Societal Collapse

Description

From the Wikipedia:

"Societal collapse (also known as civilizational collapse) is the fall of a complex human society characterized by the loss of cultural identity and of socioeconomic complexity, the downfall of government, and the rise of violence. Possible causes of a societal collapse include natural catastrophe, war, pestilence, famine, population decline, and mass migration. A collapsed society may revert to a more primitive state (Dark Ages), be absorbed into a stronger society, or completely disappear.

Virtually all civilizations have suffered such a fate, regardless of their size or complexity, but some of them later revived and transformed, such as China, India, and Egypt. However, others never recovered, such as the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, the Mayan civilization, and the Easter Island civilization. Societal collapse is generally quick but rarely abrupt. However, some cases involve not a collapse but only a gradual fading away, such as the British Empire since 1918.

Anthropologists, (quantitative) historians, and sociologists have proposed a variety of explanations for the collapse of civilizations involving causative factors such as environmental change, depletion of resources, unsustainable complexity, invasion, disease, decay of social cohesion, rising inequality, secular decline of cognitive abilities, loss of creativity, and misfortune.[1][4][5] However, complete extinction of a culture is not inevitable, and in some cases, the new societies that arise from the ashes of the old one are evidently its offspring, despite a dramatic reduction in sophistication. Moreover, the influence of a collapsed society, such as the Western Roman Empire, may linger on long after its death.

The study of societal collapse, collapsology, is a topic for specialists of history, anthropology, sociology, and political science. More recently, they are joined by experts in cliodynamics and study of complex systems."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse)

Discussion

Duration of Civilizations

Wikipedia:

"The social scientist Luke Kemp analyzed dozens of civilizations, which he defined as "a society with agriculture, multiple cities, military dominance in its geographical region and a continuous political structure," from 3000 BC to 600 AD and calculated that the average life span of a civilization is close to 340 years. Of them, the most durable were the Kushite Kingdom in Northeast Africa (1,150 years), the Aksumite Empire in Africa (1,100 years), and the Vedic civilization in South Asia and the Olmecs in Mesoamerica (both 1,000 years), and the shortest-lived were the Nanda Empire in India and the Qin Dynasty in China ."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse)

Population Dynamics Involved in the Decline and Collapse of Societies and Civilizations

Declining birth rates as a factor in civilizational decline:

From the Wikipedia:

"Writing in The Histories, the Greek historian Polybius largely blamed the decline of the Hellenistic world on low fertility rates. He asserted that while protracted wars and deadly epidemics were absent, people were generally more interested in "show and money and the pleasures of an idle life" than in marrying and raising children. Those who had children, according to him, had no more than one or two, with the express intention of "leaving them well off or bringing them up in extravagant luxury."[70][71] However, it is difficult to estimate the actual fertility rate of Greece at the time because Polybius did not provide any data for analysis but gave only a narrative that likely came from his impression of the kinds of Greeks with whom he was familiar: the elites, rather than the commoners. Otherwise, the population decline would have been abrupt. Nevertheless, the Greek case parallels the Roman one.

But since more plenteous honor has come to planes that yield a sterile shade, than to any three, we fruit-bearers (if as a nut tree I am counted among them) have begun to luxuriate in spreading foliage. How apples grow not every year, and injured grapes and injured berries are brought home: now she that would seem beautiful harms her womb, and rare in these days is she who would be a parent.

By around 100 BC, the notion of romantic love started becoming popular in Rome. In the final years of the Roman Republic, Roman women were well known for divorcing, having extramarital affairs, and being reluctant to bear children. Viewing that as a threat to the social and political order and believing that the Roman upper-class was becoming increasingly cosmopolitan and individualistic, upon the establishment of the Roman Empire, Caesar Augustus introduced legislation designed to increase the birthrate. Men aged 20 to 60 and women aged 20 to 50 were legally obliged to marry, and widowed or divorced individuals within the relevant age range were required to remarry. Exemptions were granted to those who had already had three children in the case of free-born people and four in the case of freed slaves. For political or bureaucratic office, preference was given to those with at least three legitimate children. Diminished inheritance rights awaited those who failed to reproduce. In a speech to Roman nobles, he expressed his pressing concern over the low birthrates of the Roman elite. He also said that freed slaves had been granted citizenship and Roman allies given seats in government to increase the power and prosperity of Rome, but the "original stock" was not replacing itself and leaving the task to foreigners. Roman poet Ovid shared the same observation.

However, Augustan pro-natal policies proved unsuccessful. All that they did was fuel nostalgia and disdain for the present and went no further than reaffirming the past-oriented, rural, and patriarchal values of Imperial Rome. Like their Greek counterparts, Roman elites had access to contraception, though that knowledge was lost to Europe during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, and so could enjoy sexual intercourse without having to rear additional children. In other words, people of high socio-economic class of the Greco-Roman world were able to control their own fertility. Also, that ability likely trickled down to the lower classes. In any case, the result was predictable. The absence of modern medicine, which would have extended life expectancy, caused their numbers to start shrinking. Moreover, population decline coincided with people being less religious and more questioning of traditions, both of which contributed to falling fertility as more and more people came to the conclusion that it was up to them, rather than the gods, on how many children they had.

Other population imbalances may occur when low fertility rates coincides with high dependency ratios or when there is an unequal distribution of wealth between elites and commoners, both of which characterized the Roman Empire.

Several key features of human societal collapse can be related to population dynamics. For example, the native population of Cusco, Peru at the time of the Spanish conquest was stressed by an imbalanced sex ratio.

There is strong evidence that humans also display population cycles. Societies as diverse as those of England and France during the Roman, medieval, and early modern eras, of Egypt during Greco-Roman and Ottoman rule, and of various dynasties in China all showed similar patterns of political instability and violence becoming considerably more common after times of relative peace, prosperity, and sustained population growth. Quantitatively, periods of unrest included many times more events of instability per decade and occurred when the population was declining, rather than increasing. Pre-industrial agrarian societies typically faced instability after one or two centuries of stability. However, a population approaching its carrying capacity alone is not enough to trigger general decline if the people remained united and the ruling class strong. Other factors had to be involved, such as having more aspirants for positions of the elite than the society could realistically support (elite overproduction), which led to social strife, and chronic inflation, which caused incomes to fall and threatened the fiscal health of the state. In particular, an excess in especially young adult male population predictably led to social unrest and violence, as the third and higher-order parity sons had trouble realizing their economic desires and became more open to extreme ideas and actions. Adults in their 20s are especially prone to radicalization. Most historical periods of social unrest lacking in external triggers, such as natural calamities, and most genocides can be readily explained as a result of a built-up youth bulge. As those trends intensified, they jeopardized the social fabric, which facilitated the decline."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse)

More information

Bibliography

"Joseph Tainter frames societal collapse in his The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988), which is a seminal and founding work of the academic discipline on societal collapse. He elaborates that 'collapse' is a "broad term," but in the sense of societal collapse, he views it as "a political process." He further narrows societal collapse as a rapid process (within "few decades") of "substantial loss of sociopolitical structure," giving the fall of the Western Roman Empire as "the most widely known instance of collapse" in the Western world.

Others, particularly in response to the popular Collapse (2005) by Jared Diamond and more recently, have argued that societies discussed as cases of collapse are better understood through resilience and societal transformation, or "reorganization", especially if collapse is understood as a "complete end" of political systems, which according to Shmuel Eisenstadt has not taken place at any point. Eisenstadt also points out that a clear differentiation between total or partial decline and "possibilities of regeneration" is crucial for the preventive purpose of the study of societal collapse."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse)