Forgot to post the link....

Another way of getting to the same issue is to ask, "Why Societies thrive?" In my experience, human societies that can be said to be successful, or thriving, are continually growing. There is always a frontier of some sort, a place where people with big dreams and lots of energy can go and build something.

Althea,
Great read. Thank you.

I don't agree with his claim that Montana is in a state of social collapse, due mainly to environmental degredation. I agree that the copper mining industry has left the state with some severe, and local, toxic waste sites. Certainly the acidic pool of leachate that sits out in the open near Butte is serious, and needs to be remediated. But I don't agree that the state suffers widespread and general environmental insult.

We don't mine and refine much copper in the USA today. As a result, those jobs, and the income they provided, are gone. It is difficult to make a living growing grain, and the lumber/wood products industry is also in decline. But, not from a lack of trees. So, the three main sources of jobs in Montana are in trouble, and families are feeling the pain.

Montana is a very large state. More than half, likely two thirds of Montana is rolling prairie, not at all like the mineral mining areas mentioned. Even those areas make up a small fraction of the mountainous areas where the mines are located.

The Berkeley pit at Butte, MT is miniscule relative to the size of Montana. Its environmental impact is equally miniscule. As is often the case, very graphic examples get used as the norm when they are in fact, the anomaly.

The old refinery superfund site at Anaconda, MT is probably larger in area than the Berkeley pit, yet it is also miniscule in the scope of the size of Montana. Also, the effects of the toxic materials is quite contained in both cases. The superfund site at Anaconda has been largely reclaimed and is now covered with a Jack Nicholas designed public golf course. Great course by the way.

The toxic water in the Berkeley pit is largely a natural product. The mine filled up initially with water from the same formations they were mining because they shut down the pumps that kept the mine dry. This water is the result of natural precipitation percolating through the mineralized rock and would contain the metals regardless of the presence of the mine. Some of the water is also from precipitation falling in the mine, but with the arid climate of Montana, this is likely minimal.

I'm unable to access the Diamond link so can only respond to Althea's synopsis. This seems like a nice little intellectual exercise, a teaching meme, for example. The problem with history is the ease with which one can pick and choose in support of one's pet theory. I too would like to see a list of factors with examples of successful human societies. I would even appreciate a focus away from wars and conquerers and massive upheavals because by Diamond's standards there never has been a successful society.

They are successful......for as long as they last

Marshall, I'm sorry the link doesn't work for you. I don't know how to fix it, so instead of continuing to try, here is the rest of the article minus the intro babble.

I thought he addressed at least one very important factor in a successful society with his example of Holland and their democratic political system which hasn't allowed an insulated elite to hold all of the decision making power for their own (short term) interests. That and being able to live within the environmental limitations or having outside support will help insure success.

Kirsten Garrett: In his introduction, Professor Michael Cook went on to talk about the book Guns, Germs and Steel for which Jared Diamond won the Pulitzer Prize.

Michael Cook: At the heart of Guns, Germs and Steel, is the most illuminating account that Ive ever read of the single most important event that ever took place in the history or pre-history of the Near East, namely the emergence, the earliest emergence of farming on this planet some 10,000 years ago. But having said that, having made the connection, I suppose that I really do have to admit that the book isnt just a contribution to Near Eastern studies. It also deals with the emergence of farming elsewhere on the planet, and it analyses the long-term consequences of that momentous development. In other words, you could pretty much say that the book poses and answers the question, How did we get to where we are now?

Kirsten Garrett: And so to Professor Jared Diamond himself.

Applause

Kirsten Garrett: Hes a tall, slender man with a small beard, and as he speaks Jared Diamond strides up and down the stage, almost chatting to the large audience. He spoke of once-vibrant societies such as the one that built Angkor Wat, the Mayan civilisation, the Easter Islands, Greater Zimbabwe, and the Indus Valley.

Jared Diamond: Why did these ancient civilisations abandon their cities after building them with such great effort? Why these ancient collapses? This question isnt just a romantic mystery. Its also a challenging intellectual problem. Why is it that some societies collapsed while others did not collapse?

But even more, this question is relevant to the environmental problems that we face today; problems such as deforestation, the impending end of the tropical rainforests, over-fishing, soil erosion, soil salinisation, global climate change, full utilisation of the worlds fresh water supplies, bumping up against the photosynthetic ceiling, exhaustion of energy reserves, accumulation of toxics in water, food and soil, increase of the worlds population, and increase of our per capita input. The main problems that threaten our existence over the coming decades. What if anything, can the past teach us about why some societies are more unstable than others, and about how some societies have managed to overcome their environmental problems. Can we extract from the past any useful guidance that will help us in the coming decades?

Theres overwhelming recent evidence from archaeology and other disciplines that some of these romantic mystery collapses have been self-inflicted ecological suicides, resulting from inadvertent human impacts on the environment, impacts similar to the impacts causing the problems that we face today. Even though these past societies like the Easter Islanders and Anasazi had far fewer people, and were packing far less potent destructive practices than we do today.

It turns out that these ancient collapses pose a very complicated problem. Its not just that all these societies collapsed, but one can also think of places in the world where societies have gone on for thousands of years without any signs of collapse, such as Japan, Java, Tonga and Tikopea. What is it then that made some societies weaken and other societies robust? Its also a complicated problem because the collapses usually prove to be multi-factorial. This is not an area where we can expect simple answers.

What Im talking about is the collapses of societies and their applications to the risks we face today. This may sound initially depressing, but youll see that my main conclusions are going to be upbeat.

Kirsten Garrett: Youre listening to an edited version of a talk given by Jared Diamond whos Professor of Physiology at UCLA, but who gave this talk at Princeton University a few weeks ago.

The first example he gave to illustrate the sorts of problems communities accumulate was the American State of Montana. Not many years ago, it was one of the wealthiest in America, wealth based on copper mining, forestry and agriculture. Now its very poor. Mining has gone, leaving terrible environmental damage, 70% of the children in Montana are on Food Aid, logging and farming are in decline. What happened was that the mining, forestry and agriculture which earned so much wealth, became destructive. Montana now has terrible forest fires, salinisation, erosion, weeds and animal diseases, and population decline. Professor Jared Diamond.

Jared Diamond: If Montana were an isolated country, Montana would be in a state of collapse. Montana is not going to collapse, because its supported by the rest of the United States, and yet other societies have collapsed in the past, and are collapsing now or will collapse in the future, from problems similar to those facing Montana. The same problems that weve seen throughout human history, problems of water, forests, topsoil, irrigation, salinisation, climate change, erosion, introduced pests and disease and population; problems similar to those faced by Montanans today are the ones posing problems in Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Australia, Nepal, Ethiopia and so on. But those countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan etcetera have the misfortune not to be embedded within a rich country that supports them, like the United States.

