{"id":63295,"date":"2022-08-14T11:01:46","date_gmt":"2022-08-14T16:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63295"},"modified":"2022-08-14T11:01:47","modified_gmt":"2022-08-14T16:01:47","slug":"we-are-not-the-first-civilization-to-collapse-but-we-will-probably-be-the-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=63295","title":{"rendered":"We Are Not the First Civilization to Collapse, But We Will Probably Be the Last"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We Are Not the First Civilization to Collapse, But We Will Probably Be the Last<\/a><\/h3>\n

The archeological remains of past civilizations, including those of the prehistoric Cahokia temple mound complex in Missouri, are sobering reminders of our fate.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Doomsday Selfie – by Mr. Fish<\/strong><\/p>\n

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CAHOKIA MOUNDS, Missouri: I am standing atop a 100-foot-high temple mound, the largest known earthwork in the Americas built by prehistoric peoples. The temperatures, in the high 80s, along with the oppressive humidity, have emptied the park of all but a handful of visitors. My shirt is matted with sweat.<\/p>\n

I look out from the structure\u2014-known as\u00a0Monks Mound<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 at the flatlands below, with smaller mounds dotting the distance. These earthen mounds, built at a confluence of the Illinois, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, are all that remain of one of the largest pre-Columbian settlements north of Mexico, occupied from around 800 to 1,400 AD by perhaps as many as 20,000 people.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0great city<\/a>, perhaps the greatest in North America, rose, flourished, fell into decline and was ultimately abandoned. Civilizations die in familiar patterns. They exhaust natural resources. They spawn parasitic elites who plunder and loot the institutions and systems that make a complex society possible. They engage in futile and self-defeating wars. And then the rot sets in. The great urban centers die first, falling into irreversible decay. Central authority unravels. Artistic expression and intellectual inquiry are replaced by a new dark age, the triumph of tawdry spectacle and the celebration of crowd-pleasing imbecility.<\/p>\n

\u201cCollapse occurs, and can only occur, in a power vacuum,\u201d anthropologist\u00a0Joseph Tainter<\/a>\u00a0writes in\u00a0The Collapse of Complex Societies<\/a><\/em>. \u201cCollapse is possible only where there is no competitor strong enough to fill the political vacuum of disintegration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We Are Not the First Civilization to Collapse, But We Will Probably Be the Last The archeological remains of past civilizations, including those of the prehistoric Cahokia temple mound complex in Missouri, are sobering reminders of our fate. Doomsday Selfie – by Mr. Fish CAHOKIA MOUNDS, Missouri: I am standing atop a 100-foot-high temple mound, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[9035,138,150],"class_list":["post-63295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-chris-hedges","tag-civilisation","tag-collapse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63296,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63295\/revisions\/63296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}