Is Industrial Society on the Verge of Collapse?

[HardPort]

9. Diamond's Gibbons-esque myopia hamstrings his scholarship.

Chaco society didn't collapse. Its people moved on to new pueblos in Arizona and New Mexico, and they are still there today and could tell Mr. Diamond all about where Chaco and Mesa Verde fit into their history and cosmology if he cared to know. But, Eurocentrism.

Same goes for the Maya. Despite the massive population collapse that followed the introduction of Afro-Eurasian pathogens, and despite centuries of colonialism, the Maya are still there, severely marginalized by modern governments but still keeping alive ancient histories and technologies in which Mr. Diamond really isn't interested if it doesn't help him build the nonsensical "Rise and Fall" narrative he inherited.

And Norse Greenland. Really? That was just a colonial outpost that was really never going to last. But saying it marked the end of Norse civilization is like saying Athenian civilization collapsed because of its failed colonization project in Sicily.

Fact is, civilizations and empires don't fall. Not even Rome. The empire went through centuries of change until it was no longer recognizable as what it had been, but it didn't fall. Eddie Gibbons just couldn't fit all that in the title of his book.