A prevalent issue among descendants of Indigenous Canadian communities is that they do not know what their native names are (Vowel 2017). While there are more than 70 Indigenous languages in Canada today, most of them have fewer than 1,000 fluent speakers (Toth 2022). Their Indigenous identities were replaced by Anglophone culture, which disconnected the First Nations peoples from their ancestry (France 2021). The preservation of native culture is a common challenge for many Indigenous communities, including in the United States and Australia (Romaine 2002).
The experience of Indigenous Canadians is unique in that their civilization rapidly declined as a direct result of foreign conquest. However, civilizations that faded across history often reveal more complex and long-term influences. Toynbee (1974) proposed that the demise of civilizations results from their reaction to external influences. Diamond (2005), with a biological emphasis, also argued that the common cause of collapse across societies is their response to environmental problems. In either case, it is rarely possible to attribute the demise of flourishing communities to one cause; the interplay between external impact and internal unrest is often the ultimate challenge.
The starting point to discussing why civilizations collapse is having a concrete definition of “civilization.” Civilization is the manifestation of a culture. Hegelian historicism defines a multifaceted civilization using a unified dialectic, where the language system, government, labor divisions, religion, arts, and social organizations are condensed into a single organism (Gill 2007). This approach abstracts away the diverse experiences within a culture to focus on its broader stages of growth. However, as Frye (1974) pointed out, “The question is not whether a culture is an organism, but whether it behaves enough like one to be studied on an organic model” (6). This Spenglian approach to historical analysis addresses the potential complications of this analogy. By analyzing the collective periods of growth and decay from a macro perspective, we can zoom in on the causal relationships between external pressures and internal decomposition.
“Collapse” is a nuanced word that requires careful elaboration. Popular narratives of collapse often simplify the long-term change with an apocalyptic termination. For instance, Gill (2007) wrote about the Mayan civilization, “There was nothing they could do or could have done. In the end, the food and water ran out – and they died” (299). In reality, however, the Mayan civilization consisted of 60 to 70 states that each experienced separate periods of decay (Middleton 2017). Even as cities were abandoned during the Terminal Classic period (AD 750–1050), new cities like Chichen Itza, Mayapan, and Uxmal continued to be built (Milbrath 2003). The Mayan civilization continued to evolve even after the arrival of the Spanish in 1502 and still have 8 million descendants today (Middleton 2017). Contrary to popular belief, communities could adapt and evolve through collapse without disappearing. Rather than biological extinction, collapse should be understood through definitive archeological features, including the fragmentation of political institutions, the disintegration of customs and language, and the breakdown of centralizing functions (Schwartz 2006).
The term “our civilization” poses an equivocal assumption that there is a singular civilization that could be generalized as “ours.” If a civilization is considered the manifestation of a culture, then each culture today warrants a civilization of its own. However, modern globalization has shifted the definition of civilization to a more all-encompassing one. As Spengler (2021) observed, “In all Civilizations the ‘modern’ cities assume a more and more uniform type” (108). Cross-cultural communication buttresses the stability and interdependence of different cultures today. While honoring the diverse customs, languages, and social structures around the world, this essay focuses on the shared broader trajectory of “our” modern civilization.
This essay argues that while the failure to respond to foreign conquests and ecological pressures have historically led to the collapse of civilizations, not one factor could have played a deterministic role independently. Modern technology has fundamentally changed the nature of civilizations and allowed cultures to become resilient together, but it has also led to critical challenges for some endangered cultures around the world.
Lessons from the Past and the Future of Our Own
Ecological Factors
Ellen Churchill Semple (1911) aptly wrote, “Man is a product of the earth’s surface” (1). In the case of the Mayans, their agricultural success was founded on the exploitation of woodlands. Without awareness of natural preservation, the Mayans used unsustainable cultivation methods that led to widespread deforestation and soil erosion (Diamond 2005). Over multiple centuries, their land gradually became vulnerable to deterioration and environmental disturbance.
