Maya and Khmer Collapse
Maya and Khmer Collapse
How do the Aimers and Buckley readings differ from Jared Diamond’s presentation in their impressions of what happened at the time of the abandonment of Mayan and Khmer cities?
The readings focus on the gradual decline of the civilizations. This is generally attributed to a general degradation of the environment due to the expansion of the societies, while political and economic instabilities gradually led to the loss of their ability to sustain themselves. In this way, the collapses occurred due to a variety of issues that they were unable to address or to resolve. In this way, these authors argue that the societies collapse due to a variety of issues that they face in the long term.
In this way, rather than simply collapsing, the readings discuss these issues gradually becoming more of a factor over time, leading to the overall decline of the civilizations. In this way, the societies do not necessarily collapse, but rather degrade to the point where they cannot be considered to be the same. In this way, the principles of the changes are results of longer periods that ended in the instability of the areas, stemming the tide of growth, and ultimately leading to the degradation of their civilization.
Diamond argues that some societies are more fragile than others. While some have existed throughout many years, others seem to have been on the verge of collapse for their history. This occurs due to the growing conflict between those at the top of society and those at the bottom. Essentially, as societies grow and the leaders begin to compete in various ways, they can tend to cause unforeseen issues that cause the instability of society.
He argues it is a complex subject and cannot be isolated to a single factor. He uses a five point framework to approach this. He focuses on the idea that societies often collapse at a specific timeframe, within a generation. He argues that this occurs that after the society reaches its peak, they tend to reach a point in which they begin to collapse rapidly.
Diamond’s overall cautionary tales about societal collapses seem to hinge on the idea that societies make decisions based on the short term, which is often bad for them in the long term. Furthermore, the strongly held values that individuals have can begin to have conflicts in their interests as societies grow and cultures mix together. The flexibility to address the issues at hand are, therefore, important in his view of societal collapse.
He cautions that there are many issues that the present society see a necessity in addressing. Problems from deforestation to climate change are the result of these short term views. Instead, the importance is on solving long term problems. These problems are numerous, and it would be a mistake to address an individual problem without addressing the rest. In this way, he argues that societies collapse due to their inability to address the problems that they face.
