Analysis Of Collapse By Jared Diamond

I did my report on Jared Diamond 's book called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The whole focus is all about taking a look at many different societies that have collapsed from specific environmental problems. Diamond 's main thesis is identifying how some civilizations crashed or succeeded in the history of the world. In his book, he identifies five set of factors that would lead to an environmental collapse such as "environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, environmental problems, and friendly trade partners—may or may not prove significant for a particular society" (Diamond 21). He then lists eight more categories that can be causes of some failing societies. Some of his factors being deforestation,

Some of the topics were the settlers of Easter Island, building the statues and the remains of Neolithic farming settlement, the city-states in Mesopotamia in the fertile crescent were called the cradle of civilization, how it had fertile soil, and great supply of water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It concluded by explaining how deforestation was one of the main causes of it failing. The Chaco canyon is also brought up in chapter four explaining how it was a social system of redistribution between different sites. Chaco Canyon 's collapse was the water management. To keep that system going they need to produce enough harvest, and since there was not enough rain during that time, people ended up starving. That was one of the reasons for the fall of the system. Next, the Mayan agriculture was included along with John Stephens and Frederick Catherwood. They both go exploring into the jungle because of rumors of Mayan ruins. They explore Art, buildings, jade, gold, shells, and they discovered carvings on monuments that had writing. Also, the Mayan Slash and burn method of farming, the institution of kingship, and the Long Count calendar were covered in chapter five. The book did relate to many of the topics in class and in the

I agree with the Jared Diamond 's thesis because he uses circumstances that have been repeated through history whether it was from the five or eight categories. It is not unlike anything we ever heard of before. Additionally, what he does is he gives the readers a well-rounded synopsis and does it based off the evidence and hypothesis. He does not go too broad or unrealistic with his theories.Through the whole book, each topic is introduced with a summary of its history, then explains in a very detailed manner about how the society collapsed or succeeded. One huge reason why I agree with his thesis is he uses evidence and has a straightforward approach on his theories. He allows us to use our own opinion to decide on a conclusion. He doesn 't force his opinion on the readers. The book was very