Why do some societies survive and others die? Collection and use of personal information

Today, the risk of collapses is the subject of intense scrutiny around the world. The monumental ruins left over from lost civilizations are shrouded in darkness and mystery. For a long time it was believed that many of these mysterious disappearances are associated with environmental disasters - people irreversibly destroyed the natural resources on which they built their own states. Archaeologists, historians, paleontologists and palynologists (scientists who study pollen) after lengthy research have confirmed their suspicions of unintentional ecological suicide of civilizations that have sunk into oblivion. Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond, author of the intellectual bestseller The Collapse, identifies eight categories of processes by which society undermines itself. These include deforestation and habitat destruction, soil disturbance, disruption of water supplies, devastating hunting, overfishing, impact of introduced species on native species, population growth and human conflict.

Different combinations of these factors, according to Diamond, determine different cases of collapse. So, population growth forces to increase agriculture. And the lack of resources can lead to famine, war, and even the death or migration of all members of society. The scale of ecological murder obscures even the specters of nuclear war or global epidemics. Ecology forces us to face the eight problems that ancient people have faced for centuries. According to the assumption of scientists, which of the many forms the collapse will take - wars or epidemics, depends on the depletion of natural resources.
In his book, Diamond tries to answer a number of questions caused by serious concern for the life of the planet in connection with the latest environmental disasters. He turns to the catastrophes of the past to reveal some kind of relationship that will shed light on dark spots collapses of different societies. Why did some societies collapse and others not? What caused and what were the consequences of environmental disasters in the past?
Diamond uses the example of several notorious societies to spread his theory step by step. He does not ignore the Mayan society with its ancient cities lost in the jungle. According to the author, the Mayan catastrophe illustrates the combined impact of environmental damage, population growth and climate change. On the example of Norwegian Greenland, which is a complex case of historical collapse, the author proves that even in the conditions of an ecological catastrophe, the collapse depends only on the very society in which it develops. Thus, of two equally strong societies, one may perish (Greenland), while the other will continue to flourish (Norway). And some acting states, such as China or North America, according to Diamond, are now faced with the acute problem of choice - whether they want to continue to exist, preserving their culture and nation, or are ready to perish as ancient states and tribes.

The book will be of interest to anyone who is interested in civilizations that have disappeared from the face of the earth, the ruins of which many of us often dream of visiting as tourists. The book will help not only to understand the reasons for the death of these civilizations, to create a certain system of historical events of the past - from antiquity to the present, but also to answer a number of questions regarding our modern world and the future life of the state in which we live.

Jared Diamond
COLLAPSE
Why do some societies survive while others die?

Dedicated to Jack and Ann Hershey, Jill Hershey Eliel and John Eliel, Joyce Herily McDowell, Dick (1929-2003) and Margie Hershey and the boys of Montana, guardians of her vast sky

I met a traveler; he came from distant countries

And he said to me: far away, where eternity guards

A fragment of a broken statue lies.
From the half-erased features, an arrogant flame shines through -

The desire to force the whole world to serve itself;

An experienced sculptor invested in a soulless stone

Those passions that could survive centuries.
And the fragment of the statue kept the words:

“I am Ozymandias, I am the mighty king of kings!

Look at my great deeds

Masters of all times, all countries and all seas!”

There is nothing around... Deep silence...

The desert is dead... And the skies above it...
Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Ozymandias

PROLOGUE
History of two farms
Two farms. - Collapses of the past and present. - Lost heaven? - A five-point scheme. - Ecology and business. - Comparative method. - Plan book

