Was it climate change or human activity that caused the decline of ancient civilizations?

The idea of the decline of civilization has been the object of much debate and speculation over the years. Although there are some that still exists today, most of them underwent complete collapse. The Civilization as we know it is a complex environment created by man. The world that man built could be elaborate or it could be simple, it could be anywhere as long as it can provide the needs of the society and man’s continued human spirit. But it has been vulnerable to change. This is a phenomenon that even the ancient civilizations have not been able to stay away from. The birth and decline of these civilizations have been in accordance with what nature dictates. Some others say because human activity disrupted the balance of nature. The five centers of civilization: Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China and Greece have been in constant struggle with natural causes and human activity. In geographical perspective, the birth and decline has been affected by natural means. But human activity on the one hand had something with some of the changes. How is a civilization vulnerable to the dictates of nature? Specifically that of climate change? How does human activity affected the environment and caused the gradual decline of the civilization?

Recent discoveries takes note that climate change has definitely affected the rise and fall of this civilizations. Nick Brooks quoted in his work “Cultural responses to aridity in the Middle Holocene and increased social complexity” published online that “Environmental catastrophes, particularly severe, rapid or abrupt changes in climate, are often associated in the academic literature with the collapse of civilizations.” Climatic change, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, flooding and other epidemic diseases are possible causes of the collapse of civilization. Climatic change has been suggested for all the five centers of civilization without question. The oldest civilization as we know it passed through environmental disaster and climate change which gradually ended their civilization.


The rivers of the ancient civilizations played a major role in its progress. We have the Tigris and Euphrates for Mesopotamia and the River Nile for Egypt to name a few that has been the major concentration of population. This concentration caused far more damage and the cities died slowly as the result of environmental changes. McNeill in his Plague and People mentions the idea that “Humans are treated as part of an ecological niche, are seen as part of a biological continuum or spectrum of entities.” (McNeill 1998). Every creature is placed in a delicate balance with nature. But we might say that this balance can sometimes be disrupted. Humans populating near the river banks caused imbalance. It is very clear that human agency caused the deterioration of environmental conditions as the result of over farming.

The rivers is the main source of food and had a lot to do with the settlement and the governance of the city. The river accomplished, so to speak, most of the waterworks and including fertilization. Take for example the Nile: it floods at the right time of the year of agriculture (Whitehouse 1988). It floods in August and deposits the right amount of silt on the fields. However, the Tigris and Euphrates tend to flood. The people then constructed irrigation and had to be constantly maintained. They went out to farm and do inland clearing. Farming that became persistent in the ancient times posed a threat when man tried to extensive clearing of tropical forest for grazing. When this happens, grasses would quickly invade fields and form turf layers that will be hard to cultivate. Human activity disturbs the natural vegetation cover resulting in the loss of soil fertility.

So, when there was a problem with salination or salinization of the soil, the man was not able to control it. Salinization occurs in warm and dry locations where soluble salts precipitate from water and accumulate in the soil. Athough is it a natural process, salinization may result from human activity such as inland clearing. The soil became increasingly salty and became very difficult to cultivate and so the soil became increasingly unusable.

The crowded cities of these civilizations progressed and what follows as we know are strings of other developments in the field of governance, agriculture, foreign trade and technology and of course social change. Most of the cities diverted to farming. There was an emergence of pastoralism. And for the first time in history, there were food surpluses with people in cities abandoning agricultural labor and eating the surplus produced by farmers (Priyadarshi 2008). But due to the population growth, the inhabitants of the ancient cities may have lived in conditions as over crowded or insanitary. Civilization became very vulnerable to social upheavals and internal revolutions.


The association between climatic change and social change is particularly striking. The people of the past tend to adapt to these changes. In Egypt there is the abandonment of the deserts and the people flanking close to the Nile Valley. In Mesopotamia, we have fragmentation. (Brooks 2006). The rise of civilization in these region is very much a story of different regions, populations and even political systems to be able to adapt to a changing environment. (Webster 1993). In China and the Indus Sarasvati region, the concentration was focused on the settlement near waterways. But with the growth of population followed the need to look for new sources of food. The settled way of life became associated with cattle raising and grazing.


Although, much of what we have today are accounts based on theories and archaeological evidence, it is suffice to say that nature had always had its effect on civilization whether the past or the present. Changes in the environment have always caused a change in the way man tried to adapt to these particular changes. I would say that environmental change is a driving force for man to adapt and create new strategies, new ways of living and new ways to be able to adapt to it. As noted, the five centers of civilization had its way of responding. Record emphasized that adaptation of these centers of civilization were as varied. Probably because the change can sometimes be abrupt or uneven. But one thing is certain though, civilization in itself can be that response to climate change. Man will always find a way to adapt to change and the struggling human mind will continue.

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Sources:


Brooks, Nick (2006) Cultural responses to aridity in the Middle Holocene and increased social complexity. Quarterly International, 151 (2006) 29–49. Retrieved January 07, 2009 from http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~e118/WS/Documents/QI151Brooks_reform.pdf.

Evans D., Evans S., Sanders W. (1993). Out of the past. London: Mayfield Publishing Company.

