Re:What Doomed a Sprawling City Near St. Louis 1k Years Ago?
by adolph on Monday April 26, 2021 @12:04PM
(#26944100)
Narratives can be informed more by the time from which they arise and not by the time to which they want to describe. The authors provide the context here:
Environmental explanations for the collapse of complex societies have been popular topics since William Thomas' 1956 volume on “Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth” (Thomas, 1956). This seminal work established the philosophical argument that humans are inherently destructive to the environment (Middleton, 2017; Ponting, 1991; Thomas, 1956), a philosophy that is widely applied in anthropology (Oliver‐Smith & Hoffman, 1999), geology (Nianfeng et al., 1999; Wilkinson, 2005), biology (Ceballos et al., 2015; Meyer & Turner, 1992; Vitousek et al., 1997), environmental ethics (Attfield, 2008), and general public discourse today (Diamond, 2005; Goudie, 2019; Montine et al., 1990; Ponting, 1991; Ward, 2009).
Environmental explanations for the collapse of complex societies have been popular topics since William Thomas' 1956 volume on “Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth” (Thomas, 1956). This seminal work established the philosophical argument that humans are inherently destructive to the environment (Middleton, 2017; Ponting, 1991; Thomas, 1956), a philosophy that is widely applied in anthropology (Oliver‐Smith & Hoffman, 1999), geology (Nianfeng et al., 1999; Wilkinson, 2005), biology (Ceballos et al., 2015; Meyer & Turner, 1992; Vitousek et al., 1997), environmental ethics (Attfield, 2008), and general public discourse today (Diamond, 2005; Goudie, 2019; Montine et al., 1990; Ponting, 1991; Ward, 2009).