While environmental exploitation led to issues for Mayans as it did for many other ancient civilizations, it was not as deterministically fatal as some historians contend (Middleton 2017). The impact of human activity on the environment at the time would be marginal compared to that of today. In the industrialized world, global warming is happening “at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years” (NASA n.d.). Mass extraction, production, and pollution is changing the earth tens of thousands of times faster than the ancient cultivation of woodlands could. As unsustainable as Mayan agriculture may be, it still had limited impact on the wide expanse of the empire and was unlikely the primary cause of its collapse.
Another proposition focuses on natural disasters, suggesting that prolonged droughts across the Mayan states ultimately led to total collapse (deMenocal 2001). Stalagmite records show that “the most extreme droughts in the entire 3,300-year record” coincided with the classic Mayan crisis from AD 700 to 1135 (Webster 2007, 62). The three multi-century droughts in this period led to severe decreases in crop yields, which could have been aggravated by unsustainable farming practices and led to widespread famine.
However, it would be premature to identify a causal relationship between droughts and socio-political crises solely based on co-occurrence. As Maher et al. (2011) suggest, ‘‘current evidence [of Mayan records] does not support simple cause-and-effect relationships between rapid climate-change events and cultural changes’’ (3). Humans were able to adapt to a wide range of environments even without modern technology. The late Bronze citadels of Mycenae and Tiryns continued for many decades even after earthquakes overtook the regions (Finné 2017). Another example would be how the droughts on the island of Anatolia led to improvements in water distribution systems, demonstrating the resilience of ancient civilizations (Jacobsen 2022).
We must apply caution when designating ecological and environmental factors as the cause of collapse. While nature is significant in shaping the foundation of ancient cultures, ecological problems on their own have unlikely wiped out an established civilization. Oftentimes, the social upheaval that precipitated from the ecological problems also played a major role in the disintegration of the political structure.
Foreign Conquest
Toynbee’s Challenge and Response theory (1974) posits that the fate of a civilization hinges on how it responds to external challenges. In the case of the Mayan civilization, ecological challenges like environmental decay and natural disasters were intertwined with internal unrest, which then reflected in the empire’s weak response against foreign threats. When faced with famine after the droughts, Mayan rulers sought to expand their territories to acquire new means of agricultural production. The conflicts between different Mayan states brewed into internecine warfare, which weakened the foundation of Mayan society (Cowgill 1979)..
When the Spanish conquistadors arrived three centuries later, the Mayan empire struggled to respond effectively due to pre-existing internal unrest (Tedlock 1993). Divided and competing over natural resources, the Mayans could not unite against the Spanish albeit outnumbering them. The threats of European military technology, infectious diseases, and warfare tactics overwhelmed the Mayan empire, leading to the gradual disintegration of its political structures, educational systems, and distinct lifestyle. The inability to defend against foreign conquerors underscores Toynbee’s proposition that a civilization’s demise often stems from its inadequate responses to external adversities.
The impact of foreign conquest was more direct in some cases, like the Fall of Rome. The replacement of the Western Roman rulers by barbarian kingdoms was one of the most well-documented political collapses of classical antiquity (Kyle 2016). Even then, the external threat was not an independent factor and was closely tied with persistent internal tensions. On one hand, major epidemics like the Plague of Cyprian (AD 250–270) annihilated the Roman population and made it difficult to defend the empire’s borders (Kyle 2016). Meanwhile, dissent between the Roman rulers exacerbated the plight, leading to weakened economy, corrupted military, and the separation of localized communities without loyalty to the empire (Watkins n.d).
Instead of being the sole destructors, the barbarians were only the last straw among the broader problems in Western Rome (Kyle 2016). Just as ecological challenges and internal divisions made the Mayans vulnerable to foreign threats, the pre-existing biological crises and internal dissent in Rome must not be overlooked.
