I'm jumping in a little late here, and will get to Doug's post on Chapter 1 in a moment, but I thought that I'd also post some thoughts on the Introduction.
The introduction reads a bit like an executive summary of the book. Diamond opens by defining "collapse", the subject of the book, as a drastic decrease in human population size; or in social complexity, or both, over a considerable area and for an extended time. He contrasts the "collapse" that will be studied in this book with milder forms of "decline", such as those linked to the rise of a neighbor, or else a revolution or other social restructuring. Diamond's main thesis is that five factors contribute to the collapse: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, the loss of friendly trade partners, and societal response to environmental damage and changing climate. Diamond argues that the last of these proves significant in almost all, if not all, cases of civilization collapse. His point is that collapse is not inevitable, but is deeply influenced by the choices made by different civilizations. Diamond also introduces the concept of "ecocide" to describe civilizational collapse caused by failure to respond to environmental factors. He identifies 12 factors leading to ecocide, 8 traditional ones - deforestation, soil degradation, water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, introduced species, increased population, and increased population density; as well as 4 modern ones - human-caused climate change, buildup of toxic chemicals in the environment, energy shortages, and full human utilization of Earth's photosynthetic capacity. ********************************************************** Reflecting on this summary, I already have a number of comments and criticisms. First, perhaps the most intriguging of the above 12 categories leading to ecocide is "full human utilization of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity." He doesn't really address it in the introduction, so we'll have to see just what he means by that. His limiting of climate change to human-caused-only also threw me off for a bit, but I guess the point is that true "ecocide" must, by definition, be self-inflected. Non-human-caused climate change is anywas addressed as one of the five collapse factors. Secondly, Diamond makes clear in his introduction that one of his major examples will be the collapse of the Anasazi (sic) civilization in the Southwest United States. I'm already looking forward to this Chapter as I spent my Independence Day holiday visiting five National Parks which preserve various ruins from this civilizational. One of the things the National Park Service emphasized is that the term "Ancestral Puebloan" is preferred for this civilization over the term "Anasazi." The term "Anasazi" is linked to a Navajo word meaning "ancient enemy." Additionally, most historians now agree that the ancestors of the modern-day Puebloan people in Arizona and New Mexico are, in fact, the same people who constructed the ruins that had been termed "Anasazi" in origin. Although I am generally a "brontosaurus" person, preferring the use of popular terms, I can also definitely sympathize with the arguments in favor of not defining a culture as an "enemy." Thus, Diamond's choice of the term "Anasazi" instead of "Ancestral Puebloan" immediately perks my interest - hopefully it is explained later on. Continuing on this point, Diamond states rather affirmatively that the collapse of the Ancestral Puebloan culture "clearly illustrates the intersection of environmental damage and population growth with climate change (..drought). Neither freindly or hostile neighbors, nor (except towards the end) warfare, appear to have been major factors in the Anasazi (sic) collapse." This paragraph is much more definitive that the interpretation currently provided by the National Park Service, which emphasizes that the causes of the abandonment of the major ruin sites is largely unknown, and is likely due to a mix of factors. Additionally, the National Park Service emphasizes that the people who built the ruins at places like Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and Aztec Ruins (no relation to the Aztec culture of Mexico) did not disappear, but in fact moved South. These people went on to other achievements, including the construction of the large pueblos at Gran Quivira, Abo, and Quarai in New Mexico, and the production of numerous petroglyphs at the present-day site of Albuquerque. It will be interesting to see if, and how, Diamond addresses this in his chapter on this subject. JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
