Perspectives on Diamond’sCollapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Previous articleNext article FreeCA FORUM ON ANTHROPOLOGY IN PUBLICPerspectives on Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or SucceedPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreReferences CitedAllen, T. F. H. , Joseph A. Tainter, and T. W. Hoekstra. 2003. Supplyside sustainability. New York: Columbia University Press. First citation in articleGoogle ScholarAmmerman, A. J. , and L. L. CavalliSforza. 1984. The Neolithic transition and the genetics of populations in Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. First citation in articleGoogle ScholarBoyd, D. J. 2001. Life without pigs: Recent subsistence changes among the Irakia Awa, Papua New Guinea. Human Ecology 29: 25982. First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarBoyd, R. , and P. J. Richerson. 2002. Group beneficial norms spread rapidly in a structured population. Journal of Theoretical Biology 215: 28796. 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First citation in articleGoogle ScholarThomas, William L. , Jr. Editor. 1956. Mans role in changing the face of the earth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. First citation in articleGoogle ScholarTurchin, P. 2003. Historical dynamics: Why states rise and fall. Princeton: Princeton University Press. First citation in articleGoogle ScholarWood, Richard G. 1996. Stephen Harriman Long. 17841864: Army engineer, explorer, investor. Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark. pd, ercFirst citation in articleGoogle ScholarWright, R. 2001. Nonzero: The logic of human destiny. New York: Vintage. First citation in articleGoogle ScholarResponses PeterB. Demenocal EdwardR. CookLamontDoherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Geoscience 211, Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964, U. S. A. 5 vi 05A recurring theme in Jared Diamonds (2005) Collapse is that the disintegration of many ancient cultures can be traced to two fundamental vulnerabilities of urban societies. Internal sociopolitical factors affect the way societies use, regulate, and protect resources such as water or land, whereas external climatic variability introduces uncertainty and vulnerability that can limit the availability of those resources. As detailed in Diamonds book, ancient cultural collapses of advanced, urban, stratified societies such as the Maya, Anasazi, or Akkadian have been linked to these two destabilizing influences. The relative importance of these factors is debated by specialists, but evidence for both types of vulnerabilities is present for each of these case studies. The archeological records of collapse are sobering in light of the apparent complexity, sophistication, and longevity of these past cultures, with their impressively successful adaptations to often marginal physical environments. Disquieting parallels are evident between these cultural collapses and the state of global societies today, and this is perhaps the most compelling point of the book. These parallels are so striking and familiar that they are apparent to scientists and the lay public alike. Most people appreciate the view that population growth coupled with increasing resource use eventually leads to loss of environmental quality as the carrying capacity of the land is diminished. There is no shortage of examples in the modern world in which geopolitical tensions and population growth have led to widespread human suffering through restrictions on the availability of food and water (Rwanda, Darfur, the Middle East). These socially destabilizing factors are those that cultures can hope to have some measure of control over. Societies can and do adopt better and more sustainable practices given sufficient incentive to do so. This Malthusian thread runs through nearly every example of ancient cultural collapse, and the question it raises becomes how many people the Earth can support and at what level. The role of climate change in these examples of cultural collapse is equally disquieting. Climate sets the longterm, sustainable carrying capacity of a given region, and its yeartoyear variability defines how societies can adapt to it using water management and agricultural practices. Chief among the concerns in semiarid regions, where many of these past cultures thrived, is the onset of exceptional drought. Drought is a climatic variable that we know something about not only for the past century or so but also for the past millennium through the contributions of dendrochronology and ocean and lake sediment studies. The U. S. Great Plains Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s illustrates how the convergence of socioeconomic and climatic vulnerabilities can lead to exceptional societal disruption given a relatively modest climatic anomaly. Several years of diminished rainfall in the northern Great Plains between 1933 and 1938 led to one of the most devastating and bestdocumented agricultural, economic, and social disasters in the history of the United States. It displaced and impoverished millions of people, cost over 1 billion in federal relief, and extended and deepened the economic collapse which was the Great Depression. To encourage settlement in the Great Plains in the early 1930s, western