In the Second Discourse, Rosseau (1754) posits that there is an irreconcilable conflict between man and nature. As early humans explored the wilderness, they inevitably disrupted the homeostasis of the earth in the process. The initial disturbance of the environment was necessary for civilizations to achieve discoveries and technological progress before they could exert reservation efforts (Bailey 2022). As in the case of the Mayans, their unsustainable farming methods were a necessary step of learning. Before having the means to understand the environmental consequences of their actions, a period of experimentation was required to establish the society’s foundation.
However, the situation is vastly different today. As we shift the question to whether our civilization is in danger, the profound impact of human destruction cannot be ignored. Unlike the Mayans, we can understand our impact on the earth with science, yet we have not slowed down on environmental destruction. Our modern lifestyle is changing the earth faster than millennia before (NASA n.d.). While technology and globalization have enhanced humanity’s ability to mitigate existential threats as a whole, certain parts of the global civilization are under disproportionate levels of ecological threats.
The Kiribati people face a particularly dire situation, as their 33 low-lying islands make them extremely vulnerable to climate change. The World Health Organization (2024) has encouraged the Kiribati government to enforce relocation policies due to rising sea levels and increasing climate instability. However, relocation comes at a significant cultural cost for Kiribatians, as they risk losing their language, religion, and customs. Under displacement, the Gilbertese language could face a similar fate as many of the endangered languages today. The inevitable assimilation that comes with relocation would effectively end the 4000-year-long civilization (Cauchi 2021). While technology makes our global civilization resilient to environmental challenges, the worsening climate crisis could erase ancient cultures and cause irreversible damage to humanity beyond technology’s saving.
Human impact, whether environmental or political, is a significant cause of cultural erosion today. Indigenous peoples in Canada face similar challenges of assimilation as the Kiribatians. In the mid-nineteenth century, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald led the forced removal of Indigenous peoples to reservations. Native Canadians were forced to assimilate into mainstream Canadian culture, as Indigenous children were placed into reformative boarding schools similar to the Native Americans in the U.S. (Jacobs 2012). The lasting trauma and disruption among Indigenous communities is a result of global modernization.
Technology, globalization, and knowledge of past societies “put us at lower risk” than ancient civilizations (Diamond 2005, 17). However, the destructive power of technology and the heightened interdependence between different societies also put us at higher risk in some aspects. Although ancient civilizations may be more vulnerable to climate change, the ones that did collapse likely suffered from other external threats and internal disturbances as well. Rather than dramatizing the failures of pre-modern societies, we must understand the complex causal relationships between different factors that led to the collapse.
Our civilization today is of a different nature than those before industrialization and globalization. As Diamond (2005) wrote, “We shouldn’t be so naive as to think that study of the past will yield simple solutions, directly transferable to our societies today” (17). We should leverage the technological advancements today to reconcile our relationship with the natural world as well as with each other.
Current Civilization
Bibliography
Bailey, Ryan. “Searching for an Environmental Self-Love: Humans and Nature in Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origins of Inequality.” University of Chicago (2022). https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.4336.
Cauchi, John P., Stefano Moncada, Hilary Bambrick, and Ignacio Correa-Velez. “Coping with environmental hazards and shocks in Kiribati: Experiences of climate change by atoll communities in the Equatorial Pacific.” Environmental Development 37 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2020.100549.
Cowgill, George L. “4 Teotihuacan, Internal Militaristic Competition, and the Fall of the Classic Maya” In Maya Archaeology and Ethnohistory edited by Norman Hammond and Gordon R. Willey, 51-62. New York, USA: University of Texas Press, 1979. https://doi.org/10.7560/750401-007
Diamond, Jared M. Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. London: Penguin Books, 2011.
