Complex Societies Collapse
Think it Can’t Happen Here? Joseph Tainter Says Think Again.
The world, has been like it is now forever, right?
It sure seems that way. I mean it all feels so permanent, doesn’t it? It’s easy to forget the fact that many, many … in fact, pretty much every civilization that has come, has also gone. What’s more, it’s inescapably true that civilizations not only decline, they precipitously collapse. And not just a few. What makes a good number of them all but disappear in just a few generations?
In The Collapse of Complex Societies, anthropologist Joseph A. Tainter makes a strong case that a society’s success or failure, its resilience or collapse, depends on its problem-solving institutions. Tainter points out that societies fail when their investments in social complexity and their energy subsidies reach a point of diminishing marginal returns.
Collapse, as viewed by Tainter, is a political process that comes about in a society after an extended period of diminishing returns on investments in complexity. It may, and often does, have consequences in such areas as economics, art, and literature, but it is fundamentally a matter of the sociopolitical sphere. A society has collapsed when it displays a rapid, significant loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity. The term ‘established level’ is important. To qualify as an instance of collapse a society must have been at, or developing toward, a level of complexity for more than one or two generations. What’s more, not all failures of empire should be categorized as collapse. For instance, the demise of the Carolingian Empire is not a case of collapse — merely an unsuccessful attempt at empire building. Collapse must be fairly rapid — taking no more than several decades, or a century at most — and must entail a substantial loss of sociopolitical structure. Losses that are less severe or take longer to occur are considered cases of weakness and decline.
For Tainter, collapse is manifest in such things as:
A lower degree of stratification and social differentiation;
Less economic and occupational specialization, of individuals, groups, and territories;
Less centralized control; that is, less regulation and integration of diverse economic and political groups by elites;
Less behavioral control and regimentation;
Less investment in the epiphenomena of complexity, those elements that define the concept of ‘civilization’: monumental architecture, artistic and literary achievements, and the like;
Less flow of information between individuals, between political and economic groups, and between a center and its periphery;
Less sharing, trading and redistribution of resources;
Less overall coordination and organization of individuals and groups; a smaller territory integrated within a single political unit.
Tainter tells us that not all collapsed or collapsing societies will be equally characterized by every item on this list, and the list is by no means complete. He points out that some societies that are characterized as ‘collapsed’ have not possessed all of these features, and indeed one or two that he introduces had few of them.
It’s interesting to note that some of humanity’s greatest literary, poetic and philosophical works have emerged precisely during periods of collapse. To name just two such instances (there are many): Confucianism, Taoism and many other foundational Chinese works were developed during the collapse of the Western Chou Empire, and the Iliad and many other Homeric-era works appeared during the collapse of Mycenaean civilization.
The Collapse of Complex Societies begs the question: have investments in complexity by some of society’s global empires reached a state of diminishing returns, a tipping point? Are we due for a fall? Will a combination of circumstances brought on by ecological overshoot — climate change, burgeoning population, agricultural failure, etc. — bring about a radical reduction in societal complexity? It does seem that we have reached a point of no return — or are about to — and will soon face a global emergency. If some kind of collapse is emminent, which empire will go first? Think it can’t happen to us? Better think again! I’ll bet that folks who thrived in the once-mighty cultures listed below never thought they would come to an end either!
This essay, then, recaps and quotes from Joseph Tainter’s book. In particular, I have excerpted and somewhat condensed his discussion and examples of societal collapse, below. The list provides a fairly concise description of what happened in most of the better known cases of collapse. I used this text:
Tainter, Joseph, The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, 1988.
1. The Western Chou Empire
China’s Chou Dynasty lasted from 1122 BCE till 771 BCE. Those who came after looked back on it as a golden age, especially in light of the corrupt Shang Dynasty, which it supplanted. The Chou ruled through a feudal system, but within a few centuries their control began to slip. The royal house began to lose power as early as 934 BCE. Barbarian invasions increased in frequency through the ninth and eighth centuries, and regional lords began to ignore their obligations to the Chou court. In 771 BCE the last Western Chou ruler was killed in battle and the capital city, Hao, overrun and sacked by northerners.
The period of the Chou disintegration and conflict produced some of China’s major philosophical, literary, and scientific achievements. Confucius wrote during, and in reaction to, this era. Contending schools of philosophy (the ‘Hundred Schools’) proliferated and flourished between 500 and 250 BCE. In addition to many technical and economic developments, Chinese political thought in its classical form emerged during the worst of the breakdown.