land boosters advertised the exceptional suitability of western land for agriculture and popularized the myth that rain follows the plow, the pseudoscience notion that tilled soil attracts rainfall and favorable growing conditions. As the farms multiplied, these claims were fortuitously strengthened by extended periods of unusually high rainfall. In truth, however, the region was illsuited to farming. The explorer Steven Long (Wood 1966: 11819) reported in 1820 that the Great Plains region was almost wholly unfit for cultivation and of course uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence. Motivated by increasing crop prices and favorable climatic conditions, farm lands expanded and capitalized at breakneck pace in the early twentieth century with little regard for soil conservation. Crop prices plummeted when the national economy went into decline after the economic collapse of 1929 and were further weakened in the early 1930s when bumper crop yields flooded the market. Tragically, many farmers took on additional debt to expand operations in an attempt to recoup their losses. A societal perfect storm was gathering. Unknown to the farmers at that time, ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic had been gradually shifting by a few tenths of a degree from their average values. These relatively slight changes in tropical ocean temperatures diverted the rainbearing winds coming up from the Gulf of Mexico away from the Great Plains, denying the region its normal rainfall for several years in a row. The Great Plains had become vulnerableoverdeveloped and unprotectedand so when the drought took hold and the soil dried, the first strong winds lifted and carried away black clouds of topsoil, gradually erasing millions of acres of farmland. Farms and businesses defaulted by the thousands, banks failed, and unprecedented federal relief programs were introduced to stabilize the crisis. As captured in Steinbecks classic novel, the fabric of American society was strained as millions of migrants dispersed from the Great Plains in search of jobs at a time when the country was just beginning to crawl out of the Great Depression. The Dust Bowl era was important because society learned from past mistakes and improved its resilience to subsequent even larger drought events, including a sixyear drought in the 1950s and a threeyear dry period in the late 1980s which led to the burning of millions of acres in Yellowstone National Park. A current multiyear drought in the American West began in 1999 and has surpassed the Dust Bowl in cumulative water deficit. Multiyear drought events thus appear to be fairly common, occurring roughly several times per century. However, it is the possibility of a megadroughta period of extreme, widespread drought lasting from several decades to even several centuriesthat is most disquieting. Megadroughts are very different from other drought events, and modern society has never experienced one. As detailed in the pages of Collapse, there is very solid evidence that at least three ancient cultures experienced such megadroughts (Anasazi, Maya, and Akkadian populations) and none survived intact. This is not to say that drought was the definitive agent in each case (the archeological record is mute on this issue), as there is equally strong evidence for growing socioeconomic vulnerabilities before collapse. A spatial and temporal history of North American drought spanning the past 1, 200 years has been developed using a gridded database of dendrochronological records calibrated in terms of an instrumental drought index (the Palmer Drought Severity Index). These records are particularly valuable not only for appreciating the role of climate change in cultural collapses but also for placing modern climate variability in a longerterm context and understanding its causes. The dendrochronological reconstructions of past drought indicate that in the AD 9001300 interval, the western United States experienced an almost 400year period of elevated aridity and epic drought, punctuated by relatively short episodes of wetter conditions. The primary characteristic that differentiates this early megadrought in the West from droughts experienced during the twentieth century (for example, the Dust Bowl) was its longterm persistence. Individual drought years during the Dust Bowl (such as 1934) were probably as bad as some of the worst years during the megadrought, but overall the Dust Bowl did not last even 10 years. The difference between the twentiethcentury droughts we have experienced and that of the AD 9001300 interval tells us just how bad things could get in the West. This leads to an obvious and extremely important question: How could a 400year period of elevated aridity and epic drought happen in the West? We know with reasonable certainty now that droughts in that western United States are often associated with the development of coolerthanaverage sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. This region is part of the wellknown El Nio/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system, and belowaverage sea surface temperatures in the eastern part of the tropical Pacific are referred to as a La Nia condition. So, La Nias are associated with drought in the West, but how could one last 400 years when