Why Did Ancient Civilizations Fail PDF Download
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Author | : Scott A J Johnson |
Publisher | : Routledge |
Total Pages | : 476 |
Release | : 2016-09-19 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 1315512874 |
Download Why Did Ancient Civilizations Fail? Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Ideas abound as to why certain complex societies collapsed in the past, including environmental change, subsistence failure, fluctuating social structure and lack of adaptability. Why Did Ancient Civilizations Fail? evaluates the current theories in this important topic and discusses why they offer only partial explanations of the failure of past civilizations. This engaging book offers a new theory of collapse, that of social hubris. Through an examination of Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Roman, Maya, Inca, and Aztec societies, Johnson persuasively argues that hubris blinded many ancient peoples to evidence that would have allowed them to adapt, and he further considers how this has implications for contemporary societies. Comprehensive and well-written, this volume serves as an ideal text for undergraduate courses on ancient complex societies, as well as appealing to the scholar interested in societal collapse.
Author | : Eric H. Cline |
Publisher | : Princeton University Press |
Total Pages | : 264 |
Release | : 2015-09-22 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0691168385 |
Download 1177 B.C. Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
A bold reassessment of what caused the Late Bronze Age collapse In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh's army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C., which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. But the Sea Peoples alone could not have caused such widespread breakdown. How did it happen? In this major new account of the causes of this "First Dark Ages," Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes. Bringing to life the vibrant multicultural world of these great civilizations, he draws a sweeping panorama of the empires and globalized peoples of the Late Bronze Age and shows that it was their very interdependence that hastened their dramatic collapse and ushered in a dark age that lasted centuries. A compelling combination of narrative and the latest scholarship, 1177 B.C. sheds new light on the complex ties that gave rise to, and ultimately destroyed, the flourishing civilizations of the Late Bronze Age—and that set the stage for the emergence of classical Greece.
Author | : Jared Diamond |
Publisher | : Penguin UK |
Total Pages | : 608 |
Release | : 2013-03-21 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0141976969 |
Download Collapse Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future. What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Jared Diamond's Collapse also shows how - unlike our ancestors - we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors. 'A grand sweep from a master storyteller of the human race' - Daily Mail 'Riveting, superb, terrifying' - Observer 'Gripping ... the book fulfils its huge ambition, and Diamond is the only man who could have written it' - Economis 'This book shines like all Diamond's work' - Sunday Times
Author | : Norman Yoffee |
Publisher | : University of Arizona Press |
Total Pages | : 352 |
Release | : 1991-07 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 9780816512492 |
Download The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Publikacja prac seminarium "School of American Research" które odbyło się w Santa Fe, 22-26 marca 1982 r.
Author | : Joseph Tainter |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 268 |
Release | : 1988 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 9780521386739 |
Download The Collapse of Complex Societies Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Dr Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory.
Author | : Guy D. Middleton |
Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | : 463 |
Release | : 2017-06-26 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 110715149X |
Download Understanding Collapse Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
In this lively survey, Guy D. Middleton critically examines our ideas about collapse - how we explain it and how we have constructed potentially misleading myths around collapses - showing how and why collapse of societies was a much more complex phenomenon than is often admitted.
Author | : Robert Drews |
Publisher | : Princeton University Press |
Total Pages | : 264 |
Release | : 2020-03-31 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0691209979 |
Download The End of the Bronze Age Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
The Bronze Age came to a close early in the twelfth century b.c. with one of the worst calamities in history: over a period of several decades, destruction descended upon key cities throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, bringing to an end the Levantine, Hittite, Trojan, and Mycenaean kingdoms and plunging some lands into a dark age that would last more than four hundred years. In his attempt to account for this destruction, Robert Drews rejects the traditional explanations and proposes a military one instead.
Author | : Annalee Newitz |
Publisher | : W. W. Norton & Company |
Total Pages | : 320 |
Release | : 2021-02-02 |
Genre | : Science |
ISBN | : 039365267X |
Download Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and Science Friday A quest to explore some of the most spectacular ancient cities in human history—and figure out why people abandoned them. In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today. Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers—slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers—who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia. Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.
Author | : David R. Montgomery |
Publisher | : Univ of California Press |
Total Pages | : 299 |
Release | : 2007-05-14 |
Genre | : Nature |
ISBN | : 0520933168 |
Download Dirt Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.
Author | : William Ophuls |
Publisher | : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform |
Total Pages | : 0 |
Release | : 2012 |
Genre | : Civilization |
ISBN | : 9781479243143 |
Download Immoderate Greatness Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle
*Immoderate Greatness* explains how a civilization's very magnitude conspires against it to cause downfall. Civilizations are hard-wired for self-destruction. They travel an arc from initial success to terminal decay and ultimate collapse due to intrinsic, inescapable biophysical limits combined with an inexorable trend toward moral decay and practical failure. Because our own civilization is global, its collapse will also be global, as well as uniquely devastating owing to the immensity of its population, complexity, and consumption. To avoid the common fate of all past civilizations will require a radical change in our ethos-to wit, the deliberate renunciation of greatness-lest we precipitate a dark age in which the arts and adornments of civilization are partially or completely lost.