Why civilizations collapse
Hundreds of years ago in what is now modern Honduras, Copán was a thriving civilization, a center of the cultural life of the Maya. Tens of thousands of people made their home in the Copán Valley. Yet despite its importance, Copán went into decline. Across the vast territory of the ancient Maya, other important sites were sharing a similar fate. Classic Maya civilization was collapsing.
Why did this great civilization fall? The history of humankind has been marked by patterns of growth and decline. Some declines have been gradual, occurring over centuries. Others have been rapid, occurring over the course of a few years. War, drought, natural disaster, disease, overpopulation, economic disruption: any of these or a combination of these events can bring about the collapse of a civilization. Internal causes (such as political struggles or overfarming) can combine with external causes (such as war or natural disaster) to bring about a collapse. What does this mean for modern civilizations? What can we learn from the past?
Join us as we explore the collapse of four ancient civilizations. You'll learn what happens when a society collapses and how archaeologists find and interpret evidence. You can visit the Maya city of Copán and search for clues to its collapse. You can also try your hand at "garbage-ology" and study what trash can tell us about a society.
The ancient Maya once occupied a vast geographic area in Central America. Their civilization extended to parts of what is now Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador, and most of Guatemala and Belize. From the third to the ninth century, Maya civilization produced awe-inspiring temples and pyramids, highly accurate calendars, mathematics and hieroglyphic writing, and a complex social and political order. Looking at the impressive remains of ancient Maya civilization, it's hard to imagine how such a society could collapse.
Looking for clues at Copán
Clues to this collapse can be found at Copán, a Maya site in western Honduras. Copán was once a Classic Maya royal center, the largest site in the southeastern part of the Maya area. Covering about 29 acres, it was built on the banks of the Copán River on an artificial terrace made of close to a million cubic feet of dirt. Over time, people spread out from the central core and built homes in outlying areas that had formerly been used for crops. Copán's nobles built smaller, rival complexes on sites that were increasingly further from the core.
In spite of its wealth, power, and size, Copán collapsed. No monuments seem to have been produced after A.D. 822. Does this mean that the collapse was sudden? Or is it possible that the society collapsed more gradually? To explore why Copán collapsed, try an archaeological activity and discover what scientists recently found when they examined the site.
Mesopotamia was known as the land between two rivers, the Tigris to the north and the Euphrates to the south. Rains were seasonal in this area, which meant that the land flooded in the winter and spring and water was scarce at other times. Farming in the region depended on irrigation from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. In ancient times, many resources in Mesopotamia were scarce or absent, which stimulated trade within the region and beyond. Supported by lucrative trade with its neighbors, Mesopotamia grew to become a powerful empire.
Mashkan-shapir was a typical Mesopotamian city, located about 20 miles from the Tigris River and connected to the river by a network of canals. Despite a flourishing civilization, Mashkan-shapir was abandoned within only 20 years of its settlement. What could have caused this rapid demise?
Poisoned fields: A contributor to collapse
Along with factors such as war and changes in the environment, scientists now believe irrigation techniques played an important role in Mashkan-shapir's collapse. The same process that allowed farming in this region also eventually made it impossible to farm. Irrigation has a Catch-22: if irrigation water is allowed to sit on the fields and evaporate, it leaves behind mineral salts; if attempts are made to drain off irrigation water and it flows through the soil too quickly, erosion becomes a problem. Scientists believe that Mashkan-shapir's collapse was caused in part by destruction of the fields by mineral salts. When mineral salts concentrate in the upper levels of the soil, it becomes poisonous for plants.
In Mesopotamia, irrigation was essential for crop production. The rivers were higher than the surrounding plain because of built-up silt in the river beds, so water for irrigation flowed into the fields by gravity. Once the water was on the fields, it could not readily drain away because the fields were lower than the river. As the water evaporated, it not only left its dissolved mineral salts behind, but also drew salts upward from lower levels of the soil. Over time, the soil became toxic and would no longer support crops. By about 2300 B.C., agricultural production in Mesopotamia was reduced to a tiny fraction of what it had been. Many fields were abandoned as essentially useless. Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets tell of crop damage due to salts.