Visiting Montana again just brought home to me that these problems of ancient civilisations are not remote problems of romantic mysterious people, theyre problems of the modern world including of the United States. I mentioned then that theres a long list of past societies that did collapse, but there were also past societies that did not collapse. What is it then that makes some societies more vulnerable than others? Environmental factors clearly play a role, archaeological evidence accumulated over the last several decades has revealed environmental factors behind many of these ancient collapses. Again, to appreciate the modern relevance of all this, if one asked an academic ecologist to name the countries in the modern world that suffer from most severe problems of environmental damage and of over-population, and if this ecologist never read the newspapers and didnt know anything about modern political problems, the ecologist would say "Well thats a no-brainer, the countries today that have ecological and populations, there are Haiti, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, the Philippines, Indonesia, Solomon Islands." Then you ask a politician who doesnt know, or a strategic planner who knows or cares nothing about ecological problems, what you see is the political tinderboxes of the modern world, the danger spots, and the politician or strategic planner would say "Its a no-brainer; Haiti, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, the Philippines, Indonesia, Solomon Islands", the same list. And that simply makes the point that countries that get into environmental trouble are likely to get into political trouble both for themselves and to cause political troubles around the world.

÷snip÷

So lets take then the first of these examples, the collapse of Easter Island society. Any of you here in this room, have any of you had the good fortune to have visited Easter Island? Good for you, you lucky person, Im going there next month, Ive wanted for decades to go there. And Easter is the most remote habitable scrap of land in the world; its an island in the Pacific, 2,000 miles west of the coast of Chile, and something 1300 miles from the nearest Polynesian island. It was settled by other Polynesians coming from the west, sometime around AD800 and it was so remote that after Polynesians arrived at Easter Island, nobody else arrived there. Nobody left Easter as far as we know, and so the Easter story is uncomplicated by relations with external hostiles or friendlies. There werent any. Easter Islanders rose and fell by themselves.

Easter is a relatively fragile environment, dry with 40 inches of rain per year. Its most famous because of the giant stone statutes - those big statues weighing up to 80 tons - stone statues that were carved in a volcanic quarry and then dragged up over the lift of the quarry and then 13 miles down to the coast and then raised up vertically onto platforms, all this accomplished by people without any draught animals, without pulleys, without machines. These 80 ton statues were dragged and erected under human muscle power alone. And yet when Europeans arrived at Easter in 1722, the statues that the islanders themselves had erected at such great personal effort, the islanders were in the process of throwing down their own statues, Easter Island society was in a state of collapse. How, why and who erected the statues, and why were they thrown down?

Well the how, why and who has been settled in the last several decades by archaeological discoveries. Easter Islanders were typical Polynesians, and the cause of the collapse became clear from archaeological work in the last 15 years, particularly from paeleo-botannical work and identification of animal bones in archaeological sites. Today Easter Island is barren. Its a grassland, there are no native trees whatsoever on Easter Island, not a likely setting for the development of a great civilisation, and yet these paeleo-botannical studies, identifying pollen grains and lake cores show that when the Polynesians arrived at Easter Island, it was covered by a tropical forest that included the worlds largest palm tree and dandelions of tree height. And there were land birds, at least six species of land birds, 37 species of breeding sea-birds - the largest collection of breeding sea-birds anywhere in the Pacific.

Polynesians settled Easter, they began to clear the forest for their gardens, for firewood, for using as rollers and levers to raise the giant statues, and then to build canoes with which to go out into the ocean and catch porpoises and tuna. In the oldest archaeological one sees the bones of porpoises and tuna that the people were eating. They ate the land birds, they ate the sea-birds, they ate the fruits of the palm trees. The population of Easter grew to an estimated about 10,000 people, until by the year 1600 all of the trees and all of the land birds and all but one of the sea-birds on Easter Island itself were extinct. Some of the sea-birds were confined to breeding on offshore stacks.

The deforestation and the elimination of the birds had consequences for people. First without trees, they could no longer transport and erect the statues, so they stopped carving statues. Secondly, without trees they had no firewood except of their own agricultural wastes. Thirdly, without trees to cover the ground, they suffered from soil erosion and hence agricultural yields decreased, and then without trees they couldnt build canoes, so they couldnt go out to the ocean to catch porpoises, there were only a few sea-birds left because they didnt have pigs the largest animal left to eat with the disappearance of porpoises and tuna were humans. And Polynesian society then collapsed in an epidemic of cannibalism. The spear points from that final phase still litter the ground of Easter Island today. The population crashed from about 10,000 to an estimated 2,000 with no possibility of rebuilding the original society because the trees, most of the birds and some of the soil were gone.

I think one of the reasons that the collapse of Easter Island so grabs people is that it looks like a metaphor for us today. Easter Island, isolated in the middle of the Pacific Island, nobody to turn to to get help, nowhere to flee once Easter Island itself collapsed. In the same way today, one can look at Planet Earth in the middle of the galaxy and if we too get into trouble, theres no way that we can flee, and no people to whom we can turn for help out there in the galaxy.

I cant help wondering what the Islander who chopped down the last palm tree said as he or she did it. Was he saying, What about our jobs? Do we care more for trees than for our jobs, of us loggers? Or maybe he was saying, What about my private property rights? Get the big government of the chiefs off my back. Or maybe he was saying, Youre predicting environmental disaster, but your environmental models are untested, we need more research before we can take action. Or perhaps he was saying, Dont worry, technology will solve all our problems.

Laughter

Kirsten Garrett: After speaking about several other Pacific Island nations and what happened to them, Professor Jared Diamond went on to talk of the Anasazi, an Indian nation later called the Pueblo, in what is now the United States.

Jared Diamond: My next example involves the Anasazi in our south west, in the four corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah. How many of you here have been to either Mesa Verde or Chaco Canyon? OK, looks like nearly half of you. Its very striking to visit say Chaco Canyon where there are still the ruins of the biggest skyscrapers erected in the United States until the Chicago skyscrapers erected in Chicagos loop in the 1870s and 1880s. But the skyscrapers of Chaco Canyon were erected by native Americans, the Anasazi. Up to 6-storey buildings, with up to 600 rooms. The Anasazi build-up began around AD600 with the arrival of the Mexican crops of corn, squash and beans, and in that relatively dry area. Again its very striking today to drive through an area where today either nobody is living at all, or nobodys living by agriculture. At Chaco Canyon itself there are a couple of houses of National Park Rangers importing their food, and then nobody else living within 20 or 30 miles. And yet to realise, and to see the remains on the ground, this used to be a densely populated agricultural environment.

The Anasazi were ingenious at managing to survive in that environment, with low fluctuating, unpredictable rainfall, and with nutrient-poor soils. The population built up. They fed themselves with agriculture, in some cases irrigation agriculture, channelled very carefully to flood out over the fields. They cut down trees for construction and firewood. In each area they would develop environmental problems by cutting down trees and exhausting soil nutrients, but they dealt with those problems by abandoning their sites after a few decades and moving on to a new site. Its possible to reconstruct Anasazi history in great detail for two reasons: tree rings, because this is a dry climate, the south-west. From tree-rings you can identify from the rings on the roof beams, what year - 1116, not 1115 AD - what year the tree in that roof was cut down, and also those cute little rodents in the south-west, pack rats, that run around gathering bits of vegetation in their nests and then abandoning their nests after 50 years, a pack rat midden is basically a time capsule of the vegetation growing within 50 yards of a pack rat midden over a period of 50 years. And my friend Julio Betancourt who was near an Anasazi ruin and happened to see a pack rat midden whose dating he knew nothing about. He was astonished to see in whats now a treeless environment, in this pack rat midden were the needles of pinion pine and juniper. So Julio wondered whether that was an old midden. He took it back, radio carbon-dated it, and lo and behold it was something like AD 800. So the pack-rat middens are time capsules of local vegetation allowing us to reconstruct what happened.

