[Geodesic]

Interesting article on the rise & fall of complex societies.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ ... d-collapse

According to Diamond, the Maya fell into a classic Malthusian trap as their population grew larger than their fragile and inefficient agricultural system could support. More people meant more cultivation, but more cultivation meant deforestation, erosion, drought, and soil exhaustion. The result was civil war over dwindling resources and, finally, collapse.

[Tanada]

I took the time to review the five paintings online and it is actually quite a spectacular bit of story telling. If you picture the location as being say Cologne during the rise of the Roman Empire it demonstrates history very well.

[sparky]

.

The classic " lab experiment " of societal collapse is Easter Island
It happened in complete isolation , that make it a perfect study

When the Island was colonized around 1000AD by the Polynesian Maoris , it was covered with forest , flightless birds roamed the undergrowth fishing was good
the population is though to have risen above the 10.000 mark
by the time of captain Cook , the place was seriously eroded , barren of anything but some stands of scrubs ,
domestic middens (old rubbish tips ) shown a dramatic decrease in wild bird and fish remains , their diet was very bad
no canoes were made , there were 3000 people left , engaging in continuous warfare statues making was discontinued while all the old statues were toppled .

[bobcousins]

.

The classic " lab experiment " of societal collapse is Easter Island
It happened in complete isolation , that make it a perfect study

That is not true, since Europeans first visited the island before it's ultimate collapse. There is the textbook case, but there is an alternative story that is quite different.

Indeed, the first visit by Europeans indicates the island was flourishing. Strangely, after introducing rats, disease, and raiding the island for food, water and slaves, Europeans found the island declining rapidly... Of course, the story the surviving islanders told to European missionaries ascribed the problem to internal strife, rather than the Europeans - who the impoverished islanders now depended on for food handouts.

We know that islands tend to be sensitive ecosystems, and we also know that early Europeans were little better than the Vikings in the rape and pillage of "primitive" societies. A little revisionist history, and hey presto we can blame the "primitives" not the Europeans for destroying yet another civilization. Diamond unfortunately propagates the myth of internal collapse for his own purposes.

Civilizations certainly do rise and fall, but the case of Easter Island is a lot more complicated than Diamond paints. Either way, it is not a perfect study. It is quite possible that Easter Island was only a marginal habitat at the whim of climate change, and would have collapsed without European help, but now we may never know.

[Ludi]

There's good evidence, I think, that civilizations tend to be vulnerable to climate change - (examples from the Americas - the Hohokam, maybe the Maya). They tend to develop specialized agriculture which can't adapt quickly to changing conditions. And they tend to engage in practices which make it worse, by destroying watersheds, cutting down forests, etc.

[mos6507]

Civilizations certainly do rise and fall, but the case of Easter Island is a lot more complicated than Diamond paints. Either way, it is not a perfect study. It is quite possible that Easter Island was only a marginal habitat at the whim of climate change, and would have collapsed without European help, but now we may never know.

Haiti has followed the ecological path of Easter Island and hasn't as of yet had a malthusian die-off, but I'd hardly consider that country a success or role model for sustainability. I don't think things have to get as horrible as yeast in a petri dish to prove the point that deforestation is a bad idea.

[Tanada]

Can someone cite a few examples of a confirmed Malthusian collapse for me?

[Sixstrings]

Can someone cite a few examples of a confirmed Malthusian collapse for me?

Easter Island?

EDIT: (oops old thread I see Easter Island was already mentioned.. do you not agree with the Maya and Easter Island examples?)

[Tanada]

Can someone cite a few examples of a confirmed Malthusian collapse for me?

Easter Island?

EDIT: (oops old thread I see Easter Island was already mentioned.. do you not agree with the Maya and Easter Island examples?)

Thomas Malthus proposed that populations would increase until widespread famine caused a collapse of social order and a catastrophic reduction back to a more sustainable level.

Easter Island, as was pointed out up thread, was raided by Europeans after which time disease and ecological invasive species were introduced and the society collapsed under all of the massive new stress.

The Maya appear to have had a tax revolt where the peasantry decided to depart for friendlier neighbor cultures and the whole economy collapsed. Kind of the ultimate Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged scenario except in ancient times.

[Sixstrings]

Easter Island, as was pointed out up thread, was raided by Europeans after which time disease and ecological invasive species were introduced and the society collapsed under all of the massive new stress.

My understand is that they'd already collapsed before contact with Europeans:

The first-recorded European contact with the island was on 5 April (Easter Sunday) 1722 when Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen visited for a week and estimated there were 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants on the island. This was an estimate, not a census, and archaeologists estimate the population may have been as high as 10,000 to 15,000 a few decades earlier. His party reported "remarkable, tall, stone figures, a good 30 feet in height", the island had rich soil and a good climate and "all the country was under cultivation".

Fossil pollen analysis shows that the main trees on the island had gone 72 years earlier in 1650. The civilization of Easter Island was long believed to have degenerated drastically during the century before the arrival of the Dutch, as a result of overpopulation, deforestation and exploitation of an extremely isolated island with limited natural resources. The Dutch reported that a fight broke out in which they killed ten or twelve islanders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Easter_Island

I saw a documentary recently that mentioned rats may have been the problem on Easter Island. Something along the lines of a couple breeding pairs stowing away on the first settlers' boats. The rats ate the palm tree seeds, and with no natural predators on the island over time the rat population exploded and pretty much ate the trees into extinction.

Add to that the societal pressure for each generation to build more and bigger moai statues, and it's no surprise they used up all their trees.

My problem with the Easter Island example is that it's a CLOSED SYSTEM. The collapse went down during a period of time where the islanders had no contact with the rest of the world off-island. Closed, small scale systems are vulnerable by nature. So I don't think Easter Island is comparable to other civilizations that have give and take with the larger world around them -- when there's famine in one area, there's surplus in another etc.

I think this open-system equilibrium effect is why you can't really find many examples of resource collapse. History shows that when populations outgrow available resources, *something* will happen to reduce the population before the whole civilization collapses. That could be population reduction through warfare, or natural diseases caused by overcrowding (plague, etc.). After the Black Death in Europe, civilization didn't collapse -- life actually got a lot better for those left standing, and the improved living conditions sparked the Renaissance.

So I think that's the natural norm in these situations, simple population reduction vs. outright collapse and extinction. Let's not forget that our species was once reduced to a mere thousand breeding pairs planetwide.. in opnion, if we recovered from that we can bounce back from anything. (talking about survival of the species here, not necessarily firstworld living standards)

[Cloud9]

There is pretty good evidence that the advent of the dark ages in 536 was brought about by climate change. Governments unable to feed their populations collapsed world wide. Populations plummeted and chaos reigned.

http://www.pbs.org/saf/1203/hotline/hstahle.htm

http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/history/535ad.htm

http://mitchtempparch.blogspot.com/2009 ... hange.html