Facing History & Ourselves, “Aggressive Assimilation,” last updated October 29, 2019 https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/thesescanada/vol2/OKQ/TC-OKQ-7557.pdf
Finné, Martin, Karin Holmgren, Chuan-Chou Shen, Hsun-Ming Hu, Meighan Boyd, and Sharon Stocker. “Late Bronze Age Climate Change and the Destruction of the Mycenaean Palace of Nestor at Pylos.” PLOS ONE 12, no. 12 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0189447.
France, Paige. “A Lost Indigenous Identity - the Medium.” The Medium, November 16, 2021. https://themedium.ca/a-lost-indigenous-identity/.
Frye, Northrop. “‘The Decline of the West’ by Oswald Spengler.” Daedalus 103, no. 1 (1974): 1–13. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024181.
Gill, Richardson B., Paul A. Mayewski, Johan Nyberg, Gerald H. Haug, and Larry C. Peterson. “DROUGHT AND THE MAYA COLLAPSE.” Ancient Mesoamerica 18, no. 2 (2007): 283–302. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956536107000193.
Government of Canada. “First Nations in Canada.” May 2, 2017. https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1307460755710/1536862806124.
Hegel, Georg, Wilhelm Friedrich, and Duncan Forbes. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Translated by Hugh Barr Nisbet of Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Jacobsen, Matthew J., Jordan Pickett, Alison L. Gascoigne, Dominik Fleitmann, and Hugh Elton. “Settlement, environment, and climate change in SW Anatolia: Dynamics of regional variation and the end of Antiquity.” PLOS ONE 17, no. 6 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0270295.
Middleton, Guy M. “Do civilisations collapse?” Aeon. Aeon Media Group, November 16, 2017. https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-idea-of-civilisational-collapse-says-about-history.
Milbrath, Susan and Carlos Peraza Lope. “Revisiting Mayapan: Mexico's Last Maya Capital.” Ancient Mesoamerica 14, no. 2 (2003): 1-47. https://www.academia.edu/3682158/Revisiting_Mayapan_Mexicos_Last_Maya_Capital._Susan_Milbrath_and_Carlos_Peraza_Lope_.
NASA. “Evidence - NASA Science.” https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence/.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality A Discourse on a Subject Proposed by the Academy of Dijon: What is the Origin of Inequality Among Men, and is it Authorised by Natural Law? Translated by G. D. H. Cole. Zürich: ETH Zurich, 1754.
Romaine, Suzanne. Vanishing voices - the extinction of the worlds languages. Oxford University Press, 2002.
Semple, Ellen C. “Influences of Geographic Environment On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography.” Nature 88, no. 101 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/088101a0.
Schwartz, Glenn M., and John J. Nichols, eds. After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex Societies. University of Arizona Press, 2006. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt181hxqb.
Spengler, Oswald and Charles Francis Atkinson. The Decline of the West. London: Arktos, 2021.
Tedlock, Dennis. “Torture in the Archives: Mayans Meet Europeans.” American Anthropologist 95, no. 1 (1993): 139–52. http://www.jstor.org/stable/681183.
Toth, Katalina. “The Death and Revival of Indigenous Languages.” Harvard International Review, January 19, 2022. https://hir.harvard.edu/the-death-and-revival-of-indigenous-languages/.
Toynbee, Arnold J. A Study of History. New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc, 1974.
Vowel, Chelsea. Indigenous writes: A guide to first nations, métis & Inuit issues in Canada. Newburyport: Portage & Main Press, 2017.
Watkins, Thayer. “The Economic History of the Western Roman Empire.” San José State University. Accessed July 10, 2024. https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/barbarians.htm#:~:text=The%20Roman%20Empire%20during%20the,River%20at%20the%20Black%20Sea.
World Health Organization. “Countering the Climate Crisis in Kiribati.” March 8, 2024. https://www.who.int/westernpacific/news-room/feature-stories/item/countering-the-climate-crisis-in-kiribati#:~:text=Kiribati%2C%20home%20to%20around%20120%2C000,the%20world%20to%20climate%20change.