What happened is that the Anasazi deforested the area around their settlements until they were having to go further and further away for their fuel and their construction timber. At the end they were getting their logs, neatly cut logs, uniform weighing on the average 600 pounds, 16 feet logs, were cut at the end on tops of mountains up to 75 miles away and about 4,000 feet above the Anasazi settlements, and then dragged back by people with no transport or pack animals, to the Anasazi settlements themselves. So deforestation spread. That was the one environmental problem.

The other environmental problem was the cutting of arroyos. In the south-west when water flow gets channelled for example in irrigation ditches, then vast water flow is run off in desert rains. It digs a trench in the channel, and digs a trench deeper and deeper so those of you whove been to Chaco Canyon will have seen those arroyos up to 30 feet deep. And today, if the water level drops down in the arroyos, thats not a problem for farmers, because weve got pumps, but the Anasazi did not have pumps, and so when the irrigation ditches became incised by arroyo cutting and when the water level in the ditches dropped down below the field levels, they could no longer do irrigation agriculture. For a while they got away with these inadvertent environmental impacts. There were droughts around 1040 and droughts around 1090, but at both times the Anasazi hadnt yet filled up the landscape, so they could move to other parts of the landscape not yet exploited. And the population continued to grow.

And then in Chaco Canyon when a drought arrived in 1117, at that point there was no more unexploited landscape, no more empty land to which to shift. In addition at that point, Chaco Canyon was a complex society. Lots of stuff was getting imported into Chaco - stone tools, pottery, turquoise, probably food was being imported into Chaco. Archaeologists cant detect any material that went out of the Chaco Valley, and whenever you see a city into which material stuff is moving and no material stuff is leaving, you think that the modern world - the model could be of New York City or Rome, or Washington and Rome - that is to say you suspect that out of that city is having political control or religious control in return for which the peasants in the periphery are supplying their imported goods.

When the drought came in 1117 it was a couple of decades before the end. Again any of you who have been to Pueblo Benito, will have seen that Pueblo Benito was the six storey skyscraper. Pueblo Benito was a big, unwalled plaza, until about 20 years before the end, when a high wall went up around the plaza. And when you see a rich place without a wall, you can safely infer that the rich place was on good terms with its poor neighbours, and when you see a wall going up around the rich place, you can infer that there was now trouble with the neighbours. So probably what was happening was that towards the end, in the drought, as the landscape is filled up, the people out on the periphery were no longer satisfied because the people in the religious and political centre, were no longer delivering the goods. The prayers to the gods were not bringing rain, there was not all the stuff to redistribute and they began making trouble. And then at the drought of 1117, with no empty land to shift to, construction of Chaco Canyon ceased, Chaco was eventually abandoned. Long House Valley was abandoned later. The Anasazi had committed themselves irreversibly to a complex society, and once that society collapsed, they couldnt rebuild it because again they deforested their environment.

In this case then, the Anasazi case, we have the interaction of well understood environmental impact and very well understood climate change from the tree rings, from the width of the tree rings, we know how much rainfall was falling in each year and hence we know the severity of the drought.

My next to last example involves Norse Greenland. As the Vikings began to expand over and terrorise Europe in their raids. The Vikings also settled six islands in the North Atlantic. So we have to compare not 80 islands as in the Pacific, but 6 islands. Viking settlements survived on Orkney, Shetland, Faeroe and Iceland, albeit it with severe problems due to environmental damage on Iceland. The Vikings arrived in Greenland, settled Greenland AD 984, where they established a Norwegian pastoral economy, based particularly on sheep, goats and cattle for producing dairy products, and then they also hunted caribou and seal. Trade was important. The Vikings in Greenland hunted walruses to trade walrus ivory to Norway because walrus ivory was in demand in Europe for carving, since at that time with the Arab conquest, elephant ivory was no longer available in Europe. Vikings vanished in the 1400s. There were two settlements; one of them disappeared around 1360 and the other sometime probably a little after 1440. Everybody ended up dead.

The vanishing of Viking Greenland is instructive because it involves all five of the factors that I mentioned, and also because theres a detailed, written record from Norway, a bit from Iceland and just a few fragments from Greenland: a written record describing what people were doing and describing what they were thinking. So we know something about their motivation, which we dont know for the Anasazi and the Easter Islanders.

Of the five factors, first of all there was ecological damage due to deforestation in this cold climate with a short growing season, cutting turf, soil erosion. The deforestation was especially expensive to the Norse Greenlanders because they required charcoal in order to smelt iron to extract iron from bogs. Without iron, except for what they could import in small quantities from Norway, there were problems in getting iron tools like sickles. It got to be a big problem when the Inuit, who had initially been absent in Greenland, colonised Greenland and came into conflict with the Norse. The Norse then had no military advantage over the Inuit. It was not guns, germs and steel. The Norse of Greenland had no guns, very little steel, and they didnt have the nasty germs. They were fighting with the Inuit on terms of equality, one people with stone and wooden weapons against another.

So problem No.1, ecological damage, problem No.2, climate change. The climate in Greenland got colder in the late 1300s and early 1400s as part of whats called the Little Ice Age, cooling of the North Atlantic. Hay production was a problem. Greenland was already marginal because its high latitude short growing season, and as it got colder, the growing season got even shorter, hay production got less, and hay was the basis of Norse sustenance. Thirdly, the Norse had military problems with their neighbours the Inuit. For example, the only detailed example we have of an Inuit attack on the Norse is that the Icelandic annals of the years 1379 say In this year the scralings (which is an old Norse word meaning wretches, the Norse did not have a good attitude towards the Inuit), the wretches attacked the Greenlanders and killed 18 men and captured a couple of young men and women as slaves. Eighteen men doesnt seem like a big deal in this century of body counts of tens of millions of people, but when you consider the population of Norse Greenland at the time, probably about 4,000 people, 18 adult men stands in the same proportion to the Norse population then as if some outsiders were to come into the United States today and in one raid kill 1,700,000 adult male Americans. So that single raid by the Inuit did make a big deal to the Norse, and thats just the only raid that we know about.

Fourthly, there was the cut-off of trade with Europe because of increasing sea-ice, with a cold climate in the North Atlantic. The ships from Norway gradually stopped coming. Also as the Mediterranean reopened Europeans got access again to elephant ivory, and they became less interested in the walrus ivory, so fewer ships came to Greenland. And then finally cultural factors, the Norse were derived from a Norwegian society that was identified with pastoralism, and particularly valued calves. In Greenland its easier to feed and take care of sheep and goats than calves, but calves were prized in Greenland, so the Norse chiefs and bishops were heavily invested in the status symbol of calves. The Norse, because of their bad attitude towards the Inuit did not adopt useful Inuit technology, so the Norse never adopted harpoons, hence they couldnt eat whales like the Inuit. They didnt fish, incredibly, while the Inuit were fishing. They didnt have dog sleighs, they didnt have skin boats, they didnt learn from the Inuit how to kill seals at breeding holes in the winter. So the Norse were conservative, had a bad attitude towards the Inuit, they built churches and cathedrals, the remains of the Greenland cathedral is still standing today at Gardar. Its as big as the cathedral of Iceland, and the stone churches, some of the three-stone churches in Greenland are still standing. So this was a society that invested heavily in their churches, in importing stained-glass windows and bronze bells for the churches, when they could have been importing more iron to trade to the Inuit, to get seals and whale meat in exchange for the iron.

