Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

by Jared Diamond

By collapse, I mean a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time.

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.

When the good decades then do end, the society finds itself with more population than can be supported, or with ingrained habits unsuitable to the new climate conditions.

Hence collapses for ecological or other reasons often masquerade as military defeats.

For over a thousand years, Rome successfully held off the barbarians,

the fall of the Khmer Empire centered on Angkor Wat in relation to invasions by Thai neighbors,

The fourth set of factors is the converse of the third set: decreased support by friendly neighbors, as opposed to increased attacks by hostile neighbors.

no stone of Easter origin has been found on any other island or vice versa. Thus, Easter Islanders may have remained effectively completely isolated at the end of the world, with no contact with outsiders for the thousand years or so separating Hotu Matu’a’s arrival from Roggeveen’s.

islanders ended up with the highest incidence of cavities and tooth decay of any known prehistoric people: many children already had cavities by age 14, and everyone did by their 20s.

why were Easter Islanders the only ones to go overboard, to make by far the largest investment of societal resources in building them, and to erect the biggest ones? At least four different factors cooperated to produce that outcome. First, Rano Raraku tuff is the best stone in the Pacific for carving: to a sculptor used to struggling with basalt and red scoria, it almost cries out, “Carve me!” Second, other Pacific island societies on islands within a few days’ sail of other islands devoted their energy, resources, and labor to interisland trading, raiding, exploration, colonization, and emigration, but those competing outlets were foreclosed for Easter Islanders by their isolation. While chiefs on other Pacific islands could compete for prestige and status by seeking to outdo each other in those interisland activities, “The boys on Easter Island didn’t have those usual games to play,” as one of my students put it. Third, Easter’s gentle terrain and complementary resources in different territories led as we have seen to some integration of the island, thereby letting clans all over the island obtain Rano Raraku stone and go overboard in carving it. If Easter had remained politically fragmented, like the Marquesas, the Tongariki clan in whose territory Rano Raraku lay could have monopolized its stone, or neighboring clans could have barred transport of statues across their territories—as in fact eventually happened. Finally, as we shall see, building platforms and statues ...

The overall picture for Easter is the most extreme example of forest destruction in the Pacific, and among the most extreme in the world: the whole forest gone, and all of its tree species extinct. Immediate consequences for the islanders were losses of raw materials, losses of wild-caught foods, and decreased crop yields.

Not until 1966 did islanders become Chilean citizens.

Magellan became the first European to cross the Pacific in 1521,

reluctance of Easter Islanders themselves and of some scientists to accept that the islanders caused the deforestation, because that conclusion seems to imply that they were uniquely bad or improvident among Pacific peoples.

two main sets of factors behind Easter’s collapse: human environmental impacts, especially deforestation and destruction of bird populations; and the political, social, and religious factors behind the impacts, such as the impossibility of emigration as an escape valve because of Easter’s isolation, a focus on statue construction for reasons already discussed, and competition between clans and chiefs driving the erection of bigger statues requiring more wood, rope, and food.

Chaco Anasazi society flourished from about A.D. 600 for more than five centuries, until it disappeared some time between 1150 and 1200.

Some time between A.D. 1150 and 1200, Chaco Canyon was virtually abandoned and remained largely empty until Navajo sheepherders reoccupied it 600 years later.

Because the Navajo did not know who had built the great ruins that they found there, they referred to those vanished former inhabitants as the Anasazi, meaning “the Ancient Ones.”

Despite these varying proximate causes of abandonments, all were ultimately due to the same fundamental challenge: people living in fragile and difficult environments, adopting solutions that were brilliantly successful and understandable “in the short run,” but that failed or else created fatal problems in the long run,

Chaco Canyon abandoned because of human impact on the environment, or because of drought? The answer is: it was abandoned for both reasons.

All of us moderns—house-owners, investors, politicians, university administrators, and others—can get away with a lot of waste when the economy is good. We forget that conditions fluctuate, and we may not be able to anticipate when conditions will change. By that time, we may already have become attached to an expensive lifestyle, leaving an enforced diminished lifestyle or bankruptcy as the sole outs.

Especially important, both for bad and for good, was the bishop Diego de Landa, who resided in the Yucatán Peninsula for most of the years from 1549 to 1578.

They did damage their environment, especially by deforestation and erosion. Climate changes (droughts) did contribute to the Maya collapse, probably repeatedly. Hostilities among the Maya themselves did play a large role. Finally, political/cultural factors, especially the competition among kings and nobles that led to a chronic emphasis on war and erecting monuments rather than on solving underlying problems, also contributed.

