general+course

back Outline the general course of past societal collapses.


 * Societal collapse is the decline of the culture, civil institutions or other major characteristics of a society or civilization. The most common factors contributing to the collapse of society are environmental, social and cultural.
 * Societal collapse is also a catastrophic fall in population. For example, the sudden disappearance of the Mayans and Easter Islanders are viewed as societal collapses. Often caused by factors from the 5 point framework. The real deciding factor is usually undeterminable but other contributing factors, such as smallpox epidemics in Easter Island, are often easily determinable historical evidence.
 * Overpopulation is also a factor of societal collapse since there is not enough food and other important resources to satisfy everyone
 * A natural disaster such as a tsunami, massive earthquake, etc may wreak such havoc on a culture that it can no longer sustain itself through past social processes and it undergoes massive change. Societal collapse significant depopulation may occur (eg. natural disaster, war famine).
 * Some examples of past societal collapses are Easter Island, Mayans, Anasazi, Greenland, Polynesians of the Pitcarn Island
 * In general, societal collapses can be caused by unawareness and inflamation of a societies resources. Like the collapses listed above, many humans did not know some of their resorces were limited and how to use their environment to the best of their knowledge without abusing it. Like Easter Island, many societies go through a series of warning signs before a certain collapse occurs.
 * The eight categories of processes that lead to collapses described by Diamond address many of the main reasons that societies collapse. Almost all of the processes described are applicable to both past societal collapses and modern day problems that could potentially lead to collapses, except for perhaps over hunting and over fishing. Diamond also describes four modern day collapse processes which are problems nowadays but were not an issue in the past such as climate change, energy shortage, etc. This means that in addition to all the problems of the past that could lead to collapses, we now have these additional four risks to consider.