2. The Harappan Civilization
The Harappan, or Indus Valley, Civilization existed in northwestern India perhaps as early as 2400 BCE. Its two major cities were established according to similar designs: a fortified citadel on the western side, with civic and religious buildings, and a lower urban zone, with gridded, standardized streets, and systems of drainage and refuse disposal. There were many smaller centers, some with the same basic layout. Seaports controlled the coastline above and below the Indus. This literate civilization shows a striking degree of uniformity through time and space in pottery, ornaments, bricks, weapons, implements of bronze and stone, seals, and civic planning. Both major sites had massive granaries. The impression is of a highly centralized society in which the state controlled many facets of daily living — milling grain, manufacturing bricks and mass producing pottery, obtaining firewood, and building residences.
Yet by roughly 1750 BCE this regional uniformity and centralized control had broken down. In urban centers the standardization of street frontages declined, brickwork was less careful, bricks from older buildings were reused in new, expedient ones, and older buildings were subdivided. Pottery kilns came for the first time to be built within city walls. Expressive art became simpler. Hoards of jewelry were stashed away. Groups of unburied corpses were left lying in the streets.
3. Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia occupies a special place in world, and especially, western culture, as the center, the origin of civilization and urban society. It displays a history of political rises and declines that furnishes many examples of collapse.
Beginning in the early third millennium, Sargon of Akkad developed the first Mesopotamian empire (ca. 2350–2150 BCE). After a couple hundred years, it fell, followed by the next period of regional hegemony, the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. 2100–2000 BCE) which established a vast regional bureaucracy to collect taxes and tribute and also encouraged expansion of the irrigation system, and growth of population and settlement. This attempt to maximize economic and political power led to a rapid collapse, with disastrous consequences for southern Mesopotamia. Over the next millennium or so there was a 40 percent reduction in the number of settlements, and a 77% reduction in settled area.
After this, political power shifted north, to Babylon. The empire established by Hammurabi (ca. 1792–1750 BCE) did not survive the death of his son. Four succeeding kings ruled a greatly reduced realm, until the dynasty was terminated by the Hittites. Partly coterminously, the Assyrians in the period between 1920 and 1780 BCE established widespread trade routes, and then collapsed. The Assyrians enjoyed a political resurgence in the 14th century BCE, and then again from the ninth to the seventh centuries. In this latter era they held a vast empire over much of the Near East, only to lose most of these dependencies and suffer defeat by the Medes in 614 BCE. Assyrian social and political institutions disappeared thereafter.
After a brief resurgence by Babylon, brought to an end by Cyrus the Great, Mesopotamia was incorporated into successive Near Eastern empires of varying size and durability — Achaemenian, Seleucid, Parthian, Sassanian, and Islamic. There was an irregular but largely sustained increase in the scale and complexity of the agricultural regime, in population density and in city building.
The final and greatest disaster struck sometime in the seventh-through-tenth centuries in the form of a major collapse of the Mesopotamian alluvium. By the eleventh or twelfth centuries, the total occupied area had shrunk to only about 6% of its level 500 years earlier. Population dropped to the lowest point in five millennia. State resources declined precipitously. In many strategic and formerly prosperous areas, there were tax revenue losses of 90% or more in less than a single lifetime. The populace rebelled and the countryside became ungovernable. By the early tenth century irrigation weirs were nearly all confined to the vicinity of Baghdad. The basis for urban life in perhaps 10,000 square kilometers of the Mesopotamian heartland was eliminated for centuries. Until the modern era the region was claimed primarily by nomads.
4. The Egyptian Old Kingdom
The unification of Upper and Lower Egypt is usually traced to the First Dynasty, ca. 3100 BCE. Regarded as a milestone in political history, the Egyptian Old Kingdom was a highly centralized political system headed by a leader with qualified supernatural authority. The government was based on a literate, hierarchically organized bureaucracy. It enjoyed substantial permanent income from the crown lands, commanded large labor pools, and virtually monopolized some vital materials and imported luxuries. This government in turn enhanced productive capabilities, provided administration and outward expansion, and maintained supernatural relations.
As the Old Kingdom developed, however, it became difficult to ensure effective control of the provinces, which began to show strong feudal characteristics. The political authority of the ruler seems to have declined, while the power of provincial officials and the wealth of the administrative nobility rose. Crown lands were subdivided. The establishment of tax-exempt funerary endowments diminished royal resources. And yet these developments coincided with immense construction at royal expense. The last ruler of the Sixth Dynasty, Phiops II, built a magnificent funerary monument even as the declining power of the royal family was felt sharply at the close of his reign. With the end of the Sixth Dynasty in 2181 BCE, the Old Kingdom collapsed.
