural society after the Black Death provides an overview of agricultural and rural society’s agrarian issues; during the Middle-Ages these issues were centered around depopulation and social conflict (Dodds & Britnell, 2008, pp.3-50). Problems in the economics of society in the medieval fourteenth century involved the decline of social status and labor services (Dodds & Britnell, 2008, pp.73-132). Other examples are seen in change and growth describe of that in 1870, the Great Plains only had 127,000 people; six decades later in 1930, there were 6.8 million people; 74 percent of the population lived in non-metropolitan areas; from 1930 to 1940, there was a loss of 200,000 people; 75 percent of these counties lost populations from the Great Depression and severe drought, which had caused the abandonment of farms (Kandel & Brown, 2006, p.431). To understand these past experiences, the door to hindering issues must be opened to determine how agricultural sustainability forges change.
...t. At one point, the land could be of use and now it was only hope that kept some residents there. Farmers needed to remain optimistic, courageous, and have faith that their lives would improve. During the Great Depression it seemed that the only choice many of these farmers had was to continue to plow and harvest. Leaving the Southern Plains meant being unemployed elsewhere, losing their homes, and still facing poverty. To many, staying there in the heart of the Dust Bowl was better than what they could expect anywhere else. Choices were scarce during the depression. The Dust bowl and its residents could be described as, “…a dead land—populated by defeated people who were plagued by drought and depression.” The defeated land caused by the people, would in return make the people feel defeated as the dust storms made living in the Southern Plains nearly unbearable.
64-66), author Jared Diamond claims that agriculture as opposed to popular belief, didn’t help civilization bloom, but instead proved detrimental to human lives ever since its introduction. He states that the progressives believe agriculture was adopted due to its efficiency and how it complimented our race. He contradicts this view with multiple studies and expert sources. According to his research, modern day humans are much worse off than their hunter gatherer counterparts due to a variety of lifestyle changes ranging from greatly deteriorated nutritional quality to increased sexual discrimination. He gathers the support from various archaeological research conducted on various remains found in Chile, Greece, Turkey, etc. Archaeologists can further point out the date at which this switch (from Gathering to agriculture) took place. He further establishes that Hunter gatherers may have chosen to change ways with the preconceived idea that the capability to feed more people and reducing the burden on mothers (hence allowing them to bear a child every 2 years instead of 4) would in turn drastically improve quality of life. He concludes the article by emphasizing on how it created disparities between the elite and the commoners and by defending his own kind for having discovered mankind’s biggest mistake and the motive behind
He gives specific examples that support his claim. The collapse of a Polynesian society on
The example of societal collapse in which I will be making reference to throughout this essay is the Maya civilization. The Maya civilization is, “probably the best known of all early American civilizations.” (Fagan, 1995) It was at its strongest point between AD 300 AND 900. Around AD 900 was the time of its collapse. This civilization was developed in a densely, tropical forest on either highlands or lowlands. Today to visit a Mayan site, people would go to the modern Mexican state, capital city of Merida. This site was once home to the “New World's most advanced Native American civilization before European arrival.” (Diamond, 2009) Over the years there has been many predictions on what had caused the Maya civilization to collapse. At the moment the most recent cause that geographers and scientists have come up with is that climate change may have had a major impact on this collapse. It is said that the rainfall received during the creation of the civilization was a key factor in the continuity of life for the Mayans. This and the addition of societal factors such as religious beliefs, ethnicity and education all had an affect on their way of life, an effect on their societal well-being. Art and architecture that was formed by the Mayans is the foundation for the archaeologists work today. They look at these features and the ruins of the buildings created to depict the kind of lifestyle they lived. Looking at the art and architecture of a specific civilization or community of the past is just one way that can help to inform future adaptations. Another way in which the Europeans received knowledge on the collapse was that they sent out geographers and researchers not long after the collapse to gather as much data and information ...
The Dust Bowl existed, in its full quintessence, concurrently with the Great Depression during the 1930's. Worster sets out in an attempt to show that these two cataclysms existed simultaneously not by coincidence, but by the same culture, which brought them about from similar events. "Both events revealed fundamental weaknesses in the traditional culture of America, the one in ecological terms, the other in economic." (pg. 5) Worster proposes that in American society, as in all others, there are certain accepted ways of using the land. He sums up the "capital ethos" of ecology into three simply stated maxims: nature must be seen as capital, man has a right/obligation to use this capital for constant self-advancement, and the social order should permit and encourage this continual increase of personal wealth (pg. 6) It is through these basic beliefs that Worster claims the plainsmen ignored all environmental limits, much ...
"Collapse: Why Do Civilizations Fall?" Out of the Past. Annenburg/CPB Multimedia. 1998. *http://www.learner.org/exhibits/collapse/mayans.html* (30 Jan. 2001).
Jared Diamond author of “The Ends of the World as We Know Them” highlights the reasons for the disappearance of early civilizations. Civilizations like the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs once inhabited the earth for hundreds of years, However; when these advanced civilizations reached the pinnacle of their capability, they faced tragedies such as war, unusual weather, environmental deprivation, terminated trade markets and unscrupulous leaders who contributed to the destruction of their civilization. One significant idea portrayed from Diamond’s article is that there are many factors that threaten American civilization.
collapse. The other major issue being studied is the massive change in genetics of the
These three civilizations all had a decline that can not be totally explained. Each unique yet similar in different ways. Both the Egyptian and Mayan civilization seemed to have declined because of agricultural and ideological reasons, and all three had to do with a loss of power and trust in rulers. There are many factors that create a civilization or empire and make it powerful. The corruption and loss of these same factors is what leads to the decline of an otherwise successful civilization.