Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed By Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond is a world renowned scientist, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and currently a geography professor at UCLA. Of his six books published, we will be looking at the last chapter of his fourth book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In this book Diamond utilizes the comparative method to find resemblance in past societal collapses with our current society. In the chapter entitled, "The World as Polder: What Does it Mean to Us Today," Diamond points out that there are indeed many parallels between past and present societies and that our modern day society is currently on a path of self destruction , through examples such as globalization and the interdependency of each country.

The title "Viking" includes a wide description of Nordic people; Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians, who lived during a period of

The Vikings were a very successful group of warriors from Scandinavia. They started raiding and violently attacking other places because of their lack of resources. The Viking homeland was rural and people worked as fishers or farmers. Scandinavian people got their fish from the sea, but because the soil in that area was not very fertile, there wasn’t enough grain being grown to feed the rising population. “As Scandinavia's population grew, food shortage became a common problem. Looking for new sources of food and wealth, some Viking leaders decided to take what they needed from other people” (Doc. A). When the Vikings attacked cities, they took everything they could and then burned what was left of the destroyed city. “And the Vikings came on them just like a storm and cut them down, carried off everything, and burned the place” (Doc. B). Because of this, there was no one left to come after them, or anyone to avenge

When one sees the word Viking, the mind firstly shifts to men who are uncivilized and unprincipled. Using evidence of achievements and victories will not only show how much they impacted Europe, but how sophisticated Vikings actually were. As Charlemagne’s empire ended, the people of Europe showed extraordinary resilience toward the new movements of the era. From 800 to 1200 CE, Vikings ruled medieval Europe. These Vikings, along with thick soil, are credited with shifting Europe from endemic violence toward cooperation and legal order. An attack on the Lindisfarne monastery off the coast of Northumberland in northeastern England marked the beginning of the Viking Age. Vikings began to appear in Europe due to Scandinavian raiders repeatedly visiting the Christian countries of Europe. At first they were content with just raiding lands, but soon they began to seize land and proclaim rule. They sought riches, not land. With this established rule, Vikings promised safety and began to reform the lands they had acquired. The people agreed due to starvation and possible attacks from eneimes. The new lands had a need for settled agriculture, defensive warfare and commerce. As the Vikings began to fulfill these needs they saw an expansion in cooperation and rule of law among the villagers.

COLLAPSE by Jared Diamond attempts to answer the question, “What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?”

purpose: Highlights the collapse of several historical societies and the factors that caused their collapse.

They have a short summer only lasting a few months of the year. It didn’t take them more than 30 minutes sometimes even 20 minutes to build an igloo. They were very skilled hunters and caught things year round even in the harsh winters. Even with harsh conditions they still found ways to survive and adapt.

The choices the Greenland Norse, the people of Easter Island, and the people of Haiti made directly contributed to their societal collapse. Their environmental fragility advanced their downfall, but ultimately their poor decision-making led to their collapse. The Greenland Norse’s and people of Easter Island’s incorrect choices were mostly due to social challenges and reluctance to abandon traditions, but the incorrect choices of the Haitian people were due to selfness and impulsiveness.

This initial wave of movement westward sparked a larger movement over time of larger Norse populations towards Iceland, where at one point, there were "as many as 12,000 Viking immigrants ultimately settled there, taking their farm animals with them" (Lemonick and Dorfman 2). This mass migration and settlement outside of the native Scandinavian territory mimics the conquest and expansion of other great Empires, the only difference in the Vikings situation is that they did it by sea and all other nations did it by land; that, and the fact that the more westward they moved, the less they had to deal with other nations and more with the fury of the

The book, Collapse, by Jared Diamond, is composed of many different societies and places that were know to be great and to this day remembered in our history, but soon subsided with nothing left but a few walls. The chapters each expel absorbent information about a specific, now collapsed, society or place. Diamond successfully starts each chapter by introducing the subject, then continuing by providing detailed background information on how it has collapsed. He also is very personal within the essay by adding his own experiences and thoughts of the subject. Jared Diamond writes of how the collapse of societies is executed, it is said to be when the people demolish the environment, economy, and the population.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed shows Jared Diamond's five-point framework. Jared Diamond came up with five key elements that determine whether a civilization collapses or succeeds. Many factors help decide whether a society succeeds or not but Diamond narrowed it to five. The Mayans are the best example of Diamond’s framework because it clearly shows how environmental problems, failure to adapt to those environmental problems, climate change, essential trading partners, and neighbors caused this civilization to collapse. The first of Jared Diamond's five-point framework is climate change, this contributed to the Mayans collapsing.

The word “collapse” has a number of connotations associated with it. Some view it exclusively the degradation of societies of the highest order. Others see it as the complete disintegration of economic prospects and commerce. Some even think of it political ruin with the demise of states and ruling factions that maintain order. The most general definition for collapse can includes elements from these three viewpoints. American anthropologist and historian Joseph A. Tainter is best known for his writings on societal collapses. In 1988 he published his most widely recognized work, The Collapse of Complex Societies.

“If people destroy something replaceable by mankind their called vandals; if they destroy something irreplaceable by God, they are called developers.” – Joseph Wood Krutch

Although Greenland and Australia are thousands of miles apart and very different in geography, they also have many similarities. In his book “Collapse”, Jared Diamond shows that both countries have the five factors that can contribute to a society’s collapse. Greenland’s Norse society already collapsed a long time ago, while Australia is still a First World country going strong. If some things there don’t change, the country’s living standard will go down and there could be major problems.

Picture yourself as a ghostly spectator who is looking onto future archaeologists rummaging through the remnants of your old house. They are picking up and evaluating your old books, electronics, and clothes and considering what each item would have been used for, and how did this individual’s society come to be a ruinous, abandoned mess. This is an impossible imagination for someone who has yet to read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. In his book, he states that a society has five determining factors that decide whether it will prevail or collapse: human-inflicted environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, decreased support from friendly neighbors, and how a society responds to its problems. Diamond, the creator of this five-point framework, adequately supports his framework by providing much evidence about the collapses and potential collapses of past and current societies, such