A few years ago I visited two dairy farms - Hals and Gardar. Despite the thousands of miles between them, they have a lot in common. Both are the largest, most prosperous and technologically advanced in their area. Each has a picturesque cowshed with two rows of stalls for beef and dairy cattle. On both farms, cows grazed in the meadows in the summer, the owners stored hay for the winter and increased pasture productivity with artificial irrigation. Both farms are similar in size (several square miles) and barns. The cowsheds of Khalsa accommodated a slightly larger number of cows than in Gardar (200 and 165 respectively). The owners of both farms held prominent positions in the local community. There is no doubt about the deep religiosity of both owners. Both farms are located in a picturesque, touristy area with snow-covered mountain peaks as a backdrop. Nearby, streams rich in fish flow, which in one case flow into the famous river, and in the other - into the fjord.
These are the advantages of both farms. As for the disadvantages, both farms are located in regions that are unfavorable for dairy farming, since they are located in northern latitudes, where there is a short summer period restricts feed production. Since the climate there is not too optimal compared to lower latitudes, even in good years, both farms are very sensitive to climate change in the surrounding areas, both warmer and colder. Both areas are far from large settlements where products can be sold, so the high cost of transporting goods puts farms at a disadvantage compared to those closer to the consumer. The economy on both farms is dictated by the owner, who takes into account factors such as the whims of clients and neighbors. Well, and, by and large, their economy depends on the economy of the country in which each of the farms is located, their profits and losses are associated with the successes and failures of the country, its interaction with external, alien societies.
The cardinal difference between the farms is their current status. Hulse Farm, a family business owned by two spouses and their five children, in the Biterroot Valley of Western United States, Montana, is thriving today. Ravalli County, where this farm is located, has the highest population growth rate in America. Tim, Trud, and Dan Hulse, co-owners of the farm, personally gave me a tour of the state-of-the-art new barn and patiently explained the pros and cons of the dairy business in Montana. It is unbelievable that in the US in general, and in Khalsa in particular, this business will decline in the foreseeable future.
And Gardar, the former ancestral estate of a Norwegian bishop in southwestern Greenland, was abandoned more than five hundred years ago. The society of Norwegian Greenland collapsed completely - thousands of inhabitants, exhausted by hunger, died in wars and riots, thousands left, and no one was left. Although durable stone walls the barns of Gardar and the cathedral still standing nearby, so that I could make out individual stalls, there is no longer an owner who would tell me about the advantages and disadvantages of the business of those times. But in better times when Gardar Farm and Norwegian Greenland flourished, their decline seemed as incredible as that of Halsa Farm in the United States today.
Let me explain. By comparing these two farms, I am not suggesting that American society is doomed to decline. Rather, the opposite is true - the Hals farm is developing, the new technologies used there are being studied on neighboring farms, and the United States is the most powerful country in the world. Nor am I suggesting that societies or farms are generally prone to decline. Some do indeed collapse, like Gardar, while others remain indestructible for thousands of years. Nevertheless, my trips to Khals and Gardar, which are separated by thousands of miles, but which I visited in the same summer, made me vividly imagine that even the richest, most technologically advanced society today faces environmental and economic problems whose significance cannot be underestimated. Many of our problems are similar to the problems of Gardar and Norwegian Greenland, other states of the past tried to fight with others. Sometimes it failed (as in Norwegian Greenland), sometimes it succeeded (as with the Japanese and the Polynesians of the island of Tikopia). The latter provide us with invaluable experience that should be used for the sake of success in our struggle for survival.
Norwegian Greenland is just one of many examples where a society collapsed or perished, leaving behind monumental ruins, as in Shelley's poem "Ozymandias". By collapse, I mean a sharp drop in population and / or loss of political, economic, social achievements in a large area for a long time. The phenomenon of collapse is thus considered to be an extreme form of a long process of decline, and one must ask how abrupt a decline in a society must be in order to be considered a collapse. At times, gradual processes of decline include small random ups and downs and small political / economic / social adjustments that are inevitable for every society. A certain state is conquered by a neighbor, or its decline is associated with the strengthening of a neighbor, while the composition of the population and culture in the region do not change. There is a replacement of one ruling elite by another. In light of this, well-known examples rather than small ones are most often considered as collapses: the Anasazi Indians and the Caoqians within the United States, Mayan cities in Central America, the Moche and Tiwanaku civilizations in South America, the Mycenaean civilization in Greece and the Minoan civilization in Crete in Europe, Great Zimbabwe in Africa, Angkor Wat and the Harappan cities of the Indus Valley in Asia, and Easter Island in the Pacific (Map 1).

Map 1. Prehistoric, Historical, and Modern Societies