So there were cultural factors also while the Norse refused to learn from the Inuit and refused to modify their own economy in a way that would have permitted them to survive. And the result then was that after 1440 the Norse were all dead, and the Inuit survived. Greenland then is particularly instructive in showing us that collapse due to environmental reasons isnt inevitable. It depends upon what you do. Here are two peoples and one did things that let them survive, and the other things did not permit them to survive.

There are a series of factors that make people more or less likely to perceive environmental problems growing up around them. One is misreading previous experience. The Greenlanders came from Norway where theres a relatively long growing season, so the Greenlanders didnt realise, based on their previous experience, how fragile Greenland woodlands were going to be. The Greenlanders had the difficulty of extracting a trend from noisy fluctuations; yes we now know that there was a long-term cooling trend, but climate fluctuates wildly up and down n Greenland from year to year; cold, cold, warm, cold. So it was difficult for a long time perceive that there was any long-term trend. Thats similar to the problems we have today with recognising global warming. Its only within the last few years that even scientists have been able to convince themselves that there is a global long-term warming trend. And while scientists are convinced, the evidence is not yet enough to convince many of our politicians.

Problem No. 3, short time scale of experience. In the Anasazi area, droughts come back every 50 years, in Greenland it gets cold every 500 years or so; those rare events are impossible to perceive for humans with a life span of 40, 50, 70 years. Theyre perceptible today but we may not internalise them. For example, my friends in the Tucson area. There was a big drought in Tucson about 40 years ago. The city of Tucson almost over-draughted its water aquifers and Tucson went briefly into a period of water conservation, but now Tucson is back to building big developments and golf courses and so Tucson will have trouble with the next drought.

Fourthly the Norse were disadvantaged by inappropriate cultural values. They valued cows too highly just as modern Australians value cows and sheep to a degree appropriate to Scotland but inappropriate to modern Australia. And Australians now are seriously considering whether to abandon sheep farming completely as inappropriate to the Australian environment.

Finally, why would people perceive problems but still not solve their own problems?
A theme that emerges from Norse Greenland as well as from other places, is insulation of the decision making elite from the consequences of their actions. That is to say, in societies where the elites do not suffer from the consequences of their decisions, but can insulate themselves, the elite are more likely to pursue their short-term interests, even though that may be bad for the long-term interests of the society, including the children of the elite themselves.

In the case of Norse Greenland, the chiefs and bishops were eating beef from cows and venison and the lower classes were left to eating seals and the elite were heavily invested in the walrus ivory trade because of let them get their communion gear and their Rhineland pottery and the other stuff that they wanted. Even though in the long run, what was good for the chiefs in the short run was bad for society. We can see those differing insulations of the elite in the modern world today. Of all modern countries the one with by far the highest level of environmental awareness is Holland. In Holland, a higher percentage of people belong to environmental organisations than anywhere else in the world. And the Dutch are also a very democratic people. There are something like 42 political parties but none of them ever comes remotely close to a majority, but this which would be a recipe for chaos elsewhere, modern Holland, the Dutch are very good for reaching decisions. And on my last visit to Holland I asked my Dutch friends Why is it this high level of environmental awareness in Holland? And they said, Look around. Most of us are living in Polders, in these lands that have been drained, reclaimed from the sea, theyre below sea level and theyre guided by the dykes. In Holland everybody lives in the Polders, whether youre rich or poor. Its not the case that the rich people are living high up on the dykes and the poor people are living down in the Polders. So when the dyke is breached or theres a flood, rich and poor people die alike. In particular in the North Sea floods in Holland in the late 40s and 50s, when the North Sea was swept by winds and tides 50 to 100 miles inland, all Dutch in the path of the floods died whether they were rich or poor. So my Dutch friends explained it to me that in Holland, rich people cannot insulate themselves from consequences of their actions. Theyre living in the Polders and therefore there is not the clash between their short-term interests and the long-term interests of everybody else. The Dutch have had to learn to reach communal decisions.

Whereas in much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. Thats increasingly the case in Los Angeles where I come from. So that wealthy people in much of the world are insulated from the consequences of their actions.

Well, finally then. Ive talked mostly about the past. What about the situation today? There are obvious differences between the environmental problems that we face today and the environmental problems in the past. Some of those differences are things that make the situation for us today scarier than it was in the past. Today there are far more people alive, packing far more potent per capita destructive technology. Today there are 6-billion people chopping down the forests with chains and bulldozers, whereas on Easter Island there were 10,000 people with stone axes. Today, countries like the Solomon Islands - wet, relatively robust environments, where people lived without being able to deforest the islands for 32,000 years, within the past 15 years the Solomon Islands have been almost totally deforested, leading to a civil war and collapse of government within the last year or two.

Another big difference between today and the past is globalisation. In the past, you could get solitary collapses. When Easter Island society collapsed, nobody anywhere else in the world knew about it, nobody was affected by it. The Easter Islanders themselves, as they were collapsing, had no way of knowing that the Anasazi had collapsed for similar reasons a few centuries before, and that the Mycenaean Greeks had collapsed a couple of thousand years before and that the dry areas of Hawaii were going downhill at the same time. But today we turn on the television set and we see the ecological damage in Somalia and Afghanistan, or Haiti, and we pick up a book and we read about the ecological damage caused in the past. So we have knowledge both in space and time, that ancient peoples did not. Today we are not immune from anybodys problems. Again, if 20 years ago you would ask someone in strategic assessments to mention a couple of countries in the world (in fact I was in on such a conversation) completely irrelevant to American interests. The two countries mentioned as most irrelevant to American interests were two countries that are remote, poor, landlocked, with no potential for causing the United States trouble: Somalia and Afghanistan. Which illustrates that today anybody can cause trouble for anybody else in the world. A collapse of a society anywhere is a global issue, and conversely, anybody anywhere in the world now has ways of reaching us. We used to think of globalisation as a way that we send to them out there our good things, like the Internet and Coca Cola, but particularly in the time since September 11th weve realised that globalisation also means that they can send us their bad things like terrorists, cholera and uncontrollable immigration. So those are things that are against us, but things that are for us is that globalisation also means that exchange of information and that information about the past, so we are the only society in world history that has the ability to learn from all the experiments being carried out elsewhere in the world today, and all the experiments that have succeeded and failed in the past. And so at least we have the choice of what we want to do about it. Thank you.

Applause

Kirsten Garrett: That was Professor Jared Diamond from UCLA, speaking at Princeton University earlier this month. Then there were some questions from members of the audience.

Man: The impression I get is that you are talking about them primarily in relation to environmental factors, youre talking about an elite that becomes isolated, insular and operates without being affected by the consequences of environmental degradation. What about other cultural forces, such as the development of political instability, civil wars, people who are low down in the hierarchy that are challenging the order. And could it be the societies simply over time devolve towards political instability. What about other factors such as disease for example, could they play a role as well?