Could this happen today?
In the United States, California's San Joaquin Valley faces irrigation problems that are similar to those faced by Mashkan-shapir. The irrigated soil is becoming increasingly salty, as is the water table. Without irrigation, abundant crop yields would have been impossible in this arid area. With irrigation, the land will very likely become impossible to farm.
Modern methods don't seem to be helping the San Joaquin Valley avoid this fate. Farmers have tried to cleanse the salts from the soil by flushing it with water and draining it into the sea. They have tried pouring the salty runoff from irrigation down drains dug deep into the ground. So far, these solutions have not worked, and the fields closest to the water table are becoming poisoned by salts. Right now, it looks as if the San Joaquin Valley is headed for the same fate as Mashkan-shapir.
A thousand years ago in what is now the American Southwest, the Anasazi (a Navajo word meaning "ancient ones" or possibly "ancient enemies") built dramatic adobe dwellings, or pueblos. Chaco Canyon was the center of Anasazi civilization, its many large pueblos probably serving as administrative and ceremonial centers for a widespread population.
How the Anasazi lived
Pueblo Bonito, one of the largest of the Chaco Canyon pueblos, is a good example of how the Anasazi lived. Pueblo Bonito rose four to five stories high — an astounding achievement for the time. Rooms surrounded a central plaza, and throughout the settlement were a number of kivas, meeting places that served a ceremonial purpose. The total population of Pueblo Bonito was probably around 1,200 people at its height. Surrounding the pueblo were a number of smaller dwellings and structures. Numerous communities looked to Chaco Canyon for political and religious guidance.
After the sixth century A.D., the Anasazi of Chaco Canyon and other settlements abandoned hunting and gathering in favor of cultivating crops such as maize (corn). To grow maize, they needed rain, but the area was dry and rain was sporadic. What rain did fall was hoarded and used sparingly and effectively. Evidence of dams, canals, and other water control features found by archaeologists shows the importance of water to the Anasazi.
Abandoning the pueblos
From the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries, many of the pueblos in Chaco Canyon were abandoned. What caused people to leave the pueblos, the centers of Anasazi society? One pueblo at Sand Canyon can provide clues. Archaeologists found evidence that when Sand Canyon was finally abandoned in the thirteenth century, the kivas were burned. Kivas were sacred ceremonial places; they would not have been systematically burned without cause. Many archaeologists believe the kivas were ceremonially burned, possibly as a way to "close" the kivas when people left. The Anasazi very likely did this because they never intended to return. Another important clue is that, at Sand Canyon, people left almost all their possessions rather than taking them. The Anasazi likely had a long and difficult journey ahead of them.
Why would the Anasazi leave — potentially for good — pueblos it had taken them decades to construct? Scientists have found one possible answer by looking at tree rings (a study called dendrochronology) in the Sand Canyon area. In the period between A.D. 1125 and 1180, very little rain fell in the region. After 1180, rainfall briefly returned to normal. From 1270 to 1274 there was another long drought, followed by another period of normal rainfall. In 1275, yet another drought began. This one lasted 14 years.
When this cycle of drought began, Anasazi civilization was at its height. Communities were densely populated. Even with good rains, the Anasazi were using their land to its limits. Without rain, it was impossible to grow enough food to support the population. Widespread famine occurred. People left the area in large numbers to join other pueblo peoples to the south and east, abandoning the Chaco Canyon pueblos and, later, the smaller communities that surrounded them. Anasazi civilization began a long period of migration and decline after these years of drought and famine. By the 1300s, it had all but died out in Chaco Canyon.
Was drought alone the only factor in the mass abandonment of the pueblos? Some archaeologists now believe that other factors — religious upheaval, internal political conflict, or even warfare — may have combined to exacerbate the effects of the drought. Whatever the root causes of the famine were, the archaeological evidence clearly shows it was devastating to the Anasazi.
