Essay on Factors Leading to The Collapse of Past Societies

“America’s ‘Oh Sh*t!’ Moment”, written by Niall Ferguson, a historian who teaches at Harvard University, in 2011, explores why civilizations collapse, and how America can avoid this. He does not focus only on America, but many civilizations in the past that have collapsed. Niall Ferguson is the author of Civilization: The West and The Rest. The article is creatively and cleverly written using the metaphor of modern technology to describe the way in which the societal collapse occurs. This shows that the article was written for adults who are highly educated and understand and relate to technology. The article discusses the possibilities of what complete collapse would look like in American society. I believe the author successfully

All varying societies of world prehistory share a common outcome as they all go through and endure stages of development where they all experience some form of collapse because it is inevitably. When it comes down to prehistoric societal breakdown and complete disintegration it is widely attested in the archaeological events that take place and is typically happens very sudden, rapidly, and often entails regional abandonment, the implementation of another source of subsistence and leads to the evident breakdown differing factors including climate change.

The great Roman Empire expanded across all of Europe and into the Middle East. Its military was one of the finest. With major trading in Africa and Britain, the economy flourished with brining many citizens a healthy income. With amazing advancements in culture and technology, Roman society was at its finest. During the Pax Romana, the Romans had 200 years of peace and good ruling by level headed dictators and emperors. Despite Rome’s greatness in all of these areas, Rome would eventually fall. Surprisingly all of these qualities that led up to a flourishing empire were the same ones that led to its demise. As Germanic tribes invaded, the military weakened and the government became unstable.

Throughout history, there were various empires which developed into great, powerful forces. These empires expanded their lands to new places but, these empires ultimately came to an end. Amongst these great empires, were the Han and the Roman empire. Both were great in power but, due to political, social, and economic causes, they came to an end. Although they do partake in the equal shares of corruption and problems with the military, they also had fair shares of differences, regarding their declines. For example, the Han empire had decentralization and rebellion while Rome had shifted in interests and developed war issues. These differences and similarities are bits of history which help to comprehend why these empires are no longer

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.

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

There was no single event that caused the downfall of the empires of the ancient world. The Han Dynasty, the Gupta Empire, and the Roman Empire would each collapse because of various reasons. In the case of the Han Dynasty around 220 C.E. the young emperor, Emperor Xian of Han, that came to rule the empire lost control. Three different families took control from them, creating the period known as the Three Kingdoms. Nomadic tribes from central Asia attacked the northern borders of the empire at this same time. And the final straw was the onset of an epidemic of Smallpox that struck the population of the empire. About two hundred years later the Roman Empire will start to decline. Over a thousand years the empire had grown too large to govern

In his book, “A Short History of Progress”, Ronald Wright argues that the way things are progressing in society today very closely mimics the progress of our ancient ancestors. If we keep this up, we too will fail just as they did. Much like ancient civilizations, we have become victims to the ideology that we are making progress and have turned a blind eye to certain flaws; the irreparable damage with which this mentality threatens us will prevail in the end. Wright states that “if we see clearly what we are and what we have done, we can recognize human behavior that persists through many times and cultures…this can tell us what we are likely to do, where we are likely to go from here” (pg. 2). In other words, although we cannot foresee the

Julius Caesar once said, ” It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.” The Ancient Roman Empire was one of the world’s greatest empires. Beginning in around 750 BCE with a small settlement no one knew it would become a great empire making many discoveries that we still live by today. Although the empire was strong they started to run into some problems. Starting in 44 BCE with Caesar becoming emperor and continuing into 500 CE, the city was declining fast. Although some researchers may say that natural disasters were the main reason for the decline of Rome, however the primary reasons for the decline of Rome were political corruption and military mistakes. Political corruption was a main reason for the fall of Rome because there were higher-class people trying to take all the power which made many people unhappy causing assassinations and unfairness. Military mistakes were also a big problem because the military was too lazy to fight causing invasions and unnecessary deaths.

Unlike that of China, the decline of Rome was much more upsetting having a much larger impact on the surrounding world. The Decline and fall of the Mediterranean and Chinese civilizations was a result of population decrease, weak government, a frail economy, and invasion. The causes of the imperial collapse in Rome and Greece(The Mediterranean region)with the causes of imperial collapse in the East Asia during the period 600 BCE toward 600 CE has had an remarkable achievements but those same achievements have caused them into decline. A combination of these causes sparked the slow decline of these once great empires..

Every important empire to ever conquer a part of the world started small. They were just simple villages with a population of maybe ten. Eventually, a leader or ruler comes along and sees that village as an opportunity, so he begins to work on it. Years later, this village that was once known as being miniscule and inferior has a strong military unit, a great emperor, and has taken over many other villages; it is now an empire. This, however, may not always mean that the village will stand forever. Every empire must fall back down in order for others to rise. The city of Rome is an example of an empire that fell drastically after reaching the height of its power. One major cause to Rome’s decline was the city’s overexpansion and military overspending.

Wright refutes this idea describing it as a ‘progress trap’. Progress traps are created by the overuse of natural resources, too much faith in religion, and natural short comings. Past societies, such as the Roman Empire and the Aztecs, structured their culture around progress and economic growth,

As members of the new generations, people often wonder about the path of history if something else occurred in the past. What if the Dark Ages never appeared? What if the westerns powers never invaded China? What if the atomic bombs never went off in Japan? At the same time, there are also many questions about why things happen the way they are. Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel – the Fate of Human Societies reflects over 13,000 years of the history of human civilizations, examining why it was Europe that conquered the Americas and Africa but not vice versa. What are the determining factors of the development and progress of human civilizations?

The Roman Empire was known for being the most powerful nation in the world for over 2,000 years. Otherwise known as the eternal city, Rome quickly became the largest empire after being a city-state. However, for several reasons and over a long period of time, the empire began a period of decline. At the end of this period was obviously the fall of the Roman Empire. There are many aspects that contributed to the failure of the Empire, and different people argue that different reasons were most important to the collapse of this superpower. Social, economical, and political reasons are held responsible for the crash of the empire. The real cause of the crash was due to military over spending, inflation, and unemployment throughout the

As mankind flourished and conquered the world, they gained a seemingly infinite amount of knowledge that would produce a highly advanced civilization. Although this was a historic milestone for man, they failed to realize their mistakes in their journey of conquest. They were unable to see the destruction that they brought towards the natural way of living. Mankind was unaware that they were bound to fail because of their fundamental flaw of imperfection.