When Societies Collapse

8 ideas from the fall of civilisations

Hello there,

We live in an era of intellectual poverty, where everyone prefers zooming into the hyper-present and failing to see any value in the past.

But this unhealthy obsession with lewd reels doesn’t bode well for us.

If our goal is to ensure civilizational continuity and human flourishing, studying the cycles of rise and fall across space and time isn’t just a cool-sounding idea. It’s an imperative.

In this vein, I found Paul Cooper’s analysis of civilizations through history quite interesting.

Societal collapse isn’t fun

His stories on the rise and fall of peoples like the Sumerians, Aztecs, Vijayanagar, and Easter Island span thousands of years and offer many important lessons.

Here are 8 ideas I found intriguing, and worth thinking about:

1. Climate-driven collapse: What’s common between the Sumerians, Hittites, Mayans, Harappans, and Khmers? These are all civilizations where climate change was a major catalyst for their collapse. There was a different cocktail of factors every time, but climate-induced troubles often set the stage up for a brutal downfall. The Sumerians saw their soil becoming way too salty (since the hot sun evaporated the water that flowed from mountains that were rich in salt and minerals). This reduced fertility, leading to lower agricultural productivity, and causing famines over time. High grain prices & low yields always weaken empires and cause internal unrest, opening the empire up to invasions. That’s how the Sumerians collapsed. This offers stark lessons for our times and brings us to the next point.
   
   
   

2. Internal divisions: So many states have collapsed because internal schisms were skillfully exploited by shrewd conquerors. As Indians, we’ve experienced this time and again- from the disunited front presented by Prithviraj Chauhan to Ghori, who took advantage and accelerated the Islamic conquest of North India, to the British scheming that played one state against another to eventually control vast swathes of the subcontinent. But this is a theme that has played out across civilizations. Many believe that the Aztecs were defeated solely by a few dozen Spanish conquistadors, but even in that case, it would not have been possible without the support of local enemies of the Aztec king who assisted the Spaniards in their mission. The same goes for the Incan king Atahualpa who, weakened by civil war, paid scant attention to the advancing Spaniards who consigned the mighty empire to obscurity.
   
   
   

3. Loss of Knowledge: As civs collapse, we lose valuable knowledge that they were able to put together. So much important stuff was lost when the libraries of Alexandria or Nalanda were burned. Today, we may arrogantly believe that we’ve created enough redundancy in our data storage capabilities and that our knowledge will survive the test of that time, but that isn’t true. All our digital information is built on the bedrock of electricity, computers, and the internet. If modern civilization collapses and we destroy our electrical grids and computers, the next civ may not be able to access all the data unless they can build the technologies needed to read computers & servers. We run the very real risk of wasting our knowledge bounty without making concrete efforts at preservation.
   
   
   

4. Anti-fragile information: One way to think about it is that our info-storage media need to be prepared for all risks. The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal ensured that thousands of books were written on clay tablets. As the empire was destroyed and fires burned down the cities, the clay books, ironically, got baked and hardened, and were preserved underground through the centuries. In a way, the info-storage tech he used ended up being anti-fragile, and we may need to think of similar ways to preserve essential pieces of knowledge that new civilizations in the coming millennia would benefit from, in case the present one face total collapse and cannot pass on what it has learned.
   
   
   

5. Bronze Age supply chains: In the 2nd millennium BC, bronze was the key commodity, much like oil today, as it was used for weapons and domestic tools. But it needed tin for manufacturing, which was a rare commodity found only in a handful of places. As climate change wreaked havoc on the empires of the era, many weren’t able to secure adequate supplies which led to weakened militaries and were ultimately destroyed by invasion by a group called the ‘Sea Peoples’, who themselves were probably refugees who entered the Middle East because their area had experienced a volcano-driven climate collapse. Securing supply chains of strategic material is a make-or-break affair for states, and the same applies to semiconductor and energy dependence today.
   
   
   

6. Technological Red Queen: The Carthaginians’ naval superiority seemed unassailable until the Romans developed the Corvus—a boarding device that turned sea battles into land-style combat by helping the Romans enter the ships and wage hand-to-hand combat. This innovation allowed Rome to decisively defeat Carthage in naval engagements. Similarly, the Byzantine Empire, protected for centuries by the formidable walls of Constantinople, fell when Mehmet II deployed cannons—revolutionary siege technology that rendered their defenses obsolete. These examples highlight the "Red Queen Effect" in warfare: a relentless arms race where falling behind in technological innovation often leads to catastrophic defeat. The same was covered in my piece on lessons from 18th-century India.
   
   
   
   

7. Treaties sow the seeds of the next war: After being defeated by the Romans, the Carthaginians were forced to pay enormous reparations. These crippling payments devastated Carthage's economy, leaving soldiers unpaid and triggering a brutal civil war that was quelled at great cost. This period of hardship and humiliation fostered deep resentment among Carthaginian leaders, paving the way for figures like the brilliant general Hannibal, whose hatred for Rome drove the Second Punic War. History repeated itself nearly 2,000 years later: the Treaty of Versailles after World War I imposed ruinous reparations on Germany, causing hyperinflation, widespread suffering, and disillusionment. These conditions directly fueled the rise of extremism and made World War II inevitable. Treaties that impose excessive costs on the defeated often plant the seeds for future conflict.
   
   
   

8. Red Ochre Effect: The Mayans believed applying red ochre paste to their foreheads enhanced vitality and connected them to the divine, but the arsenic in the ochre likely poisoned their water supply, causing widespread health issues. Similarly, the Aztecs thought human sacrifices ensured agricultural fertility and divine protection, but the practice alienated their vassal states and destabilized their empire. Societies often adopt practices they believe are essential for progress or survival but are, in reality, harmful—a cautionary parallel for modern behaviors like fast food consumption or digital addiction. One can’t help but wonder what other Red Ochre ideas we’re blindly embracing in the 21st century.

---

That’s it for today, folks. I hope today’s read sparked your curiosity instead of depressing the shit out of you. If you liked it, you’ll also enjoy reading:

• Changing World Order

• How Humans Got Rich [Very Insightful]

• 23 Ideas From 2023