Beginning with the Seventh Dynasty there was a period of strife, one of the darkest episodes in Egyptian history. In the First Intermediate Period national centralization collapsed, and was replaced by a number of independent and semi-independent polities. There were many rulers and generally short reigns. Royal tombs became less elaborate.
Contemporary records are few, but those that exist indicate a breakdown of order, including strife between districts; looting, killing, revolutions, and social anarchy; and incursions into the Delta. Tombs were plundered, royal women were clothed in rags, and officials were insulted; peasants carried shields as they tilled their fields. Foreign trade dropped, famines recurred, and life expectancy declined. With the Eleventh Dynasty, beginning in 2131 BCE, order and unity began to be restored. The Middle Kingdom was established, and achieved full control by ca.1870 BCE.
5. The Hittite Empire
The Hittites are a little known people of Anatolia, whose political history begins about 1792 BCE. Throughout the succeeding centuries Hittite fortunes rose and fell, with episodes of conquest and expansion interspersed with periods of defense and disintegration. During the latter times Hittite armies suffered reverses, provinces were lost, and the cities of the homeland, including the Hittite capital, were raided and burned. The great ruler Shuppilu Humash restored the Hittite position after his accession to the throne ca. 1380 BCE, and in this and succeeding reigns the empire was firmly established in Anatolia and Syria, where the Hittites contested successfully for domination with Egypt, concluding a treaty with Rameses in 1284 BCE.
By the early thirteenth century BCE, the Hittites were at the height of their power, their empire encompassing most of Anatolia, Syria, and Cyprus. The Hittites and the Egyptians were the two major powers in the region. Yet the resources of this empire were strained. Although relations with Egypt remained peaceful, the Hittites encountered troubles in nearly all directions, including the Assyrians to the southeast, the Kaska tribes to the east, and little known peoples in western Asia Minor and Cyprus. Toward the end of the thirteenth century BCE their written records declined and finally ceased altogether.
As the Hittite Empire collapsed a catastrophe of major magnitude but uncertain form overtook the region. Excavated sites across Anatolia and Syria are consistently found to have burned about this time. Hittite Civilization collapsed with the Empire. The life of the central Anatolian Plateau, after about 1204 BCE was disrupted for a century or more. The area ceased to sustain urban settlements, and seems to have been thinly populated and used by nomads. When a new empire emerged in the region between the twelfth and ninth centuries BCE, it was Phrygian, and totally unrelated to that of the Hittites.
6. Minoan Civilization
The Minoan Civilization of Crete was the first in Europe. The earliest palaces on the island were built soon after 2000 BCE. They were thereafter repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes, and up to the final collapse were each time rebuilt more splendidly than before. The Minoans possessed advanced knowledge of architecture, engineering, drainage, and hydraulics. The palace of Knossos after 1700 BCE was more luxurious than the contemporary palaces of Egypt and the Near East, featuring water-flushing latrines, a drainage system, and walls adorned with rich frescoes. There were craft production rooms for potters, weavers, metal workers, and lapidaries. Palaces functioned as administrative centers, as warehouses, and as controlling nodes in the economy. They contained large numbers of storerooms and storage vessels, with Knossos alone having the capacity to hold more than 240,000 gallons of olive oil. There was administrative writing: records included the contents of armories, and indicate that goods were directed to the palace, and from there redistributed. The Phaistos Disk is the oldest known example of printing, being made from movable type impressed into the clay.
The Minoans traded widely about the Mediterranean, particularly the eastern half. They were most likely the major sea power of the time. For most of Minoan history Crete seems to have been peaceful, for the palaces were unfortified and the scenes on the frescoes peaceful. About 1500 BCE however, a powerful earthquake caused widespread destruction, and thereafter there were major changes. An earlier script, undeciphered, but known as Linear A, was replaced by the Greek Linear B. New methods of warfare were introduced, involving new kinds of arms and the horse. The Mycenaean civilization of mainland Greece became a serious trade competitor. Security declined as militarism increased. The central and eastern parts of Crete, and possibly the whole island, may have come under the domination of Knossos. Many palaces were devastated, and local governors were required to report agricultural and industrial production in detail to Knossos. About 1380 BCE the Cretan palaces were finally destroyed; most were not rebuilt. Minoan civilization collapsed. Political, economic, and administrative centralization declined. A late, reduced administration at Knossos and some other sites finally ended about 1200 BCE.
7. Mycenaean Civilization
Mycenaean Civilization of Mainland Greece began to develop about 1650 BCE. It reached the height of its power and prosperity after 1400 BCE following the Minoan collapse. Throughout central and southern Greece there developed a great deal of homogeneity in such things as art, architecture, and political organization. This region was divided among a number of independent states which were each centered on a fortified palace/citadel complex headed by a single ruler. Mycenae itself is the most famous of these, and was probably the most powerful. Nobles made up the royal court and administration; major land holders (lesser nobles) administered estates in the countryside. The Linear B tablets from Pylos indicate that this kingdom was divided into sixteen administrative districts, each controlled by a governor and deputy.
Mycenaean palaces, like their Cretan counterparts, served as controlling economic centers at which goods and foodstuffs were stored and redistributed. Much of the Linear B writing was devoted to the accounting needs created thereby.
The art and architecture of Mycenaean Civilization are widely known. Major structures were built with massive, ‘cyclopean’ walls. Palaces contained frescoes and bathrooms. Gem cutting, metalwork, and pottery making were carried out by skilled artisans, as was inlay and work in ivory, glass, and faience. Very often these artisans worked under the close supervision of a palace authority. Roads, viaducts, and aqueducts were built. Mycenaean wares were traded widely about the Mediterranean. After about 1200 BCE disaster struck. Palace after palace was destroyed. There followed a period of more than 100 years of unstable conditions, repeated catastrophes affecting many centers, and movement of population. The uniform Mycenaean style of pottery gave way to local styles that were less well executed. Metalwork became simpler. Writing disappeared. The craftsmen and artisans seem to have everywhere vanished. Fortifications were built across the Isthmus of Corinth and at other places. At Mycenae, Tiryns, and Athens, water sources were developed within the citadel, cut through solid rock at great labor. The rock-cut well at Athens, at least, seems to date to the time of the troubles. Trade dropped off, and one author has suggested that the subsequent preference for iron implements was due to a sharp decline in copper and tin trade. The number of occupied settlements dropped precipitously, from 320 in the thirteenth century, to 130 in the twelfth, and 40 in the eleventh. In some areas.such as the southwest Peloponnese, settlement increased at this time, and it seems that some of the people of the devastated regions may have migrated to less troubled areas. Yet only a small part of the population loss can be accounted for in this way. Estimates of the magnitude of overall population decline range from 75 to 90 percent. Even areas that escaped devastation, such as Athens, ultimately suffered political collapse. By 1050 BCE, Mycenaean Civilization, despite brief local resurgences, was everywhere gone, and the Greek Dark Ages had begun.
8. The Western Roman Empire
The Roman Empire is the prime example of collapse; it is the one case above all others that inspires fascination to this day. A vast empire with supreme military power and seemingly unlimited resources, its vulnerability has always carried the message that civilizations are fleeting things. If the Roman Empire, dominant in its world, was subject to the impersonal forces of history, then it is no wonder that so many fear for the future of contemporary civilization.
Rome in the last few centuries BCE extended its domination first over Italy, then over the Mediterranean and its fringing lands, and finally into northwestern Europe. A combination of stresses at home, dangers abroad, and irresistible opportunities made expansion a workable policy until Augustus (27 BCE-14 CE) effectively capped the size of the empire. Additions thereafter tended to be of minor importance. Despite Rome’s spectacular rise, the Pax Romana did not endure long. As early as the second century CE, barbarian invasions and plague at home combined to weaken the empire. In the third century the empire nearly disintegrated, as civil wars and economic crises were added to more barbarian incursions and another outbreak of plague. By the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth centuries, Diocletian and Constantine restored order for a time. In 395 the Roman Empire was permanently divided into western and eastern halves. The West began a precipitous decline as provinces were increasingly lost to barbarians. Finally, the last Roman Emperor of the West was deposed in 476.
9. The Olmec
Mexico’s oldest civilization, the Olmec, developed in the humid swamps of coastal Veracruz toward the end of the first millennium BCE. Olmec art influenced much of Mesoamerica, and many subsequent civilizations. A succession of Olmec political centers emerged and disappeared in the jungle before the final collapse of Olmec Civilization. This latter event is poorly dated, but seems to have occurred sometime in the last few centuries BCE.
The Olmec are best known from the archaeological remains of their political centers. Perhaps the earliest of these was San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan (ca. 1150–900 BCE). It consists in part of a major, formally arranged mound complex on a primarily artificial plateau. Groups of long, low mounds flank courts, with large pyramids at one or both ends. A stone aqueduct was built, and pools were lined with bentonite. Exotic obsidians were imported from the Mesoamerican Highlands, and there were workshops for obsidian, brown flint, and serpentine. Basalt monuments weighing more than 20 tons were brought from mountains some 50 kilometers away, and then lifted a vertical distance of 50 meters.
The site of La Venta (ca. 800–400 BCE) may have been the political successor to San Lorenzo. It too consists of mounds, platforms, and a pyramid. Basalt columns weighing several tons in aggregate form a court that may never have been finished. A large jaguar mask mosaic was built of serpentine and then buried. After the demise of La Venta power may have shifted to Tres Zapotes, a site about which little is known.
At some Olmec sites, including San Lorenzo, there is evidence of violence at the end. At a cost of great effort, basalt monuments were deliberately and systematically mutilated and destroyed, and subsequently buried.
10. The Lowland Classic Maya
One of the most famous of collapsed civilizations, the Maya of the southern Peten lowlands left a legacy of temples, palaces, and entire cities lying abandoned in the jungle, creating a powerful image. No doubt the rain forest has much to do with this. In popular thought, civilization is what stands between humanity and the chaos of nature. The picture of cities that have been overcome by this chaos compels us to morbid fascination.
Elements of the complex of features called Mayan Civilization can be traced far into the first millennium BCE. By the last few centuries BCE, complex political organization and massive public architecture were emerging in many areas. Throughout most of the first millennium CE, Mayan cities grew in size and power. Vast public works were undertaken, temples and palaces were built and decorated, the arts flourished, and the landscape was modified and claimed for planting. These patterns intensified in the first half of the eighth century CE. Thereafter, with a swiftness that is shocking, the Mayan cities began one-by-one to collapse. By about 900 CE political and ceremonial activity on the previous level came to an end, although some remnant populations tried to carry on city life. A major part of the southern Lowlands population, was correspondingly lost, either to increased mortality, or to emigration from the newly deserted centers.
11. The Mesoamerican Highlands
A number of powerful states rose to regional prominence and subsequently collapsed in the prehistory of the Mesoamerican Highlands. These include Teotihuacan in the northern part of the Valley of Mexico, Tula to the northwest of the Valley, and Monte Alban in Oaxaca.
Teotihuacan was the largest native city in the New World (and in 600 CE, the sixth largest in the world), with a peak population estimated at roughly 125,000. Its central feature, the Street of the Dead, contains more than two kilometers of monumental construction. There are more than 75 temples, including the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. The former is the largest structure in pre-Columbian America, measuring 210 meters along each axis and 64 meters in height, with an estimated 1,000,000 cubic meters of material. At the south end of this street was the Ciudadela, with twin palaces. The city contained more than 2000 residential compounds, and hundreds of craft workshops in obsidian, pottery, jade, onyx, and shell. There were hundreds of painted murals. Networks of drains carried off rainwater.
Teotihuacan exerted a major influence throughout Mesoamerica. The city leaders had the ability to mobilize labor at an unprecedented level. The population and resources of the Valley of Mexico and beyond were economically reorganized. Tens of thousands of people were relocated to Teotihuacan and its vicinity. For 600 years or more, 85 to 90 percent of the population of the eastern and northern Valley of Mexico lived in or near the city. Materials such as shell, mica, and cinnabar were imported from locations up to hundreds of kilometers away.
In the later phase of Teotihuacan’s dominance military themes became prominent in art. The flow of some goods into the city was reduced. About 700 CE, Teotihuacan abruptly collapsed. The politically and ceremonially symbolic center of the city, the Street of the Dead and its monuments, was systematically, ritually burned. The population dropped within 50 years to no more than a fourth of its peak level. This remnant population sealed off doorways, and partitioned large rooms into smaller ones. A period of political fragmentation followed.
