Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

COLLAPSE: 
HOW
SOCIETIES
CHOOSE
TO
FAIL
OR
SUCCEED

JARED
DIAMOND

VIKING

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First published in 2005 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

13579 10 8642

Copyright
© Jared Diamond, 2005 All rights reserved

Maps by Jeffrey L. Ward

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Diamond, Jared M.

Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed/Jared Diamond.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-670-03337-5

1. Social history
—Case studies. 2. Social change—Case studies. 3. Environmental
policy
—

Case studies. I. Title.

HN13. D5 2005

304.2'8
—dc22 2004057152

This book is printed on acid-free paper. 8

Printed in the United States of America

Set in Minion

Designed by Francesca Belanger

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To

Jack and Ann Hirschy,

Jill Hirschy Eliel and John Eliel,

Joyce Hirschy McDowell,

Dick (1929-2003) and Margy Hirschy,

and their fellow Montanans:

guardians of Montana's big sky

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stampt on these lifeless things,
The hand that mockt them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

"Ozymandias," by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1817)

CONTENTS

List
of
Maps
xiu

Prologue:
A Tale of Two Farms
1

Two farms
« Collapses, past and present » Vanished Edens? ■
A five-point framework ■ Businesses and the environment ■
The comparative method ■ Plan of the book ■

PartOne:
MODERN MONTANA
25

Chapter 1:
Under Montana's Big Sky
27

Stan Falkow's story
« Montana and me ■ Why begin with Montana? ■ Montana's economic history ■ Mining · Forests ■
Soil ■ Water «» Native and non-native species ■ Differing
visions » Attitudes towards regulation · Rick Laible's story ■ Chip Pigman's story » Tim Huls's story ■ John Cook's story ■
Montana, model of the world *

PartTwo:
PAST SOCIETIES
77

Chapter 2:
Twilight at Easter
79

The quarry's mysteries
« Easter's geography and history ■ People and food * Chiefs, clans, and commoners ■ Platforms and statues ■ Carving, transporting, erecting ■ The vanished forest ■ Consequences for society ■ Europeans and explanations ■
Why was Easter fragile? ■ Easter as metaphor ·

Chapter 3:
The Last People Alive: Pitcairn and Henderson Islands 120

Pitcairn before the
Bounty
■ Three dissimilar islands » Trade ■
The movie's ending *

Chapter 4:
The Ancient Ones: The Anasazi and Their Neighbors
136

Desert farmers
· Tree rings * Agricultural strategies * Chaco's
problems and packrats · Regional integration ■ Chaco's decline
and end * Chaco's message ■

X

Contents

Chapter 5:
The Maya Collapses
157

Mysteries of lost cities
■ The Maya environment ■ Maya
agriculture ■ Maya history ■ Copan * Complexities of
collapses ■ Wars and droughts ■ Collapse in the southern
lowlands ■ The Maya message ■

Chapter 6:
The Viking Prelude and Fugues
1
78

Experiments in the Atlantic
■ The Viking explosion ■
Autocatalysis ■ Viking agriculture ■ Iron ■ Viking chiefs ■
Viking religion ■ Orkneys, Shetlands, Faeroes ■ Iceland's
environment ■ Iceland's history ■ Iceland in context ■ Vinland ■

Chapter 7:
Norse Greenland's Flowering
211

Europe's outpost
■ Greenland's climate today ■ Climate in the past ■ Native plants and animals « Norse settlement ■ Farming ■
Hunting and fishing ■ An integrated economy ■ Society ■ Trade
with Europe * Self-image ■

Chapter 8:
Norse Greenland's End
248

Introduction to the end
■ Deforestation » Soil and turf damage ■ The Inuit's predecessors ■ Inuit subsistence ■ Inuit/Norse
relations * The end ■ Ultimate causes of the end «

Chapter 9:
Opposite Paths to Success
277

Bottom up, top down
■ New Guinea highlands ■ Tikopia ■
Tokugawa problems ■ Tokugawa solutions ■ Why Japan
succeeded ■ Other successes ■

Part Three: MODERN SOCIETIES
309

Chapter 10:
Malthus in Africa: Rwanda's Genocide
311

A dilemma
■ Events in Rwanda * More than ethnic hatred ■
Buildup in Kanama ■ Explosion in Kanama ■ Why it happened ■

