Studying the demise of historic civilisations

Many of these great &quot;empires&quot; were simply extended looting machines, once they ran out of looting opportunities they collapsed in the same way that a Ponzi collapses when it run out of new &quot;investors&quot;. While things were good, it was all golden, glitter and glam, and many tall buildings.<p>Loot of course takes many forms, gold, silvers, the work of serfs, the work of slaves, monopolies on trade routes, monopolies on trades itself and of course looting of weak environments itself.<p>The aftermath is what is sustainable, but this difference between the glitter and the sustainable is very boring and what the historians call a dark age or dark period because its not newsworthy even thought it is actually the origin of the next age of expansion.

Does it seem to anyone else that they have conflated &quot;civilization&quot; and &quot;political entity&quot; for lack of a better term?<p>Serious question. It just seems that a lot of entries on this list are actually part of the same civilization. In the same way that I would consider the Spanish Empire, the British Empire, and the American Empire to be really all a part of the same Western Civilization. But maybe my thinking is totally wrong and that&#x27;s not what &quot;civilization&quot; means?

Is it true to say that China is the longest surviving civilization? They seem to think that Shang and Zhou are different civilisations? Instead of a continuity as they like to call it in China. There are good reasons why they should be considered continuations because they shared a similiar script for writing.

The full article is here: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;future&#x2F;story&#x2F;20190218-are-we-on-the-road-to-civilisation-collapse" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;future&#x2F;story&#x2F;20190218-are-we-on-the-road-...</a><p>&#x27;Interestingly&#x27; the first two listed factors are ecology related, and the biggest thread to the European civilization is not explicitly stated.

Absolutely fantastic book:- Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity&#x2F;dp&#x2F;0307719227" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity&#x2F;d...</a>

I&#x27;m quite disappointed that the aboriginal cultures of Australia are not factored into this. Bias against the idea that they might have been a civilisation?<p>Oldest oral traditions of any human culture. Oldest, still being worked, mining operation of any human culture. A hippocratic oath encoded in their culture while we, white Europeans, bled people to their deaths.<p>I think this report, while interesting - is not quite as complete a view of human civilisation as it could be. Australian aborigines throw out the whole idea - until white guys came along and genocided them, they were the oldest, longest-running civilisation of humankind, ever.

Ottoman empire lasted 624 years and it&#x27;s not mentioned in this article. They mention &#x27;Western Turk (70)&#x27; and I&#x27;ve no idea what that means.

&gt; While there is no single accepted theory for why collapses<p>This kind of reasoning rests on the success of disciplines like physics and chemistry where scientists have found general laws upon which they can build solid models of reality (within some extreme limits). History doesn&#x27;t lend itself well to this kind of thinking IMO, and only serves to cloak the innermost nature of history: it&#x27;s uniqueness. Instead we should realize the unique characteristics of our culture vs all preceding (and similarities too, by all means). It is a much more difficult exercise, but also much more rewarding since it <i>can</i> lead to a much better understanding of our predicament.<p>One thing that comes to mind is our complete interconnection and dependency on a few points of failure like no previous civilization. Our demise might not take several decades like the Roman empire, it might be over in a few days if we don&#x27;t change course(s) and build better resiliency.

My take on this is that once an economic model begins to fail, the society that is based on it will inevitably also fail. Eventually wars breakout (usually resource wars), and a new dominant player emerges and their economic model gets implemented until it fails. Usually what causes the failure is that the economic model has reached it&#x27;s growth or sustainability limit.<p>I actually think company life cycles are very analogous and can teach us much about societies and their growth and decline but on a faster timeline. Companies operate very much like mini-societies with their own culture, beliefs and ingrained practices. They have business models which are constantly evolving. Most if not all of them grow and eventually decline if they fail to adapt.<p>I&#x27;m of the opinion we are experiencing this now with whatever economic model we have in developed nations. It&#x27;s a never ending cycle, at least until the human species evolves or is eradicated.

