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LOL. Before clicking on the link I said out loud, "This will be yet another article blaming the 'collapse' of an 'ancient civilization' on 'climate change'." C

LOL. Before clicking on the link I said out loud, "This will be yet another article blaming the 'collapse' of an 'ancient civilization' on 'climate change'." Clicked the link, wasn't disappointed.

scribu 14y ago
If you think about it, climate change is actually the most obvious cause for the disappearance of a civilization completely dependent on agriculture.
ktizo 14y ago
I think you might be conflating the current issue of anthropogenic climate change with the historic fact that many different cultures' success or failure has been almost entirely subject to the whims of climatic variation.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  When someone pins climate change as the sole cause of cultures' rise or falls, I tend to wonder what bridge they are selling. Climate places real constraints on cultures but I am not sure that these are ones which necessarily dictate success or failure. If it did, Roald Amudsen should have suffered the same fate as John Franklin.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    Not the sole cause of cultures' rise or falls, but one of the main causes of many cultures' fall, often due to those particular cultures becoming deeply interconnected and unprepared for large scale changes. The fates of individual polar explorers is not particularly relevant to the fall of large city building cultures. And anyway Amundsen disappeared while on a rescue mission to find a crashed polar airship, so did suffer a similar fate, just a bit later.
    - einhverfr 14y ago
      I think you hit the nail on the head with this statement "often due to those particular cultures becoming deeply interconnected and unprepared for large scale changes." In other words, the social complexity makes a culture vulnerable, and climate/agriculture pressures can essentially cause failure where none was possible before. That's close to Prof. Tainter's thesis, actually, and he points out that there are very few cases of large-scale cultures addressing these problems by simplifying but when they do they can survive. The example he gives in his lectures is the so-called Byzantine Dark Ages which were a deliberate transformation of the Byzantine Empire in response to the Arab invasions (going from a professional army to peasant militias, etc). But most cultures that I know of aren't even proximally wiped out by climate change. The Persians were conquered by the Romans on the battlefield, as were the Gauls. The Western Roman Empire appears to have collapsed primarily from inward pressures, not outward ones, and the agricultural failures there were the result of factors other than climate change or even man-made environmental damages. Some cultures do fail due primarily to environmental reasons (Greenland and republican Iceland being the best examples), but I don't think they represent the general rule. Iceland never was a particularly fertile place to grow things (vast amounts of environmental damage were the result of grazing animals simply because there's not much else you can do in Iceland), and neither was Greenland even before the Little Ice Age....
aneth2 14y ago
You are implying that this climate change reference is in any way related to the current politicized theories about anthropogenic climate change. I'm guessing if you actually read the article (as you also imply,) you would conclude otherwise.
rprasad 14y ago
Before the globalization of the food supply, climate change was the cause of death for many of the great ancient and not-so-ancient civilizations. Getting fresh food from any part of the world is (comparatively) trivial nowadays, but even 150 years ago, most food spoiled on the way to the local market a few miles down the road.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  I doubt that most food spoiled on the way to the local market. Also note that a lot of traditional methods of preservation (everything from many forms of cheesemaking to many forms of pickling such as that involved in making sauerkraut) are basically controlled spoilage.
  - rprasad 14y ago
    While we may think of 5 miles as a quick trip, back then a 5 mile trip to the local market would have taken most of a day (and the trip itself could be a multi-day event, which is why we vote on Tuesdays). This is on top of any time the food has spent in storage between harvesting/butchering and the trip. Over that period of time, even cheese, salted meats, and jams will begin to spoil.
    - einhverfr 14y ago
      I am not sure of any of that, btw. First there are a lot of foods that don't spoil that way (i.e. beginning to rot), such as fresh fruits, fresh veggies, grains, etc. Those are still relatively friendly to transport to market. Secondly I have taken cheese, dry salami (salted, fermented meat), etc., backpacking and it is fine without refridgeration after a week even in the summer. These may sweat some of their fat but that's not the same as spoiling. Third, I don't think meats spoil as quickly after slaughter as a lot of us think. I once accidently left a fresh/micro-slaughtered/micro-butchered roast in the back of my car and discovered it three days later. Cooked it and it still tasted fresher than anything I had ever bought at a supermarket. I don't know what the supply chains look like at the supermarket but I doubt they are very short....... Edit: I could understand the argument that many of the things we would buy at our grocery store would have spoiled on the way to a local market. But if most food would have spoiled on the way to a local market that would have made cities fundamentally untenable. And yet London was a city of about two million people at that time.