Sometimes history seems to repeat itself. The rise and fall of two medieval kingdoms of West Africa is an example of this. Mali and Songhai, as well as the smaller kingdom of Ghana before them, were once great trading kingdoms famous for their gold. Yet despite their greatness, they each declined for similar reasons.
The rise and fall of Mali and Songhai
The empire of Mali, which dated from the early thirteenth century to the late fifteenth century, rose out of what was once the empire of Ghana. Mali had been a state inside of the Ghanaian empire. After Ghana fell because of invading forces and internal disputes, Mali rose to greatness under the leadership of a legendary king named Sundiata, the "Lion King." Later, another great leader named Mansa Musa extended the empire. After his death, however, his sons could not hold the empire together. The smaller states it had conquered broke off, and the empire crumbled.
As Mali's power waned, Songhai asserted its independence and rose to power in the area. Songhai had been an important trade center within Mali's empire, just as Mali had once been ruled by Ghana. Great Songhai kings such as Sunni Ali Ber and Askia Mohammed Toure extended the Songhai kingdom farther than Ghana or Mali had before it and brought an organized system of government to the area. It was the largest and most powerful kingdom in medieval West Africa. The riches of the gold and salt mines drew invaders, though, and in the late sixteenth century a Moroccan army attacked the capital. The Songhai empire, already weakened by internal political struggles, went into decline.
Timbuktu: A pattern of conquest
Looking at the city of Timbuktu, now part of the modern African state of Mali, brings this pattern of turmoil and conquest to light. In medieval times, Timbuktu was a central spot on the trade routes. During the height of ancient Mali, Timbuktu was one of its most important cities. When Mali declined, Timbuktu was taken over by the Songhai. After the decline of the Songhai empire, Timbuktu was briefly occupied by Moroccan forces, then taken over by the Fulani people and later by the French. Timbuktu's history mirrors the rise and decline of civilizations in the area.
How do we know what happened?
How do we know what happened in Mali and Songhai? Like most of what we know about history, the evidence has come from a variety of sources. Arab traders and scholars of the time wrote accounts of these great empires and their important cities, such as Timbuktu. African griots (storytellers) pass on legends of great kings and their battles. Archaeologists are finding evidence at sites such as Timbuktu and Jenne-Jono, another ancient city, that helps to explain how people lived and provide information about dates. All of these methods are helping scholars to understand how these once great African kingdoms rose to power — and why they collapsed.
The decline of the Roman Empire is one of the events traditionally marking the end of Classical Antiquity and the beginning of the European Middle Ages. Throughout the 5th century, the Empire's territories in western Europe and northwestern Africa, including Italy, fell to various invading or indigenous peoples in what is sometimes called the Migration period. Although the eastern half still survived with borders essentially intact for several centuries (until the Arab expansion), the Empire as a whole had initiated major cultural and political transformations since the Crisis of the Third Century, with the shift towards a more openly autocratic and ritualized form of government, the adoption of Christianity as the state religion, and a general rejection of the traditions and values of Classical Antiquity. While traditional historiography emphasized this break with Antiquity by using the term "Byzantine Empire" instead of Roman Empire, recent schools of history offer a more nuanced view, seeing mostly continuity rather than a sharp break. The Empire of Late Antiquity already looked very different from classical Rome.
The Roman Empire emerged from the Roman Republic when Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar transformed it from a republic into a monarchy. Rome reached its zenith in the 2nd century, then fortunes slowly declined (with many revivals and restorations along the way). The reasons for the decline of the Empire are still debated today, and likely multiple. Historians infer that the population appears to have diminished in many provinces—especially western Europe—from the diminishing size of fortifications built to protect the cities from barbarian incursions from the 3rd century on. Some historians even have suggested that parts of the periphery were no longer inhabited because these fortifications were restricted to the center of the city only.