Ignoring the difficult task of actually deciding when a civilization starts and stops, is there some theory that suggests that duration is the right measure? Don&#x27;t we need a reasonable model of how civilizations work.<p>It would be interesting to incorporate and merge the data from Joseph Tainter&#x27;s <i>Collapse of Complex Societies</i> with the data presented here.

These are awfully contested dates. Hun: 100? Vedic: 1000? Etc. These statistics obscure more than they explain, I think.

The Kingdom of Israel and Judah? While Wikipedia is not a credible source, it&#x27;s a good summary <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kingdom_of_Israel_(united_monarchy)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kingdom_of_Israel_(united_mona...</a><p>&gt; In contemporary scholarship the united monarchy is generally held to be a literary construction and not a historical reality, pointing to the lack of archaeological evidence.<p>See The Bible Unearthed for a more authentic source. I am slightly biased because I have been to Tel Hazor after and because of reading that book. (No matter who ruled at the time but a 25 x 21 m citadel with two-meter thick walls built three thousand years ago is just jaw dropping.)<p>Also, Vedic Civilisation [1000]? What evidence do we have that calls for this period to be called a single civilisation...?

You know I lately think that, ok, we&#x27;re mostly past the age of empires physically conquering one another, we&#x27;re in the age of economic ebbs and flows of established countries.<p>And in this kind of age, the thing that sinks a country is not aggression by others, but indifference and lethargy as a country &quot;gets old&quot;.<p>&quot;Getting old&quot; means the political desired and inertia of a rich, settled population get to dominate the goals and priorities of a nation, and it loses its drive to be scrappy, make sacrifices, and do the innovative things when one does when young and poor. You have generations who want to extract the gains put in by past generations. Or it costs too much to change people&#x27;s behavior.<p>That&#x27;s what I think is happening to western Europe and the US. Too many rich, old, soft people who now have settled and moneyed lives, and don&#x27;t want to make the same sacrifices that the generation previously were forced to, by unfortunate circumstance. Too happy with their 2nd homes and retirement plans.<p>Unless you have a really conscious and socially adept mechanism to force a people to renew themselves, this sets in. Sometimes, as sad as it is to imagine, I think you need a good war to refresh a country...

<i>we have the unique advantage of being able to learn from the wreckages of societies past</i><p>Why do we have that unique advantage? Plenty of civilisations had historians.

I just started researching this subject recently. Graham Hancock is a very interesting speaker regarding the subject. I highly recommend that anyone interested in this subject to have a listen.<p>Seems we are on a cycle of occasional doom and gloom, caused by nature. Think ice age cycles.

Sir John Glubb analyzed this in The Fate of Empires:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;people.uncw.edu&#x2F;kozloffm&#x2F;glubb.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;people.uncw.edu&#x2F;kozloffm&#x2F;glubb.pdf</a>

This clearly has outliers from fantastically ancient civilizations. Give it a qqnorm and you would see.<p>The median age is much more interesting than the mean, and more relevant for today.

The US lasted 243 years. Is it the oldest modern nation? I wonder, how will the modern nations different from the ancient ones?

It looks like the U.S. has another 93 years to look forward to!

Now that the citizens have discovered they can vote themselves money out of the treasury, and politicians vie to outdo each other in promising free stuff, we&#x27;ll see how long the US lasts.

Alternative title: The average length of time an ancient civilization had to last in order to be noticed by us is 336 years.

Let me throw a wrench into things with a provocative statement (which I have no intention of citing support for):<p>The affluence of Western Europe and the US was not built on hard work and ingenuity so much as the exploitation of cheap labor and the sudden access to deep veins of basic resources or economic&#x2F;industrial efficiencies which were either already extant but inaccessible without a critical mass of capital, or else were inevitable on an imminent timescale given past development.<p>Have at it.

I&#x27;m surprised the article doesn&#x27;t mention destructive ideologies. Early Christianity contributed to the demise of Roman empire. Marxism and fascism destroyed quite a few nations.

Typical western garbage. Applying vague nation state ideas to civilization. Hindus for example have seen thousands of years as their own unbroken history. Many mantras that I chant today are at least 1500 year old.