historical ones typically lasted only 37 years? The leading hypothesis relates to longterm warming over the tropical Pacific and the way it can promote the development of cool, La Nialike sea surface temperatures in the eastern end of that system. For much of the AD 9001300 interval, solar output was apparently above average. At the same time, large volcanic eruptions, which act to cool the atmosphere, were rare. Model results beginning in AD 1000 indicate that this combination of high solar and low volcanic activity would have produced a prolonged period of cool, La Nialike sea surface temperatures just when the megadrought in the West occurred. If warming over the tropical Pacific Ocean led to the development of persistent droughts in the past, why not in the future as the world is increasingly warmed by greenhouse gases? The message in Collapse may be even more relevant for the future than we would like to believe. David DemerittDepartment of Geography, Kings College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom (email protected). 5 vii 05In both its style and its substantive concerns Diamonds Collapse is the kind of book that academic geographers have not attempted for several generations. Indeed, it uncannily echoes many of the founding impulses of geography as an academic discipline, highlighting both how far the profession has come and some of what it has lost along the way. Diamond operates comfortably across a sweeping canvas, from prehistoric Easter Island and Norse Greenland to contemporary Rwanda, China, and Montana. While specialists will doubtless quibble with the details of particular chaptersI found his account of Montanas resourcedependent economy both superficial and half again too longit is difficult not to admire Diamonds determination not to let conventional divisions of discipline and areal specialism stand in his way. This marks a refreshing return to the roving curiosity of Carl Sauer, the earlytwentiethcentury founder of the influential Berkeley school of cultural geography. Although subsequent generations of geographers were often less catholic in their interests (and all too concerned with policing disciplinary boundaries), many shared Sauers commitment to geography as a kind of synthetic discipline bridging the social and natural sciences. Likewise Diamond brings the various places he describes to life by interweaving the documentary and other source materials of the social sciences together with dendrochronological and other data from the natural and physical sciences. He boldly marshals these cases to explain the role of the environment in triggering societal collapse. In this way his book also demonstrates a return to the kind of environmentalist concern that dominated geography for the first half of the twentieth century. Though Diamonds condemnation of reckless environmental destruction would warm the heart of most contemporary environmentalists, he is actually an environmentalist in the original sense of the word. Like the first professional geographers, he is concerned with the role of environment in shaping or even determining human history. While some might sense that he protests too much, he is at pains to distinguish his brand of environmentalism from the crude determinisms of old. A full title for this book, he explains, would be Societal collapses involving an environmental component, and in some cases also contributions of climate change, hostile neighbors, and trade partners, plus questions of societal responses (p. 15). His subtitle underlines his salient point that societies choose to fail (italics added). In this respect, the tone of Collapse is more hopeful than its title and depressing subject matter might otherwise suggest. Diamond argues that the fate of our society, like that of our planet, is still largely in our hands. By contrast, his Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) suggested a biogeographical inevitability to European dominance whose spirit, if not its precise empirical details, would have been familiar to environmental determinists of a century ago. If only by way of contrast, Diamonds book emphasizes three notable features about the evolution of geographical research since the collapse of that earlytwentiethcentury environmentalist paradigm. First, the research of individual geographers has become steadily more specialized and narrow in its scope. As a result, human and physical geography have been increasingly alienated from one another while within those two very broad churches further subdisciplinary specialization (the Association of American Geographers, for instance, recognizes 53 subdisciplinary specialty groups) has sometimes made it seem as if the only thing that the geographers of any department share is that their mail all gets delivered to the same address. Geography, of course, is hardly alone in facing such a dilemma. The intellectual smorgasbord on offer on my one visit to a meeting of the American Anthropological Association was almost overwhelming. Interdisciplinarity has become something of a buzzword in universities these days. If there were more of it, I might find it easier to talk with my colleagues down the hall and on the same of empirical materials as Diamond with such apparent at only a to a of geographical its of a public In geography