To the south, in Oaxaca, the center of Monte Alban was roughly coeval with Teotihuacan. Monte Alban is located on a mountaintop. A large section of this was leveled to build a center of monumental architecture and a community. The population of perhaps 24,000 created pyramids, temples, ballcourts, stelae, and frescoes. Defensive walls were built, and there was Craft production in obsidian, shell, and other commodities. Monte Alban experienced its major growth between 200 and 600 CE. Sometime in the seventh century it collapsed as the political center of the Valley, and a series of autonomous petty states formed. Within a few generations population at Monte Alban had declined to about 18 percent of its peak level, and more defensive walls were built.
Tula is generally regarded as the center of the semi-mythical Toltecs of Mesoamerican legend and history. Tula was a city of about 35,000 people with pyramids, ballcourts, and palaces. It reached its maximum size and importance between about 950 and 1150/1200 CE. Craft specialists included obsidian workers, lapidaries, metalworkers, wood carvers, feather workers, scribes, potters, spinners, and weavers. Raw materials and finished goods were imported over long distances. Tula as a state was overwhelmingly concerned with militarism. Like Teotihuacan before, it attracted a major part of the Basin of Mexico population. The end of Tula came between about 1150 and 1200 CE and may have been accompanied by burning of its ceremonial center.
12. Casas Grandes
In northern Mexico, far north of Mesoamerica and a few kilometers south of the present U.S./Mexico border, stood a major center which displays both Mesoamerican and Southwestern trappings of centralized political integration.
Beginning about 1060 CE, there was a major construction program at the regionally unique center of Casas Grandes. Various rebuildings took place until the site reached its zenith in the first half of the thirteenth century. At this time it formed a massive, multistoried apartment complex surrounded by a ring of ceremonial structures that included geometric mounds, effigy mounds, ballcourts, open plazas, a marketplace, and other specialized edifices. A city water system included a reservoir, underground stone-lined channels, and perhaps a sewage drain. These structures were clearly, built in an economic system in which labor and building materials were hierarchically controlled.
Casas Grandes was surrounded by several thousand satellite villages. It was supported by a hydraulic agricultural system and by an extensive trade network. The site contained millions of marine shells representing over 60 species, plus ricolite, turquoise, salt, selenite, copper ore, and elaborate ceramic vessels. (These last have inspired a modern imitative renaissance that serves the tourist industry in the Southwestern United States.) Occupational specialists worked in shell, copper, and other materials.
Sometime about 1340 CE, Casas Grandes political supremacy came to an end. The site fell into disrepair. Goods were still produced in large volume, but civil construction and public maintenance ceased. Public and ceremonial areas were altered for living quarters. The dead were buried in city water canals and plaza drains. As walls crumbled, ramps were built to reach the still usable upper rooms. Casas Grandes finally burned, at which time corpses were left unburied in public places, and altars were systematically destroyed.
13. The Chacoans
The San Juan Basin is an arid, upland plateau located in northwestern New Mexico with Chaco Canyon as its center. Across this inhospitable landscape are found the remains of once-populous towns and villages, now utterly ruined and filled with windblown sand. The Chacoan towns, while not as widely known as the Mayan cities, present a similarly compelling picture. Instead of cities overtaken by jungle, the Chacoan image is of lost towns filled with drifting sands, and frequented only by desert fauna or occasional Navajo herders. The Chacoans were clearly masters of this desert, but somehow, disturbingly, they lost their mastery and the desert prevailed.
The Chacoans built a series of walled stone towns, called pueblos, across the San Juan Basin, and connected many of them by roads — roads that traverse the desert, ascend mesas, and cross ravines. Exotic goods were imported from as far away as northern Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. Trees to roof the towns were carried up to 50 kilometers across the desert to Chaco Canyon, the center of the Basin. From as early as 500 CE this regional society thrived. Sometime after 1050, however, something went wrong. Construction at towns ended, and some, then many, began to be abandoned. Trade networks declined, and the towns were scavenged for building materials. By 1300 the last sedentary peoples had either left, or reverted to a simple, mobile lifestyle.
The Chacoans were not alone among prehistoric Southwesterners in this experience. Peoples such as the Mimbres, the Jornada, and many others lived through their own episodes of collapse and abandonment of settled areas.
14. The Hohokam
The Hohokam were dwellers of the Southern Arizona desert, who before their collapse in the fifteenth century A.D. developed a complex cultural system characterized by extensive canal irrigation, public architecture, and an elaborate artifactual repertoire.