The monumental ruins left over from lost civilizations are covered with a touch of romance for all of us. We admire like children when we first see them in pictures. When we grow up, many of us plan to go there as tourists during our holidays. We are fascinated by the majestic beauty and the secrets they hold. The scale of the ruins testifies to the former power and skill of their builders, like the boast of "Look at my great deeds" in the words of Shelley. The builders have already gone into oblivion, the buildings that have been given so much strength are abandoned. How could a society that was so powerful collapse? What happened to its citizens? Did they leave, and if so, why? Maybe they died? Latently, these romantic mysteries evoke an unpleasant thought: isn’t the threat of death hanging over our prosperous society as well? Won't the tourists of the future marvel at the ruins of New York skyscrapers in the same way that we admire the Mayan cities sunk in the jungle?
It has long been believed that many of these mysterious disappearances are related to environmental disasters - people irreversibly destroying the natural resources on which their society was based. Suspicions of unintentional environmental siucide - ecocide - were confirmed by discoveries made in recent decades by archaeologists, climatologists, historians, paleontologists and palynologists (scientists who study pollen). The processes by which society undermines itself by destroying its environment fall into eight categories. The component of each varies from case to case: deforestation and habitat destruction, soil disturbances (erosion, salinization, loss of fertility), disruption of water supply, devastating hunting, overfishing, impact of introduced species on native species, population growth and human conflict. .
Different combinations of these factors determine different cases of collapse. Population growth forces to look for ways to increase productivity Agriculture such as irrigation, winter crops, terracing, as well as cultivating more and more land to feed more and more hungry mouths. The immoderate use of natural resources leads to one of the above paths - to collapse. The worst lands for agriculture are again abandoned, and the consequences for society are famine, wars for impoverished resources and the overthrow of the ruling elite by the disillusioned masses. The population is declining as a result of famine, wars and diseases, and society is losing part of its political, economic, cultural achievements. Writers draw analogies between the ways of society and the life of an individual, talking about the birth of society, its growing up, flourishing, old age and death. They show that the long period of old age, which takes most of us from prosperity to death, is also characteristic of society. However, it has been proven that this metaphor is wrong in many cases (for example, for modern states in the territory Soviet Union): after reaching a peak, such a society quickly declines, leaving its citizens surprised and shocked. In the worst case of complete collapse, all members of society die or emigrate. Although, it is obvious that this sad fate is not the only possibility for any modern society. Different societies collapse to varying degrees through different mechanisms, yet many societies have not collapsed at all.
Today, the risk of collapses is a subject of close scrutiny, including the catastrophes that have already occurred in Somalia, Rwanda and some other third world countries. Ecocide frightens many, obscuring the specters of nuclear war and global epidemics. Ecology forces us to face the same eight problems that ancient people faced, plus new ones: anthropogenic climate change, the release of toxic substances into the environment, the depletion of the planet's energy supply and its photosynthetic resource. It is believed that most of these 12 points will become relevant for us in a few decades. Either we will solve the problems by then, or not only Somalia, but all the countries of the first world will face them. Most likely, instead of an apocalyptic scenario involving the extinction of mankind or the collapse of the entire industrial civilization, there will be “only” a significant decline in living standards, chronically high risk and a revision of our life priorities. Which of its many forms the collapse will take - wars or epidemics - depends on the depletion of natural resources. If these arguments are correct, then by our efforts the current generation of children and young people is now living their last years under their usual conditions.
But the seriousness of such a formulation of the environmental problem is called into question. Is the danger exaggerated or underestimated? Is it worth taking into account that the modern, nearly seven billion-strong humanity with its powerful technological potential is destroying the environment much faster than a few million people with wooden and stone tools in the distant past? Will new technologies help solve our problems, or rather create new ones? If we deplete one resource (for example, timber, oil, sea ​​fish), can we replace it with something else (e.g. plastic, solar and wind energy, fish from hatcheries)? Will population growth stop, or have we already stepped over the level where it could be controlled?
All these questions show why the well-known collapses of the past are of interest today not only to historians. Perhaps we can learn some lessons from the catastrophes of the past. Some societies are known to have collapsed while others have not; what are their differences? What processes have caused ecocide in the past? Why were some societies of the past unable to foresee the consequences of their activities, although those (from the position of the current observer) seemed obvious? How could disaster have been avoided in the past? By answering these questions, we can say which modern societies most at risk and how best to help them without waiting for a collapse, as happened in Somalia.
But there are also differences between the modern world and its problems and the world of the past and the problems of that time. We should not be naive to think that studying the problems of the past will give us simple solutions directly applicable to today's problems. In some ways, we are less risky with modern technology (and its beneficial effects), globalization, modern medicine, and a wealth of knowledge about societies past and present. But we risk more, considering again modern technologies(their colossal destructive power), globalization (when the crisis in distant Somalia affects the United States and Europe), the dependence of millions (and soon billions) of people on modern medicine and an incomparably larger population. Maybe we will learn lessons from the past, but only if we are attentive to historical facts.