Chapter 11:
One Island, Two Peoples, Two Histories:

The Dominican Republic and Haiti
329

Differences * Histories
■ Causes of divergence * Dominican
environmental impacts ■ Balaguer ■ The Dominican environment today ■ The future ■

Contents
xi

Chapter
12: China, Lurching Giant
358

China's significance
■ Background ■ Air, water, soil ■ Habitat,
species, megaprojects ■¦ Consequences ■ Connections ■
The future ·

Chapter 13:
"Mining" Australia
378

Australia's significance * Soils
■ Water ■ Distance ■ Early history
^E
Imported values ■ Trade and immigration ■ Land degradation · Other environmental problems ■ Signs of hope and change ■

Part Four: PRACTICAL LESSONS
417

Chapter 14:
Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous

Decisions?
419

Road map for success
■ Failure to anticipate ■ Failure to
perceive ■ Rational bad behavior ■ Disastrous values ■ Other
irrational failures ■ Unsuccessful solutions · Signs of hope «

Chapter 15:
Big Businesses and the Environment:

Different Conditions, Different Outcomes
441

Resource extraction
« Two oil fields
»
Oil company motives ■
Hardrock mining operations * Mining company motives ·
Differences among mining companies ■ The logging industry «
Forest Stewardship Council ■ The seafood industry ■ Businesses
and the public »

Chapter 16:
The World as a Polder: What Does It All Mean

to Us Today?
486

Introduction
■ The most serious problems · If we don't solve
them ... ■ Life in Los Angeles · One-liner objections ■¦ The past
and the present ■ Reasons for hope ■

Acknowledgments
526

Further Readings
529

Index
' 561

Illustration Credits
576

LIST
OF
MAPS

The World: Prehistoric, Historic, and Modern Societies
4-5

Contemporary Montana
31

The Pacific Ocean, the Pitcairn Islands, and Easter Island
84-85

The Pitcairn Islands
122

Anasazi Sites
142

Maya Sites
161

The Viking Expansion
182-183

Contemporary Hispaniola
331

Contemporary China
361

Contemporary Australia
386

Political Trouble Spots of the Modern World;

Environmental Trouble Spots of the Modern World
497

I

COLLAPSE

PROLOGUE

A Tale of Two Farms

Two farms
■ Collapses, past and present ■ Vanished Edens? ■

A five-point framework * Businesses and the environment
■

The comparative method * Plan of the book
■

A

few summers ago I visited two dairy farms, Huls Farm and Gardar Farm, which despite being located thousands of miles apart were still
remarkably similar in their strengths and vulnerabilities. Both were
by far the largest, most prosperous, most technologically advanced farms in their respective districts. In particular, each was centered around a magnificent state-of-the-art barn for sheltering and milking cows. Those structures,
both neatly divided into opposite-facing rows of cow stalls, dwarfed all
other barns in the district. Both farms let their cows graze outdoors in lush
pastures during the summer, produced their own hay to harvest in the late summer for feeding the cows through the winter, and increased their pro
duction of summer fodder and winter hay by irrigating their fields. The two
farms were similar in area (a few square miles) and in barn size, Huls barn
holding somewhat more cows than Gardar barn (200 vs. 165 cows, respec
tively). The owners of both farms were viewed as leaders of their respective
societies. Both owners were deeply religious. Both farms were located in
gorgeous natural settings that attract tourists from afar, with backdrops of
high snow-capped mountains drained by streams teaming with fish, and
sloping down to a famous river (below Huls Farm) or fjord (below Gardar
Farm).

Those were the shared strengths of the two farms. As for their shared
vulnerabilities, both lay in districts economically marginal for dairying, be
cause their high northern latitudes meant a short summer growing season
in which to produce pasture grass and hay. Because the climate was thus suboptimal even in good years, compared to dairy farms at lower latitudes,
both farms were susceptible to being harmed by climate change, with
drought or cold being the main concerns in the districts of Huls Farm or
Gardar Farm respectively. Both districts lay far from population centers to w
nich they could market their products, so that transportation costs and