Jared Diamond: Absolutely. In two minutes I did not do justice to cultural factors. Theres a large literature on causes of instability and civil wars and collapse of States and civil unrest, and it turns out that you will go home and say Jared Diamond has a list of eight explanations for everything. There are eight variables that people have been able to identify: With risk of civil war, for example theres a data base of all cases of State failures and civil wars and violent government transitions in the last 30 years. People have mined this data base. Would anybody like to guess what is the single factor that is the best predictor of the collapse of societies in the last couple of decades? This is an unfair question because its so surprising. The strongest predictor is infant and child mortality. Countries that have had high infant or child mortality are more likely to undergo State collapse, and there are many links, including difficulties in the workforce, high ratio of children to adults. But in brief, yes, there is a large literature of other cultural factors that contribute to the collapse of societies.

Woman: Talking about culture problems, is there any correlation between the level of conservatism in a society and the likelihood of it collapsing?

Jared Diamond: I dont know. This is something that we havent measured, we havent tried to measure. Interesting, but I dont know.

Kirsten Garrett: The next question was not miced, so Professor Jared Diamond responded and restated it.

Jared Diamond: Interesting question. For those of you who didnt hear it: Do I think that today theres more reliance that technology will come and somehow save us, even though we cant specify how? Yes there certainly is, and many of my friends, particularly in the technology sector dont take environmental problems so seriously. Ill give you a specific example. After Guns, Germs and Steel was published, it was reviewed by Bill Gates who liked it and gave it a favourable review, and the result was that I had a two-hour discussion with Bill Gates, who is a very thoughtful person, and hes interested in lots of things. He probes deeply and he has seriously considered positions of his own. The subject turned to environmental issues and I mentioned that thats the thing that most concerned me for the future of my children, Bill Gates has young children. He paused in his thoughtful way and he said, not in a dismissing way, I have the feeling that technology will solve our environmental problems, but what really concerns me is biological terrorism. Look thats a thoughtful response, but many people in the technology sector assume that technology will solve our problems. I disagree with that for two reasons.

One is that technology has created the explosion of modern problems while also providing the potential for solving them. But the first thing that happens is technology creates the problem and then maybe later it solves it, so at best theres a lag.

The second thing is that the lesson weve learned again and again in the environmental area is its cheaper, much cheaper and more efficacious to prevent a problem at the beginning than to solve it by high technology later on. So its costing billions of dollars to clean up the Hudson River, and it costs billions of dollars to clean up Montana, it would cost a trivial amount to do it right in the beginning. Therefore, I do not look to technology as our saviour.

FWIW, the following link to Amazon.com may also be helpful. The customer reviews offer some good criticism. The person who told me about this book thought it was one of the most compelling tomes she had read because of it's historical references and well researched analysis by someone who apparently has no political axe to grind.

Thanks Althea, it is an interesting read. I am somewhat familiar with Diamond and have also read alittle bit on the examples he included. I have to agree with with you Marshall, that Diamond's lessons from the collapse of civilizations is somewhat simplistic and heavily biased towards an ethnocentristic modern western view of culture. While I agree with many of his comments about the short-sightedness of modern society to cope with environmental limits, I think his book does a diservice to anthropology and archeology.

I had to groan when I saw the Montana reference. Its not just that the rest of the country buffers Montana (or Appalachia) from the environmental effects of mineral exploitation, the mining itself (and degradation) stems from the economic relationship between Montana's minerals and the industrial society that needed those minerals. Did the mining of those minerals contribute to the success of society? That depends on your time reference, geographic scale, and definition of success. Is it successful to grow civilization and add wealth to the elite or is local economic sustainability and individual well-being the measure?

I also think his reference to the Vikings and Greenland while instructive of the limits of empire, are misdrawn. The Norse, whose raiding and terrorizing are exagerated, were a very successful culture that had settlements and trading relations from Russia in the east to the New World in the west. They colonized the British Isles and northern France and were quite adaptive in settling in, consolidating power, and building sustainable settlements (not just rape and pillage). The collapse of this one settlement in Greenland is hardly a signal loss to an ambitious empire like the Norse. Same thing with the Maya. Their temples are buried in jungle but they there are Maya still living - they didn't go away. Their society collapsed due to internal conflict and now they live very differently now than they did then. Just like the Celts of Ireland and Scotland who also denuded their lands but adapted and are still around. So what are the lessons for us to take from this that we can't draw on our own looking at our own problems - I have no idea!

His lessons of a cloistered elite and egalitarian Holland while perhaps relevant to modern western politics and democracy, ignores the successful chieftain-lead societies in North America who through centralized control managed to level out uneven food production and at the same time reinforce their elevated status. Certainly, the asian countries which he cited briefly as having the longest life were cloistered (gated?) and not democratic.

He (and we often) assume that democracy is the answer to all the world's problems, but in fact rule by majority has a pretty mixed success rate if you use wars and environmental degradation as the gauge. I'm not arguing that monarcies, chief societies, or socialists have any better record either. In fact there are many ways to organize people for success and many ways to fail. As one of the posters noted, a more interesting question might be what makes for a successful society?

Again, I don't dispute his warning about the dangers of ignoring the environmental consequences of going for short-tern gains and I hope his book raises awareness and stirs debate, but I think these little lessons from the history of the world are simplistic.

Thanks for your input KT. I was hoping you would respond because of your anthropology background which in conjunction with Marshall's insight & knowledge of history casts Diamond's theory in a more realistic light. I wasn't sure if it was because of the brevity of the interview or if his examples are really weak and oversimplified to fit his meme as Marshall noted. Two of the examples are of island populations which are more vulnerable to pressures than continental societies, so I don't know if you can use them as a baseline for any other comparison.

Rather than the specific type of government, I thought he was saying that a governing body or ruling elite which looks out for the long term interest of the entire society is most likely to succeed. If the societies resources are directed toward enriching a few at the expense of all, problems will surely arise.

Yeah, that seems to be the thrust of his argument. I haven't read his recent books but based on the interview at the link, it seems to me that the concept of "societal values" could have been discussed as a key factor in how cultures interact with and shape the environment for better or worse. I suppose this falls under his last factor "cultural response" but he frames it as a coping mechanism coming after the fact of environmental degradation not as a "value" that produces successful civilizations with sustainable economies. Rampant materialism and the elevation of the individual and corporation over the welfare of the community is at the root of our modern problems not just poor decision-making.

I think he is working under the assumption that all societies operate(d) under the same value system as his. Note how he asks us to compare the Anasazi with modern Rome or New York. It's easy to draw all kinds of conclusions from a false premise. The social sciences do not depend on evidence for proof of their speculations, academic status is usually sufficient.

Well that seems to be the case in his book. What puzzles me (and provokes me) is that anthropologists are usually sensitive to that sort of western bias and generally strive to understand different cultural values behind behavior. That is really the whole point of anthropology.

I suspect that Diamond structured his book intentionally to be accessible to a western audience and to make a political rather than social statement. I might add that anthropology departments offer courses in human ecology and anthro-economics or whatever they call it now that do address cultural adaptations to the environment and there are journals devoted to such topics. I can't think of a good publication as a counter to Diamond's right off hand, but if one comes to mind, I'll pass it along. Can anyone else suggest some alternate readings?