This is the contradiction regarding the collapses of the past. As for the embarrassment, it is certainly not true that any society is doomed to collapse due to environmental destruction - this has not happened to every society in the past. The question is why in some cases the society turned out to be vulnerable, in others it was not, and what are the differences between some cases and others. There are examples (the Icelanders and Tikopians already mentioned by me) when a society is able to cope with environmental issues for a long time, even now. For example, the first Norwegian settlers in Iceland decided that the natural conditions of this land resembled their native, Scandinavian ones (in fact, they have significant differences), and as a result, they destroyed most of the fertile soil and forests. For a very long time, Iceland was the poorest and most environmentally disadvantaged country in the world. However, Icelanders have learned from their plight, taken tough environmental action and now enjoy the highest per capita income in the world. Tikopian islanders live on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, remote from the rest of the inhabited world, so they have to limit themselves in almost everything. But the microregulation of resources and population control on this island is done so carefully that after three thousand years of human settlement, it is still productive. So this book is not an endless series of gloomy stories, it also includes success stories that inspire hope and optimism.
In addition, I do not know of a single case when the collapse of society would be caused solely by environmental reasons, there are always other concomitant factors. When I conceived this book, I did not foresee these difficulties and naively thought that I would write only about environmental disasters. Gradually, trying to analyze ecological collapses, I got to the five-point scheme. Four of these factors - habitat destruction, climate change, hostile neighbors and friendly trading partners - may or may not matter to a particular society. The fifth factor - the attitude of society towards the environment - is always important. Let's look at all five factors one by one, taking them in the order that seems convenient to us.
The first factor, when people unintentionally destroy their habitat, has already been discussed. The extent and reversibility of damage depend, in particular, on the characteristics of the settlement (eg how many trees per unit area are cut per year) and on the characteristics of the environment (eg how many seeds germinate per unit area per year). The characteristics of the environment determine both its vulnerability and resilience (the ability to recover from damage), and the vulnerability and resilience of forests, soil, fish populations and other resources can be considered separately. So the reasons why a society has plunged itself into ecological collapse must include the extreme negligence of humans, or the extreme vulnerability of the environment, or both.
The next item on my agenda will be climate change, the term we associate today with human-caused global warming. In fact, the climate may become warmer or colder, become wetter or drier, or change in one way or another over the course of months and years, for natural causes that have nothing to do with man. Examples are changes in solar radiation, volcanic eruptions that emit dust into the atmosphere, displacement of the earth's axis relative to the Earth's orbit, and changes in the ratio of water and land on the surface of the planet. The advances and retreats of land ice during the ice age that began more than two million years ago and the so-called Little Ice Age of 1400-1800 are often discussed, as well as the results of the global cooling that followed the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambor on April 5, 1815. This eruption raised so much dust into the upper atmosphere that less sunlight reached the Earth's surface, and until the dust settled, cooling and crop declines were noted even in South America and Europe throughout the summer of 1816 ("the year without summer").
Climate change was a bigger problem for people in the past, not as enlightened, with shorter life expectancies than they are now. The climate in many regions tends to change not only from year to year, but rather with a frequency of about tens of years, for example, several wet decades can be followed by half a century of drought, and so on. In prehistoric societies, when very few years passed between generational changes, the memory of people kept no more than a few decades. Consequently, with the end of a series of wet decades, there were no people left alive who would keep the memory of the previous, dry period. Even now, the trend continues to increase the population during favorable periods, and people forget (or even do not realize) that, unfortunately, prosperous periods are ending. When they come to an end, it turns out that the number of people able to feed themselves has been exceeded in society, or ingrained customs are unacceptable in a changing climate. (I am now thinking of the dry West of the United States and the wasteful use of water in local towns and villages. Of course, during the wet decades, this is a common occurrence.) Faced with such phenomena, the society of the past did not have mechanisms to create “emergency supplies” or deliver humanitarian aid from other regions not covered by the effects of climate change. All these arguments show that society in the past was more sensitive to climate change.
Climate change can both improve and worsen the conditions of a particular society, or it can improve the conditions of one society and worsen the conditions of another (for example, the Little Ice Age was a disaster for the Greenlandic Norwegians, but was favorable for the Eskimos). There are many cases in history where a resource-depleted society coped with a loss while the climate was favorable, but collapsed when the climate got drier, colder, hotter, or otherwise changed. In this case, what caused the collapse - resource depletion or climate change? None of the simple answers are correct. If a society has not exhausted its resources, it has a chance to survive climate change. It can also survive resource depletion until climate change forces it to finally exterminate the remnants. Not every single factor, but their combination is fatal.
The third point is the presence of hostile neighbors. Almost all societies in history have lived close to others and have had some contact with them. Hostile relations with neighbors were periodic or chronic. A society can withstand enemies as long as it is strong. If for some reason, including an ecological catastrophe, it weakens, all that remains for it is to perish. The immediate cause of the collapse may be a military takeover, but the hidden cause, the factor that led to the collapse, will be the cause of the weakening of society. This means that a collapse for ecological or other reasons can be masked by a military defeat.
Much controversy about such a disguise is caused by the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Rome was subjected to numerous barbarian invasions, and the date of its fall is conditionally accepted as 476, when the last emperor was deposed. However, before the Roman Empire fell, it was surrounded by "barbarian" tribes who lived in Northern Europe and Central Asia along the borders of the "civilized" Mediterranean and who periodically attacked civilized Europe (as well as India and China). For more than a thousand years, Rome successfully repelled the attacks of the barbarians, for example, in 101 BC. e. in Northern Italy, on the Raud fields, a huge army of Teutons and Cimmerians was defeated.
However, in the end it was the barbarians who won, not the Romans. What are the reasons for this turn of fortune? Have the barbarians themselves changed, maybe there are more of them, or they have become more organized, their weapons are better, the number of horses is greater, or have the steppes of Central Asia become fertile? In this case, we will have to admit that it was the barbarians who were the main cause of the fall of Rome. Or were they all the same barbarians who always lived near the borders of the Roman Empire, but could not gain the upper hand until the empire weakened due to a combination of certain economic, political, environmental and other reasons? In this case, we blame everything on the empire's own problems, and the barbarians only deal the final blow. The issue remains controversial. Interestingly, exactly the same question is relevant when we talk about the fall of the Khmer empire, centered on Angkor Wat, which was invaded by Thai neighbors. The same can be said about the decline of the Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley, where the Aryans invaded, about the fall of Mycenaean Greece and other states of the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age after the invasion of the "peoples of the sea."
The fourth factor is the reverse of the third - the decrease in the support of friendly neighbors is the reverse side of the attack of hostile neighbors. Almost all states in history have had trading partners as well as hostile neighbors. Often partner and enemy were the same neighbor, whose policies oscillated between hostile and friendly. Most states were dependent on friendly neighbors, both on imports of goods (for example, the United States now imports oil, and Japan imports oil, timber, seafood), and through cultural ties to which society owes its cohesion (for example, Australia until recently imported cultural identity from Britain). This means that there is a risk that if your trading partner for any reason (including environmental) weakens and cannot carry out normal deliveries of goods or cultural property, then your society will also weaken. This is a very pressing issue now, as first world countries depend on oil from environmentally vulnerable and politically unstable third world countries that were subject to the 1973 oil embargo. Similar problems have arisen in the past among the Norwegians of Greenland, the Pitcairn Islanders and other societies.
And the last factor of my scheme contains the age-old question about the attitude of society to its problems, whether they are ecological or not. Different societies have different attitudes towards the same problems. For example, the problem of deforestation has confronted many societies in the past, among which the highlands of New Guinea, Japan, Tikopia, and Tonga have found a way to conserve forests and are now doing well, while Easter Island, Mangareva, and Norwegian Greenland have collapsed. How to understand what is the difference? The reaction of society depends on economic and social institutions as well as cultural values. These institutions and values ​​influence how a society is going to solve (and is going to) its problems.
In this book, we will discuss several civilizations of the past that collapsed or whose existence was brought to the brink in this framework.
It should of course be added that if climate change, hostile neighbors and trading partners may or may not contribute to the collapse of society, then environmental problems may or may not contribute either. It would be foolish to say that environmental disruption must be the main factor in any collapse. That this is not so is confirmed contemporary example the collapse of the Soviet Union and an ancient example of the destruction of Carthage by the Romans in 146 BC. e. Obviously, economic or military factors alone may be sufficient. So the full title of this book should be: "Social collapses involving an environmental component and in some cases also the contribution of climate change, hostile neighbors and trading partners, plus the question of society's attitude to the threat." This limitation still leaves us with a huge amount of ancient and modern material for research.

Currently, there are two opinions about the degree of human impact on the environment. This degree is controversial, and opinions are divided between two opposing camps. Some, the so-called environmentalists, are convinced that our environmental problems are very serious and the current rates of economic development and population growth are unacceptable. Others argue that these fears are biased and unfounded, and that economic and population growth is possible and desirable. The latter are not marked by any convenient name, and I will simply call them "non-environmentalists." Proponents of the latter view come mainly from big business, but the equation "non-environmentalist = pro-business" would be imprecise. Many businessmen consider themselves environmentalists, and many people who are not involved in big business express skepticism towards environmentalist ideas. In writing this book, where do I place myself in relation to these two camps?
On the one hand, I have been birdwatching since I was seven years old. I am an experienced, professional biologist and have been researching birds in the New Guinea rainforest for the past 40 years. I love birds, happy to watch them and very fond of the rainforest. I also love the flora and fauna of the forest and appreciate them simply for what they are. I put a lot of effort into saving different kinds and their habitat in New Guinea and elsewhere.
For the past dozen years, I have been the director of the American affiliate of the World Wide Fund for Nature, one of the largest environmentalist organizations with truly global interests. All this obliges me to criticize non-environmentalists who use such words as "alarmist", "Diamond preaches darkness and death", "exaggerates the risk" and "for him the threat of purple lice is more important than the needs of the people." But although I love the birds of New Guinea, much more I love my sons, wife, friends, Guineans and other people. I deal with environmental issues more because I see their importance for people than because it is important for birds.
On the other hand, I have a lot of experience and interest in doing things that involve the forces of society using natural resources, and often it comes across as non-environmentalist. As a teenager, I worked on large ranches in Montana, where, as an adult and a father, I often came on vacation. One summer I worked in a copper mine in Montana. I love Montana and my ranch friends, I understand, admire and sympathize with their rural pursuits, their way of life, and I dedicated this book to them. In recent years, I have had to observe and get acquainted with such areas of activity as mining, logging, fishing, oil and gas production. For the past seven years, I have been monitoring the environment near the largest oil and gas fields in Papua New Guinea, where the oil companies invited the Fund's employees. I was a frequent visitor to the enrichment enterprises, talked with their management and tried to understand their problems and prospects.
Because this relationship with big business allows me to mitigate the environmental damage that business often does, I have seen many situations where big business people care about the environment even more than National parks. I was interested in what drives such people in various areas of production. My work with big oil companies has angered some environmentalists, and phrases such as "Diamond has sold out to big business", "he's sleeping with big business" or "he's being sold to oil companies" have been heard.
In fact, I was not hired by big business, and I candidly describe everything I saw at the enterprise, even if I visited it as a guest. If I consider an oil or logging company to be destructive in any way, I say so directly. If for some reason the company seems prudent to me, I also say so. My opinion is that if the environmentalists do not deal with big business, which operates with the forces that pose the greatest threat to nature, we will not solve environmental problems. And I'm writing this book halfway through my experience with environmental issues and the realities of business.

