Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. in P4C May 08 2018

Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations.
May 08 2018 Uncategorized 1 Comments
By David R. Montgomery. In his case studies of ancient Greece and the Italian peninsula, Montgomery dispels the idea deeply rooted in Western mythology that ancient peoples lived in harmony with their environment; most societies followed a path of slow and steady population growth followed by an abrupt decline !!! We have learnt NOTHING from (a very long) history.
Forget Climate Change. Stop buying at Supermarkets, stop supporting the Throu-away Society and start making Biochar and home gardens. Shun specialization. We now have the technology to go beyond Central Control of ever growing Big everything.
People at Abu Hureyra (the headwaters of the Euphrates River in modern Syria) were forced into the labor-intensive business of agriculture between 13,000 and 10,500 years ago for a number of reasons including climatic shifts, population densities, and few options to move elsewhere (pp. 30-31). Subsequent development of more intensive and effective subsistence methods enabled human populations in that region to grow beyond levels that could be supported by hunting and gathering, and eventually for the first time in history, communities came to “depend on enhancing the productivity of natural ecosystems just to stay even, let alone grow” (p. 34). Crop production and animal husbandry enhanced each other and maximized food production, and in the process, human population began to double every thousand years. Yet shortly after societies began to settle into agricultural practices, soil erosion and degradation caused by intensive agriculture and goat grazing began to undermine entire crop yields and forced abandonment of whole villages. In order to survive, communities were eventually pushed onto more marginal lands, and irrigation systems requiring considerable technical expertise and organizational control were introduced, spawning the “inseparable twins of bureaucracy and government” (p. 37). Private property was born, class distinctions grew as not everyone had to spend their time in the fields in order to eat, and writings in the form of cuneiform indentations in clay tablets, were produced in order to help a diversifying society “manage food production and distribution” (p. 38). Eventually, salinization, extensive erosion from upland farming, and other accumulating effects of soil degradation began to plague these early civilizations. The decline of these once-great societies followed as populations outstripped productive capacities and pushed agriculture onto “the surrounding slopes initiating cycles of ‘soil mining'”
by Allan Niass