Is Modern Civilization Fragile?

Caltech—Our ancestors made themselves and us more vulnerable to the vagaries of nature and the weather once they switched from hunting and gathering to farming. So says Brian Fagan, emeritus professor of anthropology from University of California at Santa Barbara, who spoke on the impact of climate change on ancient societies at the Environmental Wars conference of the Skeptics Society last weekend. Fagan's chief claim is that Farming in this case stands for the advent of more complex and interconnected societies. Fagan argues that nimble hunter/gatherers could respond to environmental changes faster than farmers and urbanites who are tied to their land and their cities.

Fagan began his talk by describing his sojourn as a young man in a village of subsistence farmers in the Zambezi Valley in Africa. These farmers lived on the edge. In September and October, the farmers cleared and burnt the land in preparation for planting. Once the land was ready, they waited for the rain and when it came they hurried to plant their crops. The year Fagan lived in that village, the rain failed after the crops were planted and the village granaries emptied and the villagers suffered starvation. He noted in passing that he did not have any trouble getting food. "I have never forgotten what I learned about vulnerability," declared Fagan.

Fagan posits that human societies increased their vulnerability to natural catastrophes over the past 10,000 years (evidently more fully described in his book, The Long Summer: How climate changed civilization). Thus, climate change is responsible for humanity's shift to farming. Farming, according to Fagan, began in the Fertile Crescent after temperatures plunged during a global cold snap known as the Younger Dryas period. People living off abundant forests of pistachio nut trees and other plant foods had actually settled into permanent villages. As temperatures fell, the forest began to disappear and Neolithic people could no longer depend on its bounty. But instead of moving on, people in the area began the deliberate cultivation of wild plants; in other words, they became farmers. Fagan argues that farming led to "radically enhanced vulnerability," even though the new economy "spread like wildfire" and dominated the region by 8000 BC.

Fagan turns next to ancient Egypt where the Pharaonic system was established on the basis of abundant grain harvests. The Pharaohs claimed authority based on their ability to intercede with the gods to supply the annual Nile River floods that nourished Egypt's bountiful grain fields. Fagan notes that a good flood was a mere nine feet. However, a 60 year period of gradual drying began around 2180 BC as an El Nino drought struck the Ethiopian headwaters of the Nile. In fact the river became so dry that people could walk across it. In the face of these grain shortages, Egypt fell apart and local warlords seized control. It took 100 years for Egypt to reunify and later Pharaohs massively invested in irrigation and grain storage in order to avoid the fate of their improvident predecessors.

Fagan then considers the rise and fall of the Moche on the north coast of Peru between 200 and 600 AD. Northern Peru is one of the driest areas on earth, but the Moche thrived by settling in river valleys that laced the region. These irrigation societies were headed by a caste of warrior priests who were treated by their people as infallible gods, according to Fagan. However, around 600 AD a major earthquake wiped out the Moche's irrigation systems. After the earthquake an intense El Nino drought finished off the Moche, and the culture's rigid, inflexible leaders were overthrown.

Fagan's final dolorous example of human vulnerability to climatic events is Europe in the year 1315. Medieval life was set by the passage of seasons and never seemed to change. Ninety percent of Europeans lived from one harvest to the next. The only noises heard in this bucolic world were those made by the wind, birds, and church bells. Then one day it started to rain and rain and rain. The fields turned to mud and marginal soils washed away. By Christmas people were hungry. The stormy period lasted for seven years and by 1321 one and half million Europeans had died of starvation.

Fagan argues that modern human societies are as vulnerable as the earlier ones. But is that so? Let's go back to his account of the invention of agriculture. What happened is that our ancestors exchanged one set of vulnerabilities for another when they switched from gathering wild nuts and berries to farming.

Of course, there are always tradeoffs. Some archaeologists argue that early farmers were in general less healthy than their hunter/gatherer ancestors resulting lower life expectancies. They claim that farmers suffered more epidemic diseases from living in close quarters with others and that their limited grain-based diets fostered malnutrition. However, these claims are disputed, and in any case, even if ancient farmers experienced lower life expectancies than hunter/gatherers, they must have also experienced higher fertility rates because human populations began to grow after the invention of agriculture.

Farming produced storable food surpluses that freed some portion of the population from having to spend every day all day scrounging for their subsistence. True, many of these people wasted a lot of effort on religious mumbo jumbo, but some spent their time inventing pottery, writing, weaving, metal working and so forth. Rather than increasing vulnerability these new arts and technologies helped make people more resilient rather than more vulnerable. On balance, the switch made humanity less vulnerable to the vagaries of nature. Farming increased the security of food supplies, and allowed the creation of larger scale societies in which people could trade surpluses. Dynasties and even cultures pass into history, but farmers and farming remain.