How can social collapses be studied “scientifically”? Science is often misrepresented as "the sum of knowledge acquired by conducting and testing repeated experiments in the laboratory". In fact, science is a broader concept - the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the world. In some fields, such as chemistry or molecular biology, repeated experiments in the laboratory are the best way to obtain the most reliable knowledge. When I studied biology, I passed in the laboratory practical course in biochemistry. From 1955-2002 I did experimental laboratory research in physiology at Harvard University and then at the University of California, Los Angeles.
When I began studying the birds of the New Guinea rainforest in 1964, I was directly confronted with the problem of gaining reliable knowledge without the aid of repeated experiments in the laboratory or in the field. It is unacceptable, illegal and unethical to obtain data on birds by manipulating their populations in the study of natural processes. I had to use other methods. Similar problems arise in many other areas of population biology, as well as in astronomy, epidemiology, geology, and paleontology.
Often the solution is found using the "comparative method" or "natural experiment", that is, similar natural cases are compared with a different quantity of interest to us. When as an ornithologist I was interested in the effects of the cinnamon-browed honeyeater Melidectes on other honeyeater species, I compared bird communities in the mountains, which are very similar to each other, with the exception that some support populations of the cinnamon-browed honeyeater, while others do not. So it is with my books The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of Human Animals and Why Is Sex Private? The evolution of human sexuality" I compare various animal species, especially different types primates, in an attempt to find out why women (unlike females of other animal species) go through menopause and do not show obvious signs of ovulation, why men have a relatively large (by animal standards) penis, and why sex in humans is usually private, while in almost all animals it is public. A lot of scientific literature is devoted to the pitfalls of the comparative method and how to get around them. In the historical sciences (such as evolutionary biology and historical geology), where there is no way to manipulate the past, there is often no choice between laboratory and natural experience.
In this book, the comparative method is used to explain social collapses with an ecological component. In previous books (Guns, Grains, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies), I used the comparative method to solve the inverse problem of the difference in the speed at which human society was built on different continents over the past 13,000 years. In this book, the emphasis is not on the construction of society, but on its collapse, and I compare the societies of the present and the past in terms of their environmental vulnerability, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other "input" variables under the postulated stability of society. The "outgoing" variable I'm investigating is collapse, or survival, and the type of collapse, if it did occur. By comparing the outgoing parameters with the incoming ones, my goal is to predict the possibility of collapse based on the incoming data.
A suitable field for a large-scale application of the comparative method is the problem of collapses caused by deforestation in the Pacific islands. The prehistoric Pacific peoples deforested their islands to varying degrees, to the point of complete destruction, and the social consequences also varied, from prolonged trouble to complete extinction. My colleague Barry Rolette and I assessed the degree of deforestation on a special numerical scale for 81 islands, and took into account nine factors (such as rainfall, isolation, and regeneration of fertile soil) that are believed to affect forest loss. Thanks to statistical analysis, it was possible to assess the relative contribution of each factor to the result. Another comparative experience was made for the North Atlantic, where the Norwegian Vikings colonized six islands, differing in suitability for agriculture, accessibility for trade contacts with Norway and other initial parameters, as well as with different final results (from the case when the island was soon abandoned, to general destruction in 500 years and to prosperity at the present time, after 1200 years). Similar comparisons can be made between other settlements in different regions of the planet.
All of these comparisons are based on detailed information carefully collected by historians, archaeologists and other scientists. At the end of the text, I provide links to many wonderful books and works on the ancient Maya and Anasazi, modern Rwanda and China, and other societies of antiquity and modernity that I compare. These works form a very significant part of the database for my book. But besides this, there are additional conclusions that do not follow from the database of individual societies, but can be deduced from a comparative analysis. For example, in order to understand the well-known collapse of the Maya, it is necessary not only to clarify information on the history of the Indians and the state of their environment. We must consider the Mayan civilization in a broad context of comparison with other non-collapsed peoples who are similar to the Maya in some ways and different in others. This is the comparative method.
I keep talking about the need for good standalone research and good comparative analysis, because scientists often use one method to underestimate the other. Specialists in the history of a particular society often neglect comparisons with other societies, considering such an approach superficial, while those who engage in comparisons avoid delving into the study of individual societies as a short-sighted and of little value occupation. But we need both ways of learning if we want to get reliable data. In particular, it is unacceptable to generalize from only one society or to trust the conclusions drawn from only one collapse. It is only from the mass of evidence obtained by comparative analysis of the results of many cases that we can hope to draw convincing conclusions.

For the convenience of the reader, the book is compiled as follows. It resembles in the context of a boa constrictor that swallowed two too large sheep. My reflections on modern and ancient world pay disproportionate attention to one society, with less attention paid to four others.
Let's start with the first sheep. The first part consists of a long chapter on the environmental problems of Southwestern Montana, where both the Huls farm and my friends Hershey's ranch, to which this book is dedicated, are located. Montana has the advantage that, as a modern First World, it does not have the same environmental problems as much of the rest of the First World. In addition, I know many Montana residents well, so I can match state politics with the motivations of individuals. Through this acquaintance with contemporary issues it will be easier for us to imagine what happened in societies of the distant past and at first could seem unusual when we only guessed about the motivations of individuals.
The second part, which includes four short chapters, tells about the societies of the past that collapsed. They are arranged in order of difficulty, according to my five-point scheme. Most of the societies of the past that I will talk about are small and peripheral, some are geographically connected, or socially isolated, or formed in unstable environments. If the reader is confused by the fact that they are poor models of examples of a large modern society, I will explain that I specifically chose small societies for detailed consideration, since all the processes in them proceed brightly and revealingly, and not at all because a large, centrally located society, actively trading with neighbors and living in the middle of the wild, has never collapsed and cannot collapse now. Just one of these societies I will describe in detail. The Mayan state had a population of millions or tens of millions of people and was located in one of the two most culturally developed regions of the New World before the arrival of Europeans. The Maya traded with other advanced societies in the region and were undoubtedly influenced by them. In the ninth chapter, I briefly mention many famous civilizations of the past - the Fertile Crescent Society, Angkor Wat, the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley and others, in many ways similar to the Mayan civilization, where the catastrophe was significantly influenced by an environmental factor.
Our first example from past history, Easter Island (Chapter 2), comes close to what might be called a purely ecological collapse. It is caused by the destruction of forests, which led to war, increased social inequality, the appearance of the famous stone statues and the mass extinction of the population. As is known, the society of Easter Island remained isolated, friendly or hostile to the influences of its neighbors, it was not subjected. We also have no evidence of climate change there. Ours with Barry Rolette comparative analysis helped to understand why, of all the Pacific settlements, it was Easter Island that suffered a complete collapse.
Pitcairn Island and Henderson Island (Chapter 3), also in Polynesia, demonstrate the other point in my scheme at work, the loss of support from friendly neighbors. Both Pitcairn and Henderson suffered local environmental damage, but the main blow was the ecological collapse of their main trading partner. Neither hostile neighbors nor climatic changes were noted in these cases.
Through very detailed tree-ring reconstructions of climate change, it can be shown that the Anasazi, a Native American society in the southwestern United States (Chapter 5), is a prime example of environmental damage and population growth from climate change (in this case, drought). Neither hostile nor friendly neighbors, nor war (until the very last moment) contributed to the Anasazi collapse.
No book on social collapse can ignore the Maya (Chapter 5), the most advanced of Native American societies and the quintessence of romantic mystery stories of ancient jungle cities. As with the Anasazi, the Mayan catastrophe illustrates the combined effects of environmental damage, population growth, and climate change. Friendly neighbors did not play a significant role here. Unlike the Anasazi, the Mayan cities were occupied at an early stage of the collapse. Among the societies discussed in chapters 2-5, only the Maya can provide us with records of their history.
Norwegian Greenland (chapters 6–8) is a complex case of historical collapse, one of the most informative because Norwegian society was at the time one of the most literate in Europe. This case received the most extensive coverage - the second sheep in our boa constrictor. All five factors of my scheme are well documented: environmental disruption, climate change, loss of friendly ties with Norway, increased hostile skirmishes with the Inuit, and the political, economic, social, and cultural decline of Scandinavian Greenland. Greenland is the most significant approximation to a controlled social experiment - two societies (Norwegians and Inuit) live on the same island and have very different cultural traditions, as a result, one society survived and the other died. Thus, the experience of Greenland shows that even in the face of an ecological catastrophe, collapse is not a sentence, but depends on society. One can also compare Norse Greenland and five other Norse settlements in the North Atlantic to find out why the Norse Orkneys thrive when their sister Greenland perished.
Another Norse settlement, Iceland, is a shining example of a brilliant triumph over an unstable natural environment and the achievement of a high standard of modern life.
The second part (chapter 9) includes a story about three more societies that, like Iceland, have achieved success and contrast with previous examples of catastrophes. Although these societies faced fewer environmental problems than Iceland or most of the lost peoples, we will see that two paths lead to victory: a bottom-up path, as exemplified by Tikopia and the highlands of New Guinea, and a top-down path, as exemplified by Tokugawa-era Japan.
The third part brings us back to the modern world. Having already met Montana in the second chapter, we will now consider four more modern countries - two small and two huge. Third world disaster (Rwanda), third world foothold (Dominican Republic), third world giant rising to first world (China), and first world society (Australia). Rwanda (chapter 10) presents the Malthusian catastrophe that occurred before our very eyes, when an overpopulated country collapsed with terrible bloodshed, like the Maya in the past. Rwanda and neighboring Burundi are notorious for their ethnic conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis, but overpopulation, environmental problems and climate change were the dynamite that sparked this explosion of ethnic violence.
The Dominican Republic and Haiti (Chapter 11) on the island of Hispaniola are very different from the societies of the Norwegians and Inuit in Greenland. Under decades of brutal dictatorship, Haiti has become one of the most troubling places in the modern world, while there are glimmers of hope in the Dominican Republic. And if someone decided that this book promotes environmental determinism, then the last example just illustrates how much can depend on one person if he or she is the leader of the country.
China (Chapter 12) suffers, to a large extent, from all 12 types of contemporary environmental problems. Because the population and size of China are so large, the economic and environmental conditions there affect not only the Chinese, but the people of the whole world.
Australia (chapter 13) is the exact opposite of Montana, a first world society surrounded by a very unstable environment and struggling with very serious environmental problems. As a result, in order to solve these problems, Australia has joined a number of states that are radically changing their social structure.
The fourth and final part of the book contains practical conclusions. Chapter 14 poses the question that has invariably confronted any society of the past on the verge of self-destruction and inevitably confronts us as we approach self-destruction: how could a society perish, seeing the dangers in the example of its predecessors? Was their death their own fault, or were they tragic victims of insurmountable difficulties? To what extent can an ecological catastrophe be unexpected and irreparable, and can people avoid it if they act wisely and prudently? What, for example, did the inhabitants of Easter Island say when they cut down the last tree? It turns out that the group solution might not have materialized if a number of factors had not worked, starting with the inability to assess the scale of the problem and resolve the conflict, when part of the society pursues its interests despite the fact that for the rest of society they imply negative consequences.
The fifteenth chapter examines the role of modern business, part of which is driven by forces that destroy nature, while the other part of it works to protect it. We explored why some (just a few!) businesses are prone to conservation and what actions are needed to persuade others to do so.
Finally, chapter 16 summarizes the types of environmental hazards operating in modern world, the most common objections to talking about their seriousness and the differences between environmental hazards for societies past and present. The main reason is globalization, which is considered a powerful problem-solving tool, and there are good reasons for both pessimism and optimism about the viability of this tool. Globalization does not allow modern society to collapse alone, like Easter Island or Norwegian Greenland in the past. Any disorder in a society, however remote (think Somalia or Afghanistan, for example), causes trouble for prosperous societies even on other continents, and in turn that society is influenced by other countries, beneficent or destabilizing. For the first time in history, we are facing the risk of a global catastrophe. But even for the first time, we are quickly agreeing on joint scientific work, at whatever stage of development the society is at, which has not happened in the world yet. That is why I was able to write this book.

