What drives societal collapse? Precis

Author(s): Harvey Weiss and Raymond S. Bradley

URL: http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/bradley/weiss2001.pdf

What drives societal collapse? By Harvey Weiss and Raymond S. Bradley examines the relationship between climate change and the role it played in prehistoric, ancient and pre-modern societal collapses. In addition, it studies if and how this ‘link’ is still significant today and how modern societies can avoid collapse.

Weiss and Bradley define collapse differently from Diamond, as they consider a severe change in lifestyle or culture to be equivalent to societal collapse.

Previously, it was believed that the collapse of a society was caused by a combination of social, political and economic factors. However, the study of past climate changes, that occurred abruptly and caught societies by surprise, can be considered the key reasons for societal collapse. This is because changes in climate forced a society to abandon a certain region, adopt different sustenance, and generally adapt to new circumstances.

The cases of societal collapse cited in this document support this theory. The first ‘well-documented’ societal collapse was that of the Natufian society of Southwest Asia; the society shifted from relying on hunting and gathering to using labor intensive agricultural techniques to get food. This was because there was an abrupt change in climate, from having warm and wet winters and hot and dry summers to cooler and drier conditions. In 3200-3000 B.C. the Late Uruk society collapsed suddenly; this collapse has now been linked to a severe 200 year drought that occurred at that time. Another example that is given is that of the Tiwanaku civilization of the central Andes, whose agricultural base collapsed in the 10^th century due to an extended period of drought.

These examples indicate that there have been severe changes in climate in the past, and that these had a great impact on past societies. Societies were confronted with unknown weather conditions and their technological adaptations, could not counter the rapidity, extent and duration of these changes in climate. According to Weiss and Bradley, they can be considered a the main reason in causing a societies collapse.

In the past, the climate change occurred naturally and were not a product of human impact. Today, however, humans have a significant influence on rapid and extensive climate change. According to Weiss and Bradley, ‘global temperatures will rise and atmospheric circulation will change, leading to a redistribution of rainfall that is difficult to predict’. Though we have the advantage of advanced technology, we are just as vularable as the societies of the past, since we are ‘small-scale market agriculturalists’, who live in a time of worldwide population ‘overload’. We can, however, predict what will happen in the future and therefore, we can adopt countermeasures to avoid the worst case scenario.For this to occur, there must be extensive informational cooperation between nations, and strategies need to be developed to minimize impact, especially in societies that are at the greatest risk of collapse.