Is American civilization smart enough to recover?
By Gary M. Feinman and Christopher T. Fisher September 18, 2005 From the millennial perspective of archeology, episodes of collapse–settlement abandonments, dramatic regional shifts in power and population, and even cataclysmic events–are a regular feature of humankind’s global history. In his recent book, “Collapse,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond catalogs cases of what he terms “ecocide.” These are unintentional episodes of ecological catastrophe through which past societies have degraded their environment, thereby precipitating social disintegration and demographic decline. A key point of Diamond’s comparative analyses is the recognition that many past episodes of societal decline were caused by a complex web of natural perturbations, such as climatic change or environmental calamity, and anthropogenic or human factors, such as poor responses to initial challenges, that often played off each other for decades, if not much longer. Of course, the final chapters of the s
Related Questions
- If the Maya were so smart, why did their civilization crumble? Why were their descendents utterly defeated by a relative handful of Spaniards (and the illnesses they carried to the New World)?
- Why can the average American make a smart choice like who they elected for President?
- Is American civilization smart enough to recover?