Meant to say this in last post. For those who have read Diamond's other books and essays, it is clear that he adheres to a evolutionary theoretical stance that sees human destruction of the environment as a key trait - even a genetic basis of all humans throughout history. His other books often counter the old view (a strawman which few anthropologists or ethnohistorians hold anyway) of the noble savage as conservationist. I think he seeks to bolster in his accounts of societal collapse precursors to the modern problems.

Thanks, KT, for the details and perspectives of current antrhop. and ethnol. approaches. Diamond seems to be a throwback to an earlier 20th century view in Geography that environmental determinism reigned in the workings of past and current human events. I must find and read a copy of Diamonds work before I saddle him with that belief structure.

I wish I would have thought to look at one of my books before starting this thread. KT, addressing your last post, I just finished reviewing Vine Deloria's critique of Diamonds mammoth extermination theory in "Red Earth, White Lies". According to Deloria, Diamond bases his argument on undocumented belief. You might be interested in reading it if you think Diamond made a real contribution to anthropology. I have a sense Diamond is following his same well worn path in "Collapse", so I think it is wise to be skeptical.

Please let us know what you think of Diamonds latest book Marshall.

Althea and Marshall, an interesting paper on the internet by Eugene Hunn of the University of Washington "In Defense of the Ecological Indian" addresses some of these anthropological theoretical positions including Diamonds and provides some interesting background and critique of the debate over whether Native American people were conservationists or environmental despoilers. Despite being an academic paper and citing obscure anthropology & ethnohistory sources, it is very readable and provides a pretty good bibliography too.

Ahh! I had seen reference to the Hunn paper and wished to read same. Now that I have, I am much more inclined to side with the alturistic conservationists in my own habitats (so to speak) while siding with Hunn's defense of conservationism among traditional societies. I really appreciate his discussion of the meanings of "conservation" and the perjorative thrusts of its use today.

I'm rather amazed that this debate continues; similar debates were common in anthropology and geography when I was a lad in graduate school. As Hunn points out the debates have taken on pronounced and subtle ideological characteristics; somewhat different than ideologies coloring debates of my young years.

KT, thanks for the article. It supports many of my hunches that with my extremely limited background in the fields(s) were likely to remain hunches. I'll speculate that the literature in the '60's & 70's they are challenging must have, like other movements of that era, posed a threat to the established order. Kretch has stretched the defintion of scholarship to a breaking point with a book which is obviously a political tool.

I love Hunn's disclaimer, "I do not claim to be without political or theoretical biases myself. Rather, I am a cognitive ethnobiologist who considers global capitalism to be a form of insanity." I agree with him. KT, I think you're correct about Diamond attempting to reduce social/environmental interaction as necessarily destructive to a genetic cause. IMO, they are attempting to justify current western ideology by purposely misrepresenting past cultures.

An article in Jan. 2005 WW Magazine (linked on the thread "More on environmental groups) has an article entitled "Trespass" which describes the history of genetic engineering. I wasn't aware of the eugenic origins. I think the foundations of this belief system have crossed over into other areas including Anthropology and this belief system is the source of Diamond's etc. motivation. Here's a clip from "Trespass"

≈≈≈≈≈
Getting around inside Hilgard means navigating worn marble staircases and dark corridors laced with exposed pipes and heating ducts. The room where the monster box photograph is kept is small and dank. This building is home to the "old" biologythe careful observation of life, living systems, and their complex interactions. Being inside Hilgard is a visceral lesson in how Cal is neglecting the classic study of the intimate inter-relationships among agriculture, the environment, and human society. Nearby, and standing in stark contrast to Hilgard's faded splendor, is a newer, modern office building, Koshland Hall. Koshland is not unattractive, with its pitched blue tile roof lines and bright white walls lined with blue steel windows, but it was built in the mid1990s in a functional style that, like most new campus buildings, has all the charm and poetry of an ice cube. The interior is clean and well lit. Next to office doors hang plaques that name the corporations or foundations that fund the activities inside. This is the home of the "new biology"the utilitarian view that life is centered in DNA and molecules can be manipulated at will. Molecular biology is clearly doing well at Cal. Koshland Hall was named after a distinguished The new biology One hundred years ago, no one had heard of a "gene." The word was not recognized until 1909, and even after that it remained an abstraction for decades. At the time, scientists and others were making an effort to find a material basis for life, particularly heritability, the fundamental function of life. The story of genetic engineering in the United States begins with the decision to identify genes as the basis of life. But the ideological roots of this story go even deeper, into the nations earlier history and attachment to the ideas of manifest destiny, eugenics, and social engineering. Early in the twentieth century, the new "science" of sociology made its appearancealong with the highly appealing belief that social problems were amenable to scientific solutions. In time, sociology began to combine with genetic science, giving strong impetus to technocratic forms of social control, and particularly to eugenicsthe belief that the human race could be improved by selective breeding. Until the 1930s, the science of genetics had not developed much beyond Mendelian principles of heredity, but eugenics was already being promoted as the solution to social problems. As the idea that genes determined traits in people took hold, eugenics twisted it to foster the concept that there were "good" genes and "bad" genes, good and bad traits. Eugenics eventually gained a powerful foothold both in the popular imagination and in the U.S. government, as well as in Nazi Germany. Even today, these notions underlie the decisions biotechnologists make about what genes and traits are beneficial, what organisms are engineered, and who gets to decide how this technology will be used. According to Lily Kay, an assistant professor of the history of science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, genetic engineering came about as the result of the concerted effort of a few scientists, who, along with their academic and philanthropic sponsors, had a shared vision about how they could use genetics to reshape science and society. In her book The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology, Kay writes that this vision was not so much about underlying biological principles as it was about social values. The new biology that evolved from this thinking was founded on a strong belief in "industrial capitalism" and its perceived mandate for "science-based social intervention." The potential for this idea, and the intentional strategy to use it for social purposes was clearly understood from the outset, says Kay. The developers of "molecular biology" (a term coined by the Rockefeller Foundation) were confident that it would offer them a previously unimagined power and control over both nature and society. Science was molded to this agenda in 1945, when Vannevar Bush, the head of President Franklin D. Roosevelts wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development, wrote "Science, The Endless Frontier"a landmark report that outlined how science could better serve the private sector. As Kay tells the story, at that point the search for a science-based social agenda began in earnest. It was funded and directed by business corporations and foundations acting together as "quasipublic entities" using both private and public funds to harness "the expertise of the human sciences to stem what was perceived as the nations social and biological decay and help realize the vision of Americas destiny." Eventually, the combined efforts of corporate, academic, and government interests began to bear fruit and "the boundary between individual and corporate self-interest, between private and public control, would be increasingly blurred."w The story of how James Watson and Francis Crick described the structure of the DNA helix in 1953 is well known. Less known, but of considerable consequence, is what followed. With little hesitation, they announced that DNA is "the secret of life"and began to promote what was to become known as "the central dogma" the notion that genetic information flows in only one direction, from DNA to RNA to a protein, and that this process directly determines an organisms characteristics. This dogma was, as described by geneticist MaeWan Ho, author of Living with the Fluid Genome,"just another way of saying that organisms are hardwired in their genetic makeup and the environment has little influence on the structure and function of the genes." In her book, Dr. Ho argues that the central dogma is too simplistic. She observes that not all DNA "codes for proteins" and that the genome is fluid and interactive. Similarly, in a 1992 Harpers Magazine article, "Unraveling the DNA Myth: The Spurious Foundation of Genetic Engineering," Queens College biologist Barry Commoner writes that "the central dogma is the premise that an organisms genomeits total complement of DNA genesshould fully account for its characteristic assemblage of inherited traits. The premise, unhappily, is false." Still, the singular view of "life as DNA" dominated biology in the late twentieth century, in part because its very simplicity provided the biological rationale for engineering DNA. Technological advances in other fieldsthe study of enzymes that cut DNA, and bacteria that recombine itwere teamed up with high speed computers that provided the computational muscle needed. And yet, even as the old biology became the "new and improved" molecular biology, it was promoted with a social pedigree about how it would serve the public. Its mandate was the same one that was used to colonize the "new world" and to settle the Wild Westthe promise that this progress would provide everyone a better life.
≈≈≈≈≈

It seems specious to compare the little and unsuccesful Norse settlement in greenland with the fall of the roman empire.