PART 1
Modern Montana

In his previous bestseller, Guns, Germs and Steel. The fate of human societies ”Diamond reflected on the topic: why human societies develop so unevenly - the white Europeans managed to conquer the whole world in a short time, and the Australian Aborigines did not leave the Stone Age for tens of thousands of years. "Collapse" logically continues "The Guns", now analyzing what is the secret of the prosperity of some and the decline and death of others. To do this, the author needed a seven hundred-page digression into the history and material culture of a dozen ancient and modern societies: the inhabitants of the Easter Islands and Pitcairn, the Viking settlements in Greenland, the Anasazi and Maya American civilizations, as well as Haiti, Japan, China, Rwanda, Australia and rural Montana. From the very first chapter, there is a simple and clear answer: those who are lucky with the climate and landscape, and who are flexible enough to learn from their mistakes and avoid ecological disaster, survive.

This approach is called "environmental determinism". And although Diamond himself vehemently denies it, recognizing how much the will of those in power and public consciousness means, nevertheless, throughout the book, one cannot get rid of the feeling that societies are dying solely because they either raise too many goats, or cut down everything. forests, or carelessly keep their weather records, forgetting that once every two hundred years a great drought comes to them. Diamond does not know anything (or pretends not to know) either about Spengler's "organismic" theory of cultures, or about Toynbee's challenges and responses - in the best traditions of diamatists, he ignores the cult, myth and soul of culture as something secondary, in turn replacing the international the struggle of classes by the international struggle of man and nature. The easiest way to understand (and accept) the concept of Diamond is for the modern generation, brought up on computer strategies. For greater clarity, I would suggest selling "Collapse" complete with a CD of some clone of "Civilization": you are thrown into a random section of the map, where you develop your society, redistributing resources and envying your rivals, on whose territory there are many more of them. Whether your nation is called Roman, Anasazi, or Zerg is completely irrelevant. The main thing is to hold out as long as possible. After all, in the end, a powerful white man will come anyway with a gun, microbes and a fire potion.

And yet, reading The Collapse is not only possible, but necessary. Firstly, the solid erudition of the author, the scope and study of the topic will inspire respect even from the most inveterate environmental skeptic. Secondly, the text is sometimes written like a real detective, many pages of which encourage one's own fascinating investigation. For example, why are there practically no fish bones in the garbage heaps of the Greenland Vikings, despite the fact that their Scandinavian counterparts literally crunched fish waste under their feet? What forced the Greenland settlers to exchange delicious trout for disgusting seal? These answers are not important to Diamond - the very fact that Greenlanders do not have such an affordable source of protein in the diet is important to him, but this mystery is interesting in itself. And there are plenty of such intriguing plots in The Collapse. And no matter what environmental skeptics say, we really need to take more care of the old Earth, so that, like the characters in The Matrix, we are not left alone with virtual reality.

Wow, that was even better than his own Guns, Germs and Steel. If you think that soil erosion, deforestation, pollen research and bone counting in the garbage heaps of ancient settlements are too boring topics for an exciting sci-fi pop, then Collapse will convince you. In addition, this book also provides a colossal amount of new knowledge - not only about the civilizations of antiquity, but also about natural relationships and patterns, conditions for survival and ecology. Finally, the mythical stone idols of Easter Island have found flesh, context and explanation!

The book's subtitle, "Why Some Societies Survive While Others Die," sums up the essence of Diamond's research in an extremely simple and understandable way. The Maya, the Anasazi Indians, the natives of Easter Island, the colony in Greenland - all these societies perished, although some of them had a rather high level of development. Diamond is looking for the causes of death in the natural environment of these societies and ways to exploit it. Arid climate, not very fertile soils, isolation, lack of necessary minerals contributed to the fact that people were defeated. However, its main reason was still not the poverty and complexity of the habitat, but the short-sighted, wasteful position of the inhabitants. The natives of Easter Island built giant statues until they cut down the entire forest. The Anasazi, the inhabitants of the arid Chaco Canyon, have been the victim of a growing population with diminishing resources. The colonists of Greenland, who considered themselves followers of the traditions of farming and Christians, raised cattle, spent energy and resources on the construction of churches, did not eat fish even when famine threatened, and contemptuously fenced themselves off from the Inuit. The British brought rabbits to Australia to make landscapes alien to them a little more like their native English ones. Rabbits, bred in incredible numbers, eat grass and contribute to the salinization of the soil. The cases of Greenland and Australia are also examples of how "imported" values ​​are completely unsuitable for the new conditions. People who consider these values ​​fundamental to their societies hold on to them to the last. By the way, with the advent of cooling, the Greenland colony collapsed, while the Inuit survived.

Jared Diamond, however, did not write his book just to talk about ancient people. But isn’t the same fate threatening us, the modern inhabitants of the Earth? Those who believe that today's societies are much more durable and stable should take into account the following fact. The Greenlanders managed to maintain their colony for 700 years, while modern North American society has existed for barely half that time. What can happen in 300-400 years? I guess whatever. No less frightening is the realization of how the planet has shrunk and shrunk. The inhabitants of the same Easter Island developed and died alone, without affecting the rest of the world. Today this is impossible. Deforestation of tropical forests will affect the entire Earth. Famine and genocide in some countries affects the situation in others. The increase in life in third world countries can completely overturn our planet. It is difficult to imagine, but it is not at all as reliable as it seems.

Of course, "Collapse" is just a theory, which, nevertheless, is difficult to be taken critically. The evidence is so convincing that it is taken as indisputable fact. At the same time, "Collapse" cannot but raise questions. One of them was asked to Diamond more than once in various variations, the essence of which can be reduced to the following: "What did the native of Easter Island think when he cut down the last tree?". In this matter, there is natural distrust, doubt that anyone can commit such stupidity and destroy their own living environment with their own hands. Indeed, what did the native think? Probably about the same as my colleague who tossed used batteries into the nearest trash can instead of walking 200 meters to a special bin - simply because she "never goes that way." Or he, an aboriginal, was thinking about what the man washing the car in the lake, where his child would come to swim tomorrow, too. I think everyone will find something to continue this list of “thoughts”.

Read Collapse by Jared Diamond. Argue, disagree, criticize, but read.