The Hohokam canal systems from the Salt and Gila rivers were large and sophisticated. Modern canals around the city of Phoenix parallel this ancient pattern. The population supported by this system invested in the construction of Mesoamerican-like symbols of political integration, such as ball courts and platform mounds. After ca. 1300 CE, the Hohokam began to develop a new form of architecture, characterized by ‘Great Houses’ of above-ground, multi-storied, poured adobe. The Great House at Casa Grande was situated within a 26 hectare walled compound that included many residential structures. The site of Los Muertos extended over several square kilometers.
The contemporary Pima of southern Arizona appear to be the lineal descendants of the Hohokam, but at the time of European contact lacked the political centralization that was characteristic of their ancestors.
15. The Eastern Woodlands
There were at least two cases of region-wide sociopolitical collapse in the prehistory of the North American Eastern Woodlands: those of the Hopewell and Mississippian complexes.
The Hopewell complex developed in the last one or two centuries BCE and the first four centuries CE in the Great Lakes-Riverine area of the Midwest. Hopewell is distinguished by such features as construction of large earthworks requiring mobilization and coordination of labor, complex systems of mortuary ritual, elaborate artifact forms, and importation of exotic raw materials and goods from across the eastern two-thirds of what is now the United States. Archaeological analysis reveals that Hopewell in many areas was characterized by complex, hierarchically organized societies in which segments of the economic system were controlled by elites of hereditary status. By perhaps 400 CE, however, the regional constellation of localized Hopewellian societies had everywhere collapsed. The Succeeding Late Woodland period (ca. 400–900 CE) is marked by a curtailment in trade, mortuary ceremonialism, public construction, and social complexity.
This hiatus was terminated by the Mississippian complex, with trade, ceremonialism, public architecture, and political centralization that exceeded by far the levels of Hopewell. The most complex, and best known Mississippian polity was centered at Cahokia. Located at a confluence of major river systems in what is now East St. Louis. Cahokia is the largest archaeological site north of Mesoamerica. Cahokia contained some 120 mounds spread across 8 square kilometers, and with its outlying settlements had a population of perhaps 40,000 persons. It contains Monks Mound, a 6 hectare, 600,000 cubic meter, 30 meter high earthwork that is the third largest pyramid in the Americas and one of the largest features ever built by prehistoric peoples. A timber stockade was built around the central part of Cahokia, including Monks Mound. Several circular astronomical observatories were built, considered by some to be wooden versions of England’s famous Stonehenge (and mis-appropriately labeled ‘Woodhenges’).
There is a planned pattern to Cahokia. It was built by a stratified society in which there was centralized control of resources. At least one member of the community elite was buried with human retainers and an array of imported luxury goods.
After 1250 A.D. activity at Cahokia declined, some areas were converted from pubhc to private use, and over time this center lost its regional supremacy. Some Mississippian-like societies persisted in the southeastern US until European contact, but no native societies in the Midwest achieved a comparable level of complexity.
16. The Huari and Tiabuanaco Empires
The period between 200 BCE and 600 or 700 CE saw the development in Peru of extensive irrigation and agricultural terracing in conjunction with growth of population. True cities were built that were the capitals of regional states. These shared a common heritage of technology and ideology, but were divided by distinctive art styles, separate governments, and competition for food and land. Out of this competitive situation two empires emerged, those of Huari in the north and Tiahuanaco in the south.
At its height the Huari Empire dominated almost the entire central Andes and much of the adjacent coastal lowlands. This empire was controlled by the highland city of Huari: In a short time, Huari-derived ceramic styles (themselves influenced by Tiahuanaco wares) appeared in many regions. Early Huari ceramics (like the later Inca wares) tend to occur in politico-religious contexts; in ceremonial centers, in cities, and in other high-prestige sites. Molds were used for the mass production of pottery. As these wares spread, local styles began to lose importance.
The Huari Empire imposed economic, social, and cultural changes on the areas it dominated. Local cultures were disrupted. Major urban centers were established in each valley. Building complexes in the Huari architectural style (administrative structures, storehouses, or barracks) were constructed at various places. Cities rose and fell with the Huari Empire. Goods and information Were exchanged across the central Andes on a scale never seen before. Various authors have suggested that urbanism and militarism, state distribution of foodstuffs, the Andean road system, and the spread of the Quechua language began with the Huari Empire.
Until, recently, the case for a contemporaneous, or chronologically overlapping, Tiahuanaco Empire was less clear. Since the only detailed work had been at the city of Tiahuanaco itself, in the Lake Titicaca Basin, the argument for an empire was by comparison to Huari. Recent work, however, has shown that a large rural hinterland was transformed by the Tiahuanaco rulers into an artificial agricultural landscape. There were massive public reclamation and construction projects that required large, coordinated labor forces. Throughout the Lake Titicaca Basin, state administrative structures were built near potentially arable land. The settlement pattern suggests political unification of the Basin, and the existence of an empire. Tiahuanaco itself may have held between 20,000 and 40,000 persons.
