Track 10

Unit 1b. Archaeology.

What causes a society to collapse?

Pages 14 and 15.

Listen for main ideas and listen for details.

Last time we talked about archaeological discoveries and what they tell us about ancient societies. So what happened to those three societies we discussed last time?

Remember?

The Incas of South America? The people of Easter Island? And the people of Stonehenge? What made these societies collapse or disappear?

Well, today I want to talk about that about, why these three societies died out.

Why did they collapse?

Generally speaking there are three different reasons disease, environmental problems and cultural conflict.

Okay let me repeat that, the three different reasons why these societies collapsed are disease, environmental problems, and cultural conflict.

And I want you to understand these three reasons are also typical causes of societal collapse throughout history and that may have significant meaning for us today.

More on that later okay let’s get started on the three reasons. First we have disease of course diseases can kill people right? But a whole society our first example describes how the Incan society of Peru disappeared, evidence suggests that disease was the cause.

500 years ago the Incan Empire was the largest empire in the world with ten million people, and it was also the richest and these riches consisting of gold and valuable stones for example.

Led to this great society’s disappearance how?

Well when the Europeans heard about the Incas wealth they wanted it they wanted all of it. So they traveled to the Incan Empire to steal the riches and while they were in the Americas? They passed new diseases to the Incan people one of the most deadly diseases was smallpox. Nearly two-thirds of the Incas died because they got smallpox. So disease caused the Incan Empire to collapse, and historically disease is a big reason why many other societies have collapsed.

Now the second cause of societal collapse I want to discuss is environmental change, an example of collapse due to environmental change is Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean.

Environmental change can be caused by nature or it can be caused by humans in the case of Easter Island research suggest it was caused by people. About 1200 years ago the first people of Easter Island cut down all the trees on the island they used the trees as rollers to move their statues.

Can you guess what went wrong?

Easter Island soon had major problems because the people had used up all of the trees, without trees they couldn’t build boats for fishing or make tools for farming. The shortage of trees led to a major drop in population. We might say that the Easter Islanders disappeared because they couldn’t live in this new environment. This environment without trees.

Very sad story isn’t it?

The third and final big reason societies collapse is cultural conflict, archeologists have found evidence that the ancient people of Stonehenge were very peaceful for a time, they had no weapons except for hunting.

However later they began to make weapons of war their culture changed from a very peaceful one to a culture of war and fighting . Archaeologists believe that the people of Stonehenge also began to fight within their culture and soon the society collapsed.

Why?

Because they experienced cultural conflict.

Okay, so remember historically the three big reasons why societies have collapsed are disease, environmental change , and cultural conflict.

For next time I want you to think about these three causes of collapse, then think about problems in the world today. Which societies are strong and which face potential collapse?

I’ll see you the next class.