LOL. Before clicking on the link I said out loud, "This will be yet another article blaming the 'collapse' of an 'ancient civilization' on 'climate change'." Clicked the link, wasn't disappointed.

scribu 14y ago

If you think about it, climate change is actually the most obvious cause for the disappearance of a civilization completely dependent on agriculture.

ktizo 14y ago

I think you might be conflating the current issue of anthropogenic climate change with the historic fact that many different cultures' success or failure has been almost entirely subject to the whims of climatic variation.

einhverfr 14y ago
When someone pins climate change as the sole cause of cultures' rise or falls, I tend to wonder what bridge they are selling. Climate places real constraints on cultures but I am not sure that these are ones which necessarily dictate success or failure. If it did, Roald Amudsen should have suffered the same fate as John Franklin.
- ktizo 14y ago
  Not the sole cause of cultures' rise or falls, but one of the main causes of many cultures' fall, often due to those particular cultures becoming deeply interconnected and unprepared for large scale changes. The fates of individual polar explorers is not particularly relevant to the fall of large city building cultures. And anyway Amundsen disappeared while on a rescue mission to find a crashed polar airship, so did suffer a similar fate, just a bit later.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    I think you hit the nail on the head with this statement "often due to those particular cultures becoming deeply interconnected and unprepared for large scale changes." In other words, the social complexity makes a culture vulnerable, and climate/agriculture pressures can essentially cause failure where none was possible before. That's close to Prof. Tainter's thesis, actually, and he points out that there are very few cases of large-scale cultures addressing these problems by simplifying but when they do they can survive. The example he gives in his lectures is the so-called Byzantine Dark Ages which were a deliberate transformation of the Byzantine Empire in response to the Arab invasions (going from a professional army to peasant militias, etc). But most cultures that I know of aren't even proximally wiped out by climate change. The Persians were conquered by the Romans on the battlefield, as were the Gauls. The Western Roman Empire appears to have collapsed primarily from inward pressures, not outward ones, and the agricultural failures there were the result of factors other than climate change or even man-made environmental damages. Some cultures do fail due primarily to environmental reasons (Greenland and republican Iceland being the best examples), but I don't think they represent the general rule. Iceland never was a particularly fertile place to grow things (vast amounts of environmental damage were the result of grazing animals simply because there's not much else you can do in Iceland), and neither was Greenland even before the Little Ice Age....

aneth2 14y ago

You are implying that this climate change reference is in any way related to the current politicized theories about anthropogenic climate change. I'm guessing if you actually read the article (as you also imply,) you would conclude otherwise.

rprasad 14y ago

Before the globalization of the food supply, climate change was the cause of death for many of the great ancient and not-so-ancient civilizations. Getting fresh food from any part of the world is (comparatively) trivial nowadays, but even 150 years ago, most food spoiled on the way to the local market a few miles down the road.

einhverfr 14y ago
I doubt that most food spoiled on the way to the local market. Also note that a lot of traditional methods of preservation (everything from many forms of cheesemaking to many forms of pickling such as that involved in making sauerkraut) are basically controlled spoilage.
- rprasad 14y ago
  While we may think of 5 miles as a quick trip, back then a 5 mile trip to the local market would have taken most of a day (and the trip itself could be a multi-day event, which is why we vote on Tuesdays). This is on top of any time the food has spent in storage between harvesting/butchering and the trip. Over that period of time, even cheese, salted meats, and jams will begin to spoil.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    I am not sure of any of that, btw. First there are a lot of foods that don't spoil that way (i.e. beginning to rot), such as fresh fruits, fresh veggies, grains, etc. Those are still relatively friendly to transport to market. Secondly I have taken cheese, dry salami (salted, fermented meat), etc., backpacking and it is fine without refridgeration after a week even in the summer. These may sweat some of their fat but that's not the same as spoiling. Third, I don't think meats spoil as quickly after slaughter as a lot of us think. I once accidently left a fresh/micro-slaughtered/micro-butchered roast in the back of my car and discovered it three days later. Cooked it and it still tasted fresher than anything I had ever bought at a supermarket. I don't know what the supply chains look like at the supermarket but I doubt they are very short....... Edit: I could understand the argument that many of the things we would buy at our grocery store would have spoiled on the way to a local market. But if most food would have spoiled on the way to a local market that would have made cities fundamentally untenable. And yet London was a city of about two million people at that time.