Name: 【TED】Why societies collapse | Jared Diamond
Uploaded: 2017-01-25T03:14:35.000Z
Duration: 19 min 49 s
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I think all of us have been interested, at one time or another,

in the romantic mysteries of all those societies that collapsed,

such as the classic Maya in the Yucatan, the Easter Islanders,

the Anasazi, Fertile Crescent society, Angor Wat, Great Zimbabwe

and so on. And within the last decade or two,

archaeologists have shown us that there were environmental problems

But there were also plenty of places in the world

where societies have been developing for thousands of years

such as Japan, Java, Tonga and Tikopea. So evidently, societies

in some areas are more fragile than in other areas.

How can we understand what makes some societies more fragile

than other societies? The problem is obviously relevant

to our situation today, because today as well, there are

some societies that have already collapsed, such as Somalia

and Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. There are also

societies today that may be close to collapse, such as Nepal, Indonesia and Columbia.

What is there that we can learn from the past that would help us avoid

declining or collapsing in the way that so many past societies have?

Obviously the answer to this question is not going

to be a single factor. If anyone tells you that there is a single-factor

explanation for societal collapses, you know right away

that they're an idiot. This is a complex subject.

But how can we make sense out of the complexities of this subject?

In analyzing societal collapses, I've arrived at a

five-point framework -- a checklist of things that I go through

to try and understand collapses. And I'll illustrate that five-point

framework by the extinction of the Greenland Norse society.

This is a European society with literate records,

so we know a good deal about the people and their motivation.

In AD 984 Vikings went out to Greenland, settled Greenland,

and around 1450 they died out -- the society collapsed,

Why did they all end up dead? Well, in my five-point framework,

the first item on the framework is to look for human impacts

on the environment: people inadvertently destroying the resource

base on which they depend. And in the case of the Viking Norse,

the Vikings inadvertently caused soil erosion and deforestation,

which was a particular problem for them because

they required forests to make charcoal, to make iron.

So they ended up an Iron Age European society, virtually

unable to make their own iron. A second item on my checklist is

climate change. Climate can get warmer or colder or dryer or wetter.

In the case of the Vikings -- in Greenland, the climate got colder

in the late 1300s, and especially in the 1400s. But a cold climate

isn't necessarily fatal, because the Inuit -- the Eskimos inhabiting

Greenland at the same time -- did better, rather than worse,

with cold climates. So why didn't the Greenland Norse as well?

The third thing on my checklist is relations with neighboring

friendly societies that may prop up a society. And if that

friendly support is pulled away, that may make a society

more likely to collapse. In the case of the Greenland Norse,

they had trade with the mother country -- Norway --

and that trade dwindled: partly because Norway got weaker,

partly because of sea ice between Greenland and Norway.

The fourth item on my checklist is relations with hostile societies.

In the case of Norse Greenland, the hostiles were the Inuit --

the Eskimos sharing Greenland -- with whom the Norse

got off to bad relationships. And we know that the Inuit

killed the Norse and, probably of greater importance,

may have blocked access to the outer fjords, on which

the Norse depended for seals at a critical time of the year.

And then finally, the fifth item on my checklist is the political,

economic, social and cultural factors in the society that make it

more or less likely that the society will perceive and solve its

environmental problems. In the case of the Greenland Norse,

cultural factors that made it difficult for them

to solve their problems were: their commitments to a

Christian society investing heavily in cathedrals; their being

a competitive-ranked chiefly society; and their scorn for the Inuit,

from whom they refused to learn. So that's how the five-part

framework is relevant to the collapse and eventual extinction of the Greenland Norse.

For the past five years, I've been taking my wife and kids to

Southwestern Montana, where I worked as a teenager

on the hay harvest. And Montana, at first sight, seems

like the most pristine environment in the United States.

But scratch the surface, and Montana suffers from serious problems.

Going through the same checklist: human environmental impacts?

Yes, acute in Montana. Toxic problems from mine waste

have caused damage of billions of dollars.

Problems from weeds, weed control, cost Montana nearly

200 million dollars a year. Montana has lost agricultural areas

from salinization, problems of forest management,

problems of forest fires. Second item on my checklist:

climate change. Yes -- the climate in Montana is getting warmer

and drier, but Montana agriculture depends especially on irrigation

from the snow pack, and as the snow is melting -- for example,

as the glaciers in Glacier National Park are disappearing --

that's bad news for Montana irrigation agriculture.

Third thing on my checklist: relations with friendlies

that can sustain the society. In Montana today, more than half of

the income of Montana is not earned within Montana,

but is derived from out of state: transfer payments from

social security, investments and so on --

which makes Montana vulnerable to the rest of the United States.

Fourth: relations with hostiles. Montanans have the same problems

as do all Americans, in being sensitive to problems

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【TED】Why societies collapse | Jared Diamond

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