The former was an environmental disaster/shift; the consequence for humans there was death by starvation. The latter was a drastic political change, primarily. The consequences for the average roman may have been considerable, but not fatal.

The USofA is oft compared to the civilization of Rome. Perhaps we are comparable to the relatively brief heyday of the Republic. Perhaps a shift to dictatorship is inevitable. For the average citizen of Rome's broad country-sides, what was the real difference?

Governments by, of and for the people have been rare. More dominant have been governments by and for governing elites and their hanger-ons, at least those that have been recorded in history books or carried forward in oral traditions. We look at examples of democratic or traditional societies as quaint experiments or aberrations of normative societies led by famous men or movements.

The example of the Greenland Vikings ought to be compared to the examples of expanding homesteading into the High Plains of the US. While environmental conditions remained cyclically favorable, the settlements persisted but once conditions deteriorated, many folks moved on. The main point is that human populations tend to push out toward the limits of their realms; those limits might be environmental or political or geographical.

Althea, eugenics had its roots in its early handmaiden, racialism, a belief system that was based both on the religious beliefs of the day and science of the day. We have added molecular biology to this justification of social organization and engineering to improve us all (or get rid of the unwanted elements or genes among us.)

Good analogy Marshall. Perhaps comparisons with the agricultural challenges of the southwestern Anasazi could be made with modern over-development of the drought prone west.

Althea, Anthropology has a long checkered history of enlistment in political thought and theory extending back to the last century and continuing up to the present. With its evolutionary perspective, it has proven to be a fertile ground for bolstering radical views on race especially. Starting with the "science" of phrenology - the idea that physical, moral, intellectual, and social development, could be understood by the shape of the skull and jaw structure which spawned a ludicrous parlor science of taking skull, jawbone, and brow measurements and assessing intellectual potential.

These anatomical descriptions of 'races' and their characteristics were the inspiration for mid twentieth-century racial anthropology followed in Nazi Germany (and also the US). During Hitler's reign, Nazi anthropologists provided the theoretical justification for racism including the notion of an Aryan super race and lower races (jews, gypsies, etc.), and participated in the Holocaust. Anthropology was also very divided in the late 19th-early 20th century over eugenics movement heavily financed by the Rockfeller's who funded the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics and Human Heredity which called for killing or sterilizing people whose heridity made them a burden on society.

At the same time, anthropologists such as Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict and Ashley Montagu challenged the "eugenics" movement and argued that behavioral differences among ethnic groups were not genetically based, but caused by environmental factors, "culture", and people's histories and experiences. There always seem to be movements and counter-movements in anthropology paralleling the diversity of social views on subjects.

I'm not sure about Diamond's root theoretical beliefs. I think it might stem at least partially from socio-biology with its focus on the gene as the driver of social behavior particularly traits such as altruism and hostility.

I agree Marshall, that's a good comparison. The high plains in general are a marginal environment for human and human-supported animal populations. The south-west also, much of it.

Many tropical areas are marginal also and not able to withstand much tampering, would we agree? For instance, I don't think the MotoGrosso region of Brazil will prove sustainable for the conventional ag that is currently speading. It's primarily the moist parts of the temperate latitudes that are seemingly appropriate for the typical european-style subsistence. Not surprisingly, as that is precisely where it developed.

If those regions shrink or shift significantly it could cause some social collapse, I reckon.

Thanks for the primers KT & Marshall.

His intentions aside, Diamond seems to have a fairly large and loyal following. The woman who told me about this book has a PhD in one of the social sciences. I assume she would have an understanding based on some degree of critical awareness. Everyone who posted on this thread was easily able to find problems with his ideas. We represent a broad range of interests and levels of education (if that is even meaningful & I know for Pat it isn't), and Diamonds work didn't hold up to scrutiny here. What worries me is that someone like the woman I know speaks authoritatively on this subject, yet seems to have been completely snowed. This is especially troubling in light of his final factor: "Why is it that people failed to perceive the problems developing around them, or if they perceived them, why did they fail to solve the problems that would eventually do them in? Why did some peoples perceive and recognise their problems and others not?" I can't come up with an answer.

I think Diamond has a following because his book speaks to a major concern of folks over the breakdown of our social-economic-political system with all its technology and know-how to deal effectively with problems like environmental limits and other conflicts. The historical and anthropological context of his book maybe reinforces our sense that something very basic is wrong with the way all humans deal with problems that require longterm adjustments and underscores their sense that we need to fundamentally re-examine how we deal with the limits of our existence. I think the historical context also has wide appeal because it confronts our modern arrogance and puts us in our place right alongside other challenged civilizations in history and not as evolved as we might think.

I have some problems with his approach and underlying theory, but I certainly applaud his goal to raise awareness. I would see his popularity not so much as an endorsement of his method and theory so much as agreement with the general tenor of his message.

Do you know what he proposes as a solution? I only recall something about better decision-making that serves more than the elite. Hard to disagree with that, but, if seems to me something is being left unsaid, given his thesis about man's genetic predisposition for calamity.

Apart from prevention mentioned at he end of the interview, I didn't see any solutions proposed. From the first hit of a quick google search is this clip of a salon.com blog.

"The book then goes on to review which combinations of factors were responsible for each collapse in his study, and concludes with a warning that the current state of our civilization exhibits all of these factors, and therefore "we" citizens need to pressure our governments, notably in the US, to heed these warnings and act to prevent collapse."

lol.

Thanks for the link Althea. Pollard's criticisms of Diamond echo some of the same things we've said here.

By the way, did you follow Pollard's recommended link at the end of the article to read John Zerzan's "Future Primitive"? An interesting read with some nice writing particularly in his summary of the anthropological literature - reminds me why I was attracted to anthropology. He is an anarchist and his views are very radical and provocative - possibly aligned with a school of anthropology called "Marxist" - meaning not socialist but rather focused on the means of and control of production.

Zerzan stresses the advantages of hunter-gathering to humans in terms of amount of work, leisure time, health, environmental and human harmony, and notes that it persisted for many thousands of years. He views the rise of civilization as accompanying domestication of plants and animals (breaking with nature) and bringing about gender roles, division of labor, domination by elite, territories, symbolic culture (language, numbers, religion) and human conflict.

To deal with environmental calamity, he recommends a more radical breaking away from our usual ways of thinking about these problems.

