The Earth Transformed: An Untold History

by Peter Frankopan

For some scholars, collapse in production was the direct result not only of rising population levels but of a rapacious central bureaucracy, whose own need and aspirations placed demands that forced farmers to push their lands to their ecological limits. In particular, the problem was caused by excessive irrigation that ruined soils by causing salinity levels to rise. The search for short-term gain resulted in outcomes that were not only unsustainable but damaging. As we have seen in the cases of implosions of states and the breakdown of trade networks, rising complexity produces diminishing returns as well as magnifying vulnerability. Far from success breeding success, in other words, what seemed like never-ending success as states expanded and land under cultivation increased in extent was often an exercise in the seeds of ruin being sown inadvertently.