A radical retelling of human history through collapse – from the dawn
of our species to the urgent existential threats of the twentieth-first
century and beyond – based on the latest research and a database of
more than 440 societal lifespans over the last 5,000 years.
Why do civilisations collapse?
For the first 200,000 years of human history, hunter-gathering Homo
sapiens lived in fluid, egalitarian civilizations that thwarted any
individual or group from ruling permanently. Then, around 12,000 years
ago, that began to change.
Slowly, reluctantly we congregated in the first farms and cities, and
people began to rely on lootable resources like grain and fish for
their daily sustenance. When more powerful weapons became available,
small groups began to seize control of these valuable commodities. This
inequality in resources soon tipped over into inequality in power, and
we started to adopt more primal, hierarchical forms of organisation.
Power was concentrated in masters, kings, pharaohs and emperors (and
ideologies were born to justify their rule). Goliath-like states and
empires – with vast bureaucracies and militaries – carved up and
dominated the globe.
What brought them down? From Rome and the Aztec empire and the early
cities of Cahokia and Teotihuacan, it was increasing inequality and
concentrations of power which hollowed these Goliaths out before an
external shock brought them crashing down. These collapses were written
up as apocalyptic, but in truth they were usually a blessing for most
of the population.
Now we live in a single global Goliath. Growth-obsessed, extractive
institutions like the fossil fuel industry, big tech, and
military-industrial complexes rule our world and produce new ways of
annihilating our species, from climate change to nuclear war. Our
systems are now so fast, complex and interconnected that a future
collapse will likely be global, swift and irreversible. All of us now
faces a choice: we must learn to democratically control Goliath, or the
next collapse may be our last.
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