McNeill, W.H. (1998). Plagues and peoples. New York: Anchor Books

Priyadarshi, Nitish (2008). Did climate change killed ancient civilizations? Retrieved January 07, 2009 from http://network.earthday.net/profiles/blogs/

TO DEFINE PRIMITIVE AND CIVILIZED

To define the word primitive and civilized and what it takes to become one is the main thrust of some recent works such as that of of Ran Prieur (Beyond Civilized and Primitive) and that of Edgardo Civallero (Primitive peoples, Civilized peoples). Upon reading their works, I was reminded of the film Pocahontas, a 1995 animated film that tells the story of Pocahontas and the legends that surrounds her. What struck me though was one of the songs in the movie composed by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz that talks about savages and their being “barely even human” as the song goes. It was during the scene when the natives and the settlers declared an all out war against each other. And both parties believed that the other were to be considered a savage.


Similarly, from the expansion of the Empires of the ancient world, to the European conquest and colonization of America, the age of exploration of the 15th century headed by the Spain and Portugal followed by France, the United Kingdom and even the Netherlands brought about the belief that the territories they were able to explore are primitive and the inhabitants are uncivilized. History then is rich in example where a primitive culture is in brutal battle against a civilized culture. What then are a primitive and a civilized man?


Civilization, as we know it, is the term given to all the things that we see around us. It is something within which have all grown up and includes our personal identity. But when we come to analyze what the word ‘civilized’ means that our difficulties begin. (Whitehouse 1994). To be able to define it, we have to take into consideration everything else. We even have to leap or stand outside of our own understanding and define it according to what others think. Accordingly, we are living in the modern era – the civilized times. The ancient past is the primordial one- the time of the savages, the primitive people. But according to whose belief? Who sets the standards?


The work of Civallero mentions the three-part evolutionary process formulated by Morgan and Tylor. This school of analysis proposed a scheme of evolution from primitive to modern, through which he believed societies progressed. These include three major stages: savagery, barbarism, and civilization. I would say that this theory, focused on social organization and technology. That there is a link between social progress and technology. That society progressed from simple to more complex forms.


Similarly, Prieur had his work focused on the present state of affairs. That civilization of the moment had not much difference from those of the primitive times if we are to talk about changes. That we keep on making mistakes as our ancestors did. The author even mentioned that “but the technological system is a crazy hybrid of everything from "stone age" to "space age" -- thus refuting the very idea that we are locked into ages” clearly illustrates that there is indeed not so much difference.


Putting the idea in my own perspective, I believe that the term ‘civilized’ and ‘primitive’ is only a catch phrase. We might consider a society civilized by the strong showing it demonstrates in the field of technology but the inhabitants are more of savages pulling each other down the corporate ladder. Or consider a primitive society as it is but whose people are living in peace with the member of the community. The term ‘primitive’ and ‘civilized’ is only skin deep. Is it right to say that a person can be considered a savage because of the difference in skin color? Or that the primitive is bizarre, even repulsive, a member of a different race?


We basically have our own understanding of it. To some extent, according to Jonathan David White in his essay published by the journal of American Popular Culture (2002) “Primitivism, the artistic representation and celebration of ancestral or colonized "tribal" peoples, plays an important role in American popular culture and gains its momentum from the philosophy that technology and technological progress is alienating or destructive and that primitive peoples, who have remained closer to nature and thus further from the damaging effects of society, are more noble and pure.”


To sum up, I believe that the classification of societies as ‘primitive’ or ‘civilized’ is biased by one’s belief. It is a collective idea. We cannot classify one society on the other end or on the other because of some classifications that we ourselves created. Civilized behavior is so critically different in actuality from primitive behavior but history again will give us examples of how civilized people can be brutal at times. Such as the times when the native Indians were sent on a journey out of their own lands. Such as the times when the slavery was prevalent in the Americas. We have to think twice.


Civilization progressed but we always have to consider the idea that the primitive people are our ancestors. And that the civilized human condition is inconceivable to primitive peoples. We make mistakes and we fall. We do things for the betterment of things and we progressed. Who knows when we are going to make a mistake again and rise and fall? A society whether civilized or primitive as we classify it is always open to change and collapse. It is of our own volition to discover the monolith of human nature and consider ourselves brothers. Not as savages or civilized and exist in equilibrium.

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Sources:

Civallero, Edgardo. Primitive people, civilized people. Retrieved from http://eprints.rclis.org/4368/1/primitive.pdf.Retrieved January 06, 2008

Pocahontas. www.wikipedia.org/ Pocahontas. Retrieved January 6, 2009

Whitehouse, Ruth and Wilkins, John (1994). The making of civilization. New York: USA.

Menken, Alan (1995). Savages. On pocahontas soundtrack (CD) Walt Disney Records.

Prieur, Ran (2008). Beyond civilized and primitive. Retrieved from ttp://ranprieur.com/essays/beyondciv.html Retrieved January 6, 2009

Zinn, Howard (1999). A people's history of the united states.

Killing the primitive. www.popmatters.com/features/030328-iraq-lanzagorta.
retrieved January 06, 2009