there is no strong and the of is in only at large research and even only at by a By contrast, Diamonds book is a trade book at a The first thing a across from in the on a when I was a was what I of Diamonds book, which their book was there is much among about the collective of the role of public geographers do not appear much that about the only in our discipline is Diamond (and even he is an only been to the geography department after most of his in the we geographers have been much more concerned about our relevance for or of In the there has been a about the cultural to a away from social but it is a view of relevance to society the National Research about geography was that this with instrumental the professional of and to over public The first of professional geographers was not with such narrow understanding of the public of geographical research and so made more time for the kind of science and public for which Diamond is so by to the environmentalist about on society, Diamond is some questions that geographers have away from in their concern with the other of the While Mans in the of the as the title of influential it, has been an the most in geography has environmental and to at social and cultural are but their and on the important questions about the of any environmental to human book that but he might have some different from his of collapse if he had more to the from that more geographical He is not about his of of his historical case are Easter New and like the Anasazi, relatively and in with his of natural he to as cases of collapse within The of their collapse for to be but it is not in an of global and their would be for that what would their collapse. about Rwanda, China, and that the is the relevant to adapt or of by the on which the of such as as and of the Diamonds of that it also might be a spatial his on societies as to down important questions about the of any and in their Recent in for example, has the importance for of and social in or environmental but these are also important as the by Diamond in the on is the book to to to can I do as an (p. to a collective global is The as a While the example of human that such to human interests do have a they to away from the difficult that from social different interests in and environmental that Collapse is more successful as an of to come than as a to how to Ecology University, (email protected). 5 vii to be Diamonds This is probably not only because of his and book Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) a because its the of past and present to a widespread concern with the of Diamonds is to a of and historical examples of societal and in to about how modern societies to so as to their of He and relevant research on collapse on Easter and the Anasazi, the Maya, and Norse such with the historical of the New and The book with a the and of modern to a of other modern case including Rwanda, the China, and In the we are to of the environmental records of some including two and the a on the of in of case the book with that few would be to The of the fate of a few prehistoric of Island with the of modern such as or societies with a of The of between prehistoric Easter and modern farmers (p. (p. (p. and or (p. Easter Island and the modern world (p. Island and the United States (p. and of and London (p. or New (p. and modern American the Greenland Norse and (p. the (p. in (p. and the (p. and F. (p. and so This of is given that Diamond as one a society may fail to (p. so often when a with a in natural science to human history, there is a on the role of of and social structure in for historical and index not even or Diamonds about in societal (p. the role of and of human history. it is his notion of societies as a of that is the Maya, the Anasazi, or was a that could choose to fail or more a U. S. or the of an these not to those of modern Rwanda, and be as of larger or global of societal within which some and at the of Diamond by by from the past, we may on (p. it is not evident is to be in the of this book is that Diamonds of and not to his to societies as populations their The of a world as to as a of or social In to the of different societies over the past it all we is a with an in and climate science is and the only to anthropology is a of its to of (p. which Diamond not to in most of the cases he as is that Diamonds of on through their bad in no way to his in and the of Although he a point of that environmental and to in and often demonstrates an that the and are the last to from environmental instance, by to resources and (p. of the on and environmental His for have little to offer the familiar of and for better and (p. Collapse is often particularly in the and detailed of from various of the It is to share Diamonds with the of life and in the societies of Easter Anasazi, Maya, and Greenland He is that current on have much to from of past and his book the that it is will that their research and do not as as and of and but to Jared Diamond many people have hardly of anthropology will be by these with other of University of U. S. A. (email protected). 5 vii U. S. universities began to the of the research in the late academic was increasingly in the of disciplinary specialization and eventually intellectual We have only just become of how we and research if we are to the