The Huari and Tiabuanaco Empires experienced a major collapse by ca. 1000/1100 CE. With the fall of the city of Huari, centers in various provinces were abandoned. Regional traditions re-emerged, as did local and regional political organizations. All cities of the southern highlands were abandoned, and-their populations scattered to the countryside. The north coast must have been depopulated. With the fall of the Huari Empire an era of smaller, contending states emerged.
17. The Kachin
The Kachin of Highland Burma are a classic people of anthropology. They are organized into three contrasting forms of society. These are the gumlao, or egalitarian, the gumsa, or stratified, and the shan, or feudal. Sociopolitical complexity and level of hierarchical authority increase through these social forms, in the order listed.
The noteworthy fact about the Kachin is that these forms are not static. Local groups may oscillate between gumlao and shan-like characteristics. Gumsa organization is a compromise between these contrasting poles. Some gumsa become shan, others revert back to gumlao organization. Yet equality of descent groups cannot be maintained, and eventually gumsa societies emerge from gumlao. What is most pertinent to the present topic is that stratified gumsa societies do not remain so. Through disaffection of their members, principles of hierarchy and associated complexity are periodically lost as such societies collapse to egalitarian organization.
The Strange Case of the Ik
The Ik are a people of northern Uganda who live at what must surely be the extreme of deprivation and disaster. A largely hunting and gathering people who have in recent times practiced some crop planting, the Ik are not really classifiable as a complex society. They are, nonetheless, a morbidly fascinating case of collapse in which a former, low level of social complexity has essentially disappeared.
Due to drought and disruption by national boundaries of the traditional cycle of movement, the Ik live in such a food- and water-scarce environment that there is absolutely no advantage to reciprocity and social sharing. The Ik, in consequence, display almost nothing of what could be considered societal organization. They are so highly fragmented that most activities, especially subsistence, are pursued individually. Each Ik will spend days or weeks on his or her own, searching for food and water. Sharing is virtually nonexistent. Two siblings or other kin can live side-by-side, one dying of starvation and the other well nourished, without the latter giving the slightest assistance to the other. The family as a social unit has become dysfunctional. Even conjugal pairs don’t form a cooperative unit except for a few specific purposes. Their motivation for marriage or cohabitation is that one person can’t build a house alone. The members of a conjugal pair forage alone, and do not share food. Indeed, their foraging is so independent that if both members happen to be at their residence together it is by accident.
Each conjugal compound is stockaded against the others. Several compounds together form a village, but this is a largely meaningless occurrence. Villages have no political functions or organization, not even a central meeting place.
Children are minimally cared for by their mothers until age three, and then are put out to fend for themselves. This separation is absolute. By age three they are expected to find their own food and shelter, and those that survive do provide for themselves. Children band into age-sets for protection, since adults will steal a child’s food whenever possible. No food sharing occurs within an age-set. Groups of children will forage in agricultural fields, which scares off birds and baboons. This is often given as the reason for having children.
Although little is known about how the Ik got to their present situation, there are some indications of former organizational patterns. They possess clan names, although today these have no structural significance. They live in villages, but these no longer have any political meaning. The traditional authority structure of family, lineage, and clan leaders has been progressively weakened. It appears that a former level of organization has simply been abandoned by the Ik as unprofitable and unsuitable in their present distress.
Modern Examples of Collapse
Other cases — the Spanish, French, Dutch and British — could be added to this list. The demise of these empires clearly represents a retrenchment from a multi-national level of centralized organization that was global in extent. There are, however, several differences from the majority of cases discussed above. Most notable is the fact that the loss of empire did not correspondingly entail collapse of the home administration. The modern cases appear to be most like the Old Babylonian kingdom, in which a relatively short-lived empire fell and was followed by a period of retrenchment, with no end to Babylon itself.
Epilogue
What should we make of all this? The takeaway is that some of these empires lasted for centuries and stretched for thousands of miles, but in the end, they collapsed, some rather precipitously. Will it happen to the empires that currently dominate Modernity?
Odds are that it will.
Like the once-mighty listed above, the empires of Modernity are almost certainly destined to fall. Only the passage of time will reveal the details.