That's quite an interesting read, KT. So many points of debate I hardly know where to start.

I guess I'll start with the most obvious (and which he didn't seem to address directly) that our human population does not allow the possibility of a 'hunter-gatherer' life-style for any but a tiny minority. Not even that if we were distributed more evenly, as we would have to be.

I don't doubt that most of what he asserts about 'primitives' is true, that they were healthier, happier, etc. I'd say the main value in this way of thinking is for we moderns to try to move closer to that way of living, without imagining that we can truly achieve it; but we can surely drastically reduce our participation in mad modern life.

For nearly everyone on the planet the basic ills that he decries are in-alterable: taxes, laws, ownership, social codes and mores, etc. Those who aggresively ignore such things are considered (rightly or wrongly) to be tramps, vagrants, homeless, or some variety of criminal. To attempt to not own anything or to not use money would require complete divorcement from humanity. Not the same thing as living in a group of hunter-gatherers.

I suppose it raises the an ineresting idea for an intentional community: A group of wanna-be gatherers could get together and buy a very large parcel of land suitable for such living. No ownership, no descrimination, no gender roles, no drudgery, etc. Remind you of anything? And somebody still has to pay the property taxes, at the least.

Pat, I'm not sure where he's going with this either as far as an alternative to what we have now. I'd like to check out some of the other articles on the ECES website to get a better idea. I have to confess that on first glance, I was ready to dismiss them as "back to nature freaks" bemoaning modern life and pining for a lost spiritual relationship with nature, but I am intrigued by some of the articles and will hold judgement.

The world's remaining hunter-gatherers are being encroached upon by civilization and are an endangered lot. They will probably not be around more than another generation or so. There is little reason to think that such a lifestyle would be feasible today given limited natural resources and lost skills. I don't think you can go back to eden once you've seen Peoria. My sense is that the ECES folks see the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as an inspiration for a new ethic or spirituality. Maybe they are seeking just to reorder priorities.

Another enthusiastic nod to Althea for the Pollard blog. Wow, I have some reading and thinking to do in whatever spare time I have. :) Not on this abbreviated lunch period.

There would be many who would accuse those promoting "primitive ethos" as promoters of paganism or animism and extolling anti-Judeo-Christian values. I don't want to start up that sort of discussion but thought the notion ought to be bared. There are many folks who really don't believe in the god of The Book, perhaps half the world's population are neither Christian nor Muslim (nor the few minor monotheistic religions.)

While I don't glorify "primitive ethos", it tended to be easier on the environment. Also those more primitive societies had some herbal type remedies that are just now being appreciated some.

However, I don't long to be at that level!!

I did read the Zerzan article. It took three sittings to get through it though because I disagree with so much of what he said. However, I do appreciate the synopsis of examples that counter Diamond's approach. I think Zerzan is cherrypickiing every bit as much as Diamond with his theory of agriculture being the demise of humanity. For example, he includes a positive mention of the Zuni people when it suits one of his points but somehow failed to notice in his research that the Zuni are an agricultural society. I thought his ideas about symbolic thought and representation totally absurd. I guess I really should read the thing again before making further comment.

I agree that there are advantages to a simpler way of life but don't think a simpler life necessarily has to be a hunter-gatherer life.

I mentioned Vine Deloria earlier. FWIW, here is a link to an interview in which he covers some of the same points as Zerzan brought up. There are some significant differences between his understanding of the relationship between people and nature and Zerzan's.

Althea, I agree there is much cherry picking in Zerzan and much that is overstated with respect to evolution, advent of hunting, division of labor, early agriculture, etc. I too am abit uncomfortable about his statements of symbolic culture.

I do think his summary is interesting and provocative and a fun read as a counter to Diamond, but it by no means represents the consensus of anthropology any more than Diamond's does. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Sorry, if my earlier comments mislead folks into thinking I totally endorse all of his statements.

Here's a good critique of Zerzan.

Thanks for the great link KT. I think the authors did a fantastic job identifying Zerzan's ideology and his method, proving the whole rant essentially meaningless. I definitely agree with their assessment of his method as violent. I felt like I was being manipulated and bludgeoned with citations by someone who is pining for an ideal, peaceful past. Talk about hypocracy.

The essay saved me the pain of having to re-read Zerzan. They did a much better job than I possibly could have refuting his malarky.

They also did a nice job outlining the limitations of archeological/anthropological inquiry & the necessity of not imposing your own preconceptions onto another culture.

That rebuttal/critique of Zerzan is itself an odd piece of work. I found it close to incomprehensible at points - perhaps due to poor translation from french. It's also hard to take seriously an essay that uses an adjective such as 'goddam'.

As a vegetarian myself, I do find Zerzan's assertion that primitives were gatherers rather than hunters - IOW, largely herbivorous - an attractive idea. It allows me to think of myself as more primeveal or perhaps proto-human than other moderns. However, this is nothing more than a hopeful affectation in the face of lack of evidence. As pointed out in the anti-zerzan essay, lack of evidence shows nothing one way or the other.

Zerzan's dislike of agriculture and culture in general I find ridiculous and so reject out of hand, just as he apparently does with evidence that doesn't appeal to his vision. It seems to me that peoples practicing gentle, sustainable herbiculture are the best-adjusted to nature without necessarily living as beasts.

One of the problems with Zerzan is the generalization about hunter-gatherer subsistence. While his summaries of the Mbuti Bushmen and Kalahari San are accurate, they are only two examples. A broader reading of the ethnographic literature shows that hunter-gatherers were opportunistic and their economies varied depending on the ecological niche they occupied. The particular mix of subsistence patterns might have included hunting and fishing, as well as horticulture (although in some ethnographic typologies even limited ag would automatically exclude them from the hunter-gatherer club - see how it works?). Then what do you do with the Aleut (Eskimos) and their predecessors who lived virtually totally by hunting and fishing? Another problem with the ethnographic literature is that most of the examples are from non-temperate marginal ag areas (rainforest or desert) where hunting and gathering still survived although likely early civilizations occupied more temperate niches too before the advent of agriculture. In those areas, seasonal variations in food availability likely resulted in what is termed "seasonal rounds" where groups moved around to different locations to exploit seasonally available food sources such as fall seed and nut crops, spring fish runs, migrating deer and ducks, summer fruits, etc. They might even totally reorganize their society to more efficiently distribute themselves across the landscape - breaking into family groups part of the year and regrouping other times. This was typical of some North American Native groups. Humans were very resourceful

I think one of the reasons humans have been so successful is because they are resourceful, esp. in terms of making use of available food.

This site has some good links for info about hunter-gatherer diets. I've only looked at a couple of enteries having spent the most time on the Foraging and Ethnobotany link.

A nice link Althea. Lots of good info on Evolution and Diet from several perspectives. I didn't realize that "Caveman" Diets had entered the popular lexicon right next to Adkins and Palm Beach.

As hunter-gatherers mankind seems a lot like a blend into nature....a combination of beauty, killing, and easy on the environment............too simple for my taste.

As this is a sharing forum I believe that man was made for a higher purpose. Too much science on the mind smothers some of this inclination. It's true that man's ability to subdue nature opens the door to a lot of harm and mischief, and yet I believe the Maker's purpose is being done through it all.