As evidence of our increased modern vulnerability to nature's whims, Fagan cites the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Katrina proves many things—among them, don't trust governments to build levees or organize effective emergency responses—but does it demonstrat increased overall vulnerability? Hardly. Katrina killed more than 1,800 people (there are hundreds more still missing), destroyed billions of dollars of property, and disrupted energy supplies, yet the American economy shrugged off the blow and continued to expand. Our elaborate globe-spanning networks of energy supplies, computers and trade actually buffer us against the effects of natural disasters.

Look back at Fagan's experience living in a village in the Zambezi Valley, where the anthropologist actually missed the lesson he should have learned. Recall that Fagan said that he never lacked for food. Didn't he ask himself: Why are the villagers starving while I'm not? Unlike the Zambezi villagers, Fagan had access to the outside modern world that could supply him Nestle chocolate, canned Spam, rolled oatmeal, powdered milk and whatever else he needed. He was less vulnerable to starvation because he did not depend on the rains falling at a specific time in a specific place.

The good news is that when the rains fail in southern Africa today, the villagers have greater access food and other supplies from across the globe—much as Fagan had five decades ago. For example, four years ago, when famine threatened (due to drought and unbelievably stupid government policies) grain was rushed to Zambia and Zimbabwe and starvation mostly averted. It is very unlikely that droughts or floods will devastate every agricultural region across the globe all at once. Mother Nature can still be a bitch, but Fagan is simply wrong when he claims that modern societies are more and more vulnerable to her caprices. Our interconnected and globalized world provides more and more of humanity with radically enhanced security rather than increased vulnerability.

Our civilization is vulnerable to destruction because people are to segmented and specialized.We are dependent on engineering and technology but few people are well educated in those areas

And that has always been the case.

Percentages? Probably about the same.

Really?

The U.S. Census Bureau claims that as of 1 July 2005, Orleans county had a population of 437,186. According to Wikipedia, 1,836 people died as a result of Katrina.

Counting ONLY Orleans county, that comes to 0.004%. Are you sure a hurricane of Katrina's magnitude would have only killed less than one half of one percent of hunter-gatherers living in the same area, without the benefit of early warning or outside assistance?

"Are you sure a hurricane of Katrina's magnitude would have only killed less than one half of one percent of hunter-gatherers living in the same area, without the benefit of early warning or outside assistance?"

Most of the people who died in New Orleans were living off the compassion of other people, in a hunter-gatherer society, they wouldn't even have been alive when Katrina hit.

Some of the most primitive people on earth:

Survivors Of Tsunami

"The December 26 tsunami in Southeast Asia heightened international awareness of the region's indigenous peoples."

"Non-governmental organizations, governments, and anthropologists working in the region say many indigenous groups survived the tsunami because their traditional lore passed down from generation to generation prepared them to deal with natural disasters. Their survival demonstrated to the world the relevance of indigenous traditional knowledge."

"In communities where Western encroachment had destroyed traditional life ways, indigenous groups had no defense against the tsunami's destruction."

The most apparent contradiction is that if Fagan were correct, most human societies today would still be hunter-gatherer. But they are not.

Farming started when hunter-gatherers domesticated plants and animals, proving it all-round more profitible to bring the food to you than you to the food. That's the inherent quality of civilization.

"This indigenous tribe survived the Tsunami: "

Stone Age tribe kills fishermen who strayed on to island

Thanks. I've seen that article before.

People are not taught survival skills such as agriculture and how to gather wild edible herbs and plants.

And then there are archaeologists.

If civilization goes to pot, look me up for some good arrowheads and other tools. But better bring something good to trade; dollar bills may have deflated a bit.

Fagan's research is broad, but seldom deep; I find it interesting for laymen, excruciating for professionals.

His California archaeology book is a good example. That's a subject I know well. I got 20 pages and had to stop.

The book was remaindered out within a year.

Ummm, yes?

"Boom, boom, boom! Out go the lights!"

You have to just love the infrastructure targets: power plants, substations, transformers, sewage processing stations, water pumping and purification plants, dams. Woo-Hoo. Hit a few of those and a city becomes uninhabitable.

...it is interesting to try to imagine what it must have been like to be set upon by a hurricane unannounced.

It didn't work out too well for the inhabitants of Galveston, Texas in September of 1900. The local station of the U.S. Weather Bureau assured the citizens that the approaching storm would miss them; consequently, few decided to evacuate.

Isaac's Storm : A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

We have many examples of advanced societies who had no access to electricity.

The key part is "society as we know it," that is, modern, technologically-advanced society. It all depends on electricity to function. Modern manufacturing for example requires vast amounts of electricity.

One only need to look at the Convention Center in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to answer that question. Of course, a lot of those folks weren't civilized to begin with.

Well, since I am probably about to buy books on gathering wild, edible, herbs and surviving off the land.I may be able to trade some wild, edible ,herbs (I may even learn about medicinal herbs while I'm at it) ,or maybe I could even trade in some of my books on hunting and gathering.

"I think I will keep...95% of my neighbors..."

Of course, otherwise with no refrigeration they will have spoiled by the time you need them...

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