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Collapse Jared Diamond

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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. A big climate change in the Mayan civilization is drought and hurricanes and its effects on the Mayans. Jared Diamond states “rainfall in the Maya homeland is unpredictably variable between years; some recent years have had three or four times more rain than other years. Also, the timing of rainfall within the year is somewhat unpredictable, so it can easily happen that farmers plant their crops in anticipation of rain and then the rains do not come when expected.” (Diamond 254). This proves how the Mayans did not have a sure season that rainfall would come. Sometimes it would be abundant and others it would be scarce. This affects …show more content…

The Mayans harmed their environment, by deforestation and erosion. Since the Mayans deforested all the land, that caused erosion. The Mayans by deforesting the land caused another problem for themselves. The Mayans would cut down trees to use for fuel and construction. Another problem that arises because of a build up of sediment is drought. Jared Diamond describes it as “man-made drought” (Diamond 268) because the Mayans caused it themselves. The Mayans were not very smart to think of the consequences deforestation would have, therefore, it contributed to the civilization

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