By the late 3rd century, the city of Rome no longer served as an effective capital for the Emperor and various cities were used as new administrative capitals. Successive emperors, starting with Constantine, privileged the eastern city of Byzantium, which he had entirely rebuilt after a siege. Later renamed Constantinople, and protected by formidable walls in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, it was to become the largest and most powerful city of Christian Europe in the Early Middle Ages. Since the Crisis of the Third Century, the Empire was intermittently ruled by more than one emperor at once (usually two), presiding over different regions. At first a haphazard form of power sharing, this eventually settled on an East-West administrative division between the Western Roman Empire (centered on Rome, but now usually presided from other seats of power such as Trier, Milan, and especially Ravenna), and the Eastern Roman Empire (with its capital initially in Nicomedia, and later Constantinople). The Latin-speaking west, under dreadful demographic crisis, and the wealthier Greek-speaking east, also began to diverge politically and culturally. Although this was a gradual process, still incomplete when Italy came under the rule of barbarian chieftains in the last quarter of the 5th century, it deepened further afterward, and had lasting consequences for the medieval history of Europe.
Throughout the 5th century, Western emperors were usually figureheads, while the Eastern emperors maintained more independence. For most of the time, the actual rulers in the West were military strongmen who took the titles of magister militum, patrician, or both, such as Stilicho, Aetius, and Ricimer. Although Rome was no longer the capital in the West, it remained the West's largest city and its economic center. But the city was sacked by rebellious Visigoths in 410 and by the Vandals in 455, events that shocked contemporaries and signaled the disintegration of Roman authority. Saint Augustine wrote The City of God partly as an answer to critics who blamed the sack of Rome by the Visigoths on the abandonment of the traditional pagan religions.
In June 474, Julius Nepos became Western Emperor but in the next year the magister militum Orestes revolted and made his son Romulus Augustus emperor. Romulus, however, was not recognized by the Eastern Emperor Zeno and so was technically an usurper, Nepos still being the legal Western Emperor. Nevertheless, Romulus Augustus is often known as the last Western Roman Emperor. In 476, after being refused lands in Italy, Orestes' Germanic mercenaries under the leadership of the chieftain Odoacer captured and executed Orestes and took Ravenna, the Western Roman capital at the time, deposing Romulus Augustus. The whole of Italy was quickly conquered, and Odoacer was granted the title of patrician by Zeno, effectively recognizing his rule in the name of the Eastern Empire. Since, as a barbarian, he was not allowed the title of Emperor,[citation needed] Odoacer returned the Imperial insignia to Constantinople and ruled as King in Italy. Following Nepos' death Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostrogoths, conquered Italy with Zeno's approval.
Meanwhile, much of the rest of the Western provinces were conquered by waves of Germanic invasions, most of them being disconnected politically from the East altogether and continuing a slow decline. Although Roman political authority in the West was lost, Roman culture would last in most parts of the former Western provinces into the 6th century and beyond.
The first invasions disrupted the West to some degree, but it was the Gothic War launched by the Eastern Emperor Justinian in the 6th century, and meant to reunite the Empire, that eventually caused the most damage to Italy, as well as straining the Eastern Empire militarily. Following these wars, Rome and other Italian cities would fall into severe decline (Rome itself was almost completely abandoned). Another blow came with the Persian invasion of the East in the 7th century, immediately followed by the Muslim conquests, especially of Egypt, which curtailed much of the key trade in the Mediterranean on which Europe depended.
The Empire was to live on in the East for many centuries, and enjoy periods of recovery and cultural brilliance, but its size would remain a fraction of what it had been in classical times. It became an essentially regional power, centered on Greece and Anatolia. Modern historians tend to prefer the term Byzantine Empire for the eastern, medieval stage of the Roman Empire.
Man remains trapped within the big wheel...new leaders with "new" ideas that when studied are actually the same ole song and dance....so around and around the wheel he goes never able to escape and move forward.....man's greed for power and money always corrupt....many have started out with the best intentions but man's greed, pride and self love or worship alwayscome screaming back to haunt and then destroy him,mankind has and always will be fail as long as he stays apart from God the Father...HE is the only leader you can trust..... |
