Why did the Easter Island civilization collapse?
They destroyed the environment upon which they depended. They deforested the island. They diverted valuable resources to the building and transport of their idols. They continued their actions with a blatant disregard for what they saw going on around them.
It’s almost as if there is a lesson there…
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Collapse $11.2 From the Publisher: In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the prehistoric Polynesian culture on Easter Island to the formerly flourishing Native American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya, the doomed medieval Viking colony on Greenland, and finally to the modern world, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of catastrophe, spelling out what happens when we squander our resources, when we ignore the signals our environment gives us, and when we reproduce too fast or cut down too many trees. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, unstable trade partners, and pressure from enemies were all factors in the demise of the doomed societies, but other societies found solutions to those same problems and persisted. Synopsis: Diamond (geography, UCLA) casts a wide net in the realms of history, geography, and science to address questions essential to humanity’s continued survival. Forty-two b&w plates, grouped together, illustrate the scope and some of the examples of his narrative: the deforested landscapes of Easter Island, Chaco Canyon, and Haiti; the forests of Japan preserved because of top-down management initiated four centuries ago; victims of the 1994 genocidal killings in Rwanda; air and water pollution in China; destruction of environment by sheep and rabbits in Australia; President John F. Kennedy and advisors deliberating during the Cuban Missile Crisis (evidence of group decision-making informed by past mistakes); oil and chemical disasters in the North Sea and in Bhopal; and a gated community, urban sprawl, and smog in Los Angeles. Concluding pages are devoted to reasons for hope. Annotation 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR |
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Why Did The Soviet Union Collapse? $20.64 Buy and sell [Why Did The Soviet Union Collapse?] at great prices. |
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Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse? $10.48 Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse? : Understanding Historical Change by Robert W. Strayer Published in 1998 by M.E. Sharpe |
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