In the United States today, with its highly efficient agriculture, farmers make up only 2% of our population, and each farmer can feed on the average 125 other people (American non-farmers plus people in export markets overseas).

Ancient Egyptian agriculture, although much less efficient than modern mechanized agriculture, was still efficient enough for an Egyptian peasant to produce five times the food required for himself and his family. But a Maya peasant could produce only twice the needs of himself and his family. At least 70% of Maya society consisted of peasants. That’s because Maya agriculture suffered from several limitations.

Maya had no animal-powered transport or plows.

The pre-Classic rise may have been facilitated by the return of wetter conditions after 250 B.C., but then a drought from A.D. 125 until A.D. 250 was associated with the pre-Classic collapse at El Mirador and other sites. That collapse was followed by the resumption of wetter conditions and of the buildup of Classic Maya cities,

temporarily interrupted by a drought around A.D. 600 corresponding to a decline at Tikal and some other sites. Finally, around A.D. 760 there began the worst drought in the last 7,000 years, peaking around the year A.D. 800, and suspiciously associated with the Classic collapse.

from small variations in the sun’s radiation,

climatologists have noted that some other famous collapses of prehistoric civilizations far from the Maya realm appear to coincide with the peaks of those drought cycles, such as the collapse of the world’s first empire (the Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia) around 2170 B.C., the collapse of Moche IV civilization on the Peruvian coast around A.D. 600, and the collapse of Tiwanaku civilization in the Andes around A.D.

one strand consisted of population growth outstripping available resources:

second strand: the effects of deforestation and hillside erosion,

The third strand consisted of increased fighting, as more and more people fought over fewer resources. Maya warfare, already endemic, peaked just before the collapse.

the strand of climate change. The drought at the time of the Classic collapse was not the first drought that the Maya had lived through, but it was the most severe.

As on Easter Island, Mangareva, and among the Anasazi, Maya environmental and population problems led to increasing warfare and civil strife. As on Easter Island and at Chaco Canyon, Maya peak population numbers were followed swiftly by political and social collapse.

that crescent-shaped area of Southwest Asia from Jordan north to southeastern Turkey and then east to Iran. From that region came the world’s first crops and domestic animals and wheeled transport, the mastery of copper and then of bronze and iron, and the rise of towns and cities, chiefdoms and kingdoms, and organized religions. All of those elements gradually spread to and transformed Europe from southeast to northwest, beginning with the arrival of agriculture in Greece from Anatolia around 7000 B.C. Scandinavia, the corner of Europe farthest from the Fertile Crescent, was the last part of Europe to be so transformed, being reached by agriculture only around 2500 B.C.

the explanation of why Iceland became the European country with the most serious ecological damage is not that cautious Norwegian and British immigrants suddenly threw caution to the winds when they landed in Iceland, but that they found themselves in an apparently lush but actually fragile environment for which their Norwegian and British experience had failed to prepare them.

differing fates of those colonies depended especially on differences in four factors: sailing distance from Europe, resistance offered by pre-Viking inhabitants, suitability for agriculture, and environmental fragility.

Malthusian dilemma: more food, but also more people, hence no improvement in food per person.

French Hispaniola’s former slaves, who renamed their country Haiti (the original Taino Indian name for the island), killed many of Haiti’s whites, destroyed the plantations and their infrastructure in order to make it impossible to rebuild the plantation slave system, and divided the plantations into small family farms.

Although the mulatto elite spoke French and identified themselves closely with France, Haiti’s experience and fear of slavery led to the adoption of a constitution forbidding foreigners to own land or to control means of production through investments.

society’s fate lies in its own hands and depends substantially on its own choices.

Australia is the most unproductive continent:

First of all, a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. Second, when the problem does arrive, the group may fail to perceive it. Then, after they perceive it, they may fail even to try to solve it. Finally, they may try to solve it but may not succeed.

generals often plan for a coming war as if it will be like the previous war, especially if that previous war was one in which their side was victorious.

the origins of some problems are literally imperceptible.

societies often fail even to attempt to solve a problem once it has been perceived.

A frequent type of rational bad behavior is “good for me, bad for you and for everybody else”—

Barbara Tuchman devoted her book The March of Folly to famous historical examples of disastrous decisions, ranging from the Trojans bringing the Trojan horse within their walls, and the Renaissance popes provoking the Protestant succession,

That’s a regular problem with competitions for prestige, which are judged on a short time frame.