A Short History of Progress

The “two most famous cases of internal collapse” (82) of empires are Rome, circa fourth century AD, and the Mayans, circa ninth century AD. As empires, both these cultures behave like pyramid schemes: “they gather wealth to the centre from an expanding periphery, which may be the frontier of a political and trading empire or a colonization of nature” (83-4). This expansive use of human and natural resources has the effect of destabilizing these cultures exactly as they reach their peak.

Like the Sumerians, deforestation impacted the peoples of the Mediterranean, which they carried out by the sixth century BC to provide goats grazing room. Though the Greeks saw this happening and tried to work against it, the ecological damage they had done to the region’s water system contributed to the wane of their cultural power in the region by 400 BC. Power shifted to Rome, which itself had to become reliant on foreign grain to survive this resource drought.

By the fourth century AD Rome controlled around 50 million people, roughly 25 percent of the human race. Roman conquest had become a private industry, with soldiers able to reap the rewards of conquered regions. As the military class grew in wealth, public land in Rome, including farmsteads, passed into the power of large estates established by wealthy military personnel. This forced Rome to become an analogue of a modern welfare state, providing free grain to an extensive population that could not feed itself. In fact, “By the time of Claudius, 200,000 Roman families were on the dole” (90).

Rome’s history is that of a transformation from a Republic into an Empire.  When Emperor Augustus (63 BC-19 AD) consolidated the Roman borders, he allowed the capital to “grow long after its dominions had begun to fray at the edges” (91). By the end of its reign, Rome was facing many problems that contributed to its collapse, including rampant inflation, tax exemption for wealthy land-owners, and poor agricultural yields. As the arable land of Rome continued to erode “Rome exported its environmental load to the colonies, becoming dependent on grain from North Africa and the Middle East” (93). Depleting these landscapes as well, Rome collapsed at its core, with power shifting to the peripheral regions of the empires. The boom of Roman population would not be seen again until the modern day.

The Chavin civilization, ancestors of the Maya, spread over much of Peru throughout the first millennium BC. During the Roman empire, their largest city, Teotihuacan, rivalled the size of Rome itself. Widespread civilization in Mesoamerica, in fact, emerged around 1200 BC. Around 200 AD the Mayan Classical Period began, though the civilization had been thriving long before.

Today the Mayan temples are surrounded by jungle, but this was farmland during the Mayan era. The Mayans were highly advanced in their use of mathematics and writing, and they developed a precise calendrical system known as the Long Count based on “the most accurate astronomy until Europe’s Renaissance” (96). The Maya were also highly agriculturally productive, using canals in swamps to control water to crops. They created “A familiar social pyramid arose” (97) supported by agricultural growth due to increased deforestation. This deforestation accompanied game loss and “by the middle of the Classic Period, only the upper class was eating much meat” (98). As resources shrank, elite power was destabilized, and the civilization collapsed by the year 909 AD mostly due to unsustainable population growth and agrarian failure. Bone remains show malnourishment of the peasants during times of growth, and that even the health of elites declined during the final years of the empire. Evidence suggests that, like the people of Easter Island, the Mayan elites did not shift their political strategies as their civilization neared collapse, but “dug in their heels […] their solution was higher pyramids […] more power to the kings” (102). To use a contemporary comparison, “the Maya elite became extremist, or ultra-conservatives, squeezing the last drops of profit from nature and humanity” (102).

Not all ancient civilizations share the exact same trajectory of collapse as Easter Island, Sumer, Rome, or the Maya. Egypt, for example, sustained its civilization for 3000 consecutive years. How? Silt from the Nile refreshed soils every year, and the desert around the region provided a natural border to arable land that the people could not expand. Conservative farming and slow population growth enforced by famine in dry years allowed Egypt to live within its ecological means. In China, fertile land was hundreds of feet deep due to ancient deposits of glacial topsoil, and so “this land was almost endlessly forgiving [to agriculture and deforestation], with erosion merely exposing new layers of good earth” (104). Even these cultures, who still faced the problems of civil unrest and fallow years, show that the overall health of a civilization is dependent on the health of its land, water, and woods.