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Fall of a Civilization is originally a concept taken from Edward Gibbon's historical account of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The fall of a civilization is considered to be the end of a specific type of urban culture, associated with large numbers of people living in towns or cities. Whilst the number of civilizations that have been said to exist vary in number, the general tendency has been for smaller civilized cultures to either suffer a decline and fall, or else to become incorporated by a larger, more dynamic culture, into a regional civilization involving more people and a greater geographic spread. The ultimate consequence of this is incorporation of the whole planet into a single civilization which has grown out of Western Europe as a result of the industrial revolution. Today, Islamic, Hindu, Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Far Eastern civilizations have become incorporated as part of the Industrial Growth Civilization that today spans the whole world, and of which, every nation is now a part. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Societal collapse is the large scale breakdown or long term decline of the culture, civil institutions or other major characteristics of a society or a civilization, on a temporary or permanent basis. ... Edward Gibbon (1737–1794). ... The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a major literary achievement of Eighteenth Century, was written by the British historian, Edward Gibbon. ... Cities are a major hallmark of human civilization. ...

Causes of a Fall of Civilization

When not incorporated into a larger civilization, the fall of a civilization may result in a Dark Age, associated with a collapse in social complexity, the disappearance of centralized authority, the fragmentation into competitive mini-states, and a major, probably Malthusian, decline in population. Societal collapse is the large scale breakdown or long term decline of the culture, civil institutions or other major characteristics of a society or a civilization, on a temporary or permanent basis. ... A Malthusian catastrophe, sometimes known as a Malthusian check, Malthusian crisis, Malthusian dilemma, Malthusian disaster, Malthusian trap, or Malthusian limit is a return to subsistence-level conditions as a result of agricultural (or, in later formulations, economic) production being eventually outstripped by growth in population. ...

There have been many explanations put forward for the collapse of civilization.

Edward Gibbon's massive work "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" began an interest in the Fall of Civilizations, that had begun with the historical divisions of Petrarch[1] between the Classical period of Ancient Greece and Rome, the succeeding Medieval Ages, and the Renaissance. For Gibbon:- Edward Gibbon (1737–1794). ... The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a major literary achievement of Eighteenth Century, was written by the British historian, Edward Gibbon. ... From the c. ... Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, which begins roughly with the earliest-recorded Greek poetry of Homer (7th century BC), and continues through the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th century AD... Ancient Greece is a period in Greek history that lasted for around one thousand years. ... Nickname: The Eternal City Motto: SPQR: Senatus PopulusQue Romanus Location of the city of Rome (yellow) within the Province of Rome (red) and region of Lazio (grey) Coordinates: Region Lazio Province Province of Rome Founded 21 April 753 BC  - Mayor Walter Veltroni Area    - City 1285 km²  (580 sq mi)  - Urban... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Raphael was famous for depicting illustrious figures of the Classical past with the features of his Renaissance contemporaries. ...

"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long."[Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed., vol. 4, ed. by J. B. Bury (London, 1909), pp. 173-174.] Gibbon suggested the final act of the collapse of Rome was the collapse of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 AD.

Theodor Mommsen in his "History of Rome", suggested Rome collapsed with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and he also tended towards a biological analogy of "genesis," "growth," "senescence," "collapse" and "decay." Theodor Mommsen Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen (30 November 1817–1 November 1903) was a German classical scholar and historian, generally regarded as the greatest classicist of the 19th century. ... A simplified plan of the city of Rome from the 15th-century illuminated manuscript Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. ...

Oswald Spengler, in his "Decline of the West" rejected Petrarch's chronological division, and suggested that there had been only eight "mature civilizations." Growing cultures, he argued, tend to develop into imperialistic civilizations which expand and ultimately collapse, with democratic forms of government ushering in plutocracy and ultimately imperialism. Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (Blankenburg am Harz May 29, 1880 – May 8, 1936, Munich) was a German historian and philosopher, although his studies ranged throughout mathematics, science, philosophy, history, and art. ... The Decline of the West (German: Der Untergang des Abendlandes) is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler, the first volume of which was published in the summer of 1918. ... From the c. ...

Arnold J. Toynbee in his monumental "A Study of History" suggested that there had been a much larger number of civilizations, including a small number of arrested civilizations, and that all civilizations tended to go through the cycle identified by Mommsen. The cause of the fall of a civilization occurred when a cultural elite became a parasitic elite, leading to the rise of internal and external proletariat. Arnold Joseph Toynbee (April 14, 1889 - October 22, 1975) was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934-1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline. ... A Study of History is the 12-volume magnum opus of British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, finished in 1961. ... The proletariat (from Latin proles, offspring) is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. ...

Joseph Tainter in "The Collapse of Complex Societies" suggested that there was diminishing returns to complexity, due to which, as states achieved a maximum permissible complexity, they would decline when further increases actually produced a negative return. Tainter suggested that Rome achieved this figure in the 2nd Century AD. Joseph Tainter is a U.S. anthropologist and historian whose best-known work is The Collapse of Complex Societies. ... Societal collapse is the large scale breakdown or long term decline of the culture, civil institutions or other major characteristics of a society or a civilization, on a temporary or permanent basis. ... In economics, diminishing returns is the short form of diminishing marginal returns. ... For the Computer Science term, see Computational complexity theory. ...

Jared Diamond in his recent book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" suggests five major reasons for the collapse of 41 studied cultures. Jared Mason Diamond (born 10 September 1937) is an American evolutionary biologist, physiologist, biogeographer and nonfiction author. ... Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed cover Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is a 2005 English-language book by University of California, Los Angeles geography professor Jared M. Diamond. ...

• Environmental damage, such as deforestation and soil erosion
• Climate change
• Dependence upon long-distance trade for needed resources
• Increasing levels of internal and external violence, such as war or invasion
• Societal responses to internal and environmental problems

Peter Turchin in his Historical Dynamics and Andrey Korotayev et al. in their Introduction to Social Macrodynamics, Secular Cycles, and Millennial Trends suggest a number of mathematical models describing collapse of agrarian civilizations. For example, the basic logic of Turchin's "fiscal-demographic" model can be outlined as follows: during the initial phase of a sociodemographic cycle we observe relatively high levels of per capita production and consumption, which leads not only to relatively high population growth rates, but also to relatively high rates of surplus production. As a result, during this phase the population can afford to pay taxes without great problems, the taxes are quite easily collectible, and the population growth is accompanied by the growth of state revenues. During the intermediate phase, the increasing overpopulation leads to the decrease of per capita production and consumption levels, it becomes more and more difficult to collect taxes, and state revenues stop growing, whereas the state expenditures grow due to the growth of the population controlled by the state. As a result, during this phase the state starts experiencing considerable fiscal problems. During the final pre-collapse phases the overpopulation leads to further decrease of per capita production, the surplus production further decreases, state revenues shrink, but the state needs more and more resources to control the growing (though with lower and lower rates) population. Eventually this leads to famines, epidemics, state breakdown, and demographic and civilization collapse (Peter Turchin. Historical Dynamics. Princeton University Press, 2003:121–127). Deforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forest land use such as arable land, urban use, logged area or wasteland. ... Severe soil erosion in a wheat field near Washington State University, USA. Erosion is the displacement of solids (soil, mud, rock, and so forth) by the agents of wind, water, ice, or movement in response to gravity. ... Variations in CO2, temperature and dust from the Vostok ice core over the last 400,000 years For current global climate change, see the main article Global warming. ... International trade is the exchange of goods and services across international boundaries or territories. ... Peter Turchin, is a world known specialist in population dynamics and mathematical modeling of historical dynamics. ... Andrey Korotayev (born in 1961) is an anthropologist, economic historian, and sociologist. ... Social cycle theory (also known as sociological theory of cycles) is one of the earliest social theories in sociology. ... Human population increase from 10,000 BC – 2000 AD. Population growth is change in population over time, and can be quantified as the change in the number of individuals in a population per unit time. ... Map of countries by population (See List of countries by population. ...

Peter Heather in his book The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians argues that this civilization did not end for moral or economic reasons, but due to the fact that centuries of contact with barbarians across the frontier generated its own nemesis by making them a much more sophisticated and dangerous adversary. The fact that Rome needed to generate ever greater revenues to equip and re-equip armies that were for the first time repeatedly defeated in the field, led to the dismemberment of Empire. Although this argument is specific to Rome, it can also be applied to the Asiatic Empire of the Egyptians, to the Han and Tang Empires of China, to the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate, and others. Peter Heather is a teacher at Worcester College, University of Oxford who is considered a leading authority on the barbarians of the Roman era. ...

Bryan Ward-Perkins in his book The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, unlike many revisionist historians who downplay the suffering of the collapse of a civilization shows the real horrors associated with it for the people who suffer its effects. The collapse of complex society meant that even basic plumbing disappeared from the continent for 1,000 years. Similar Dark Age collapses are seen with the Late Bronze Age collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean, the collapse of the Maya, on Easter Island and elsewhere. Bryan Ward-Perkins is an archaeologist and historian of the later Roman Empire and early Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the transitional period between those two eras, an historical sub-field also known as Late Antiquity. ... The Greek Dark Ages (ca. ... The Bronze Age collapse is the name of the period of history of the Ancient Middle East extending between the collapse of the Hittite and Egyptian Empires in Anatolia, Syria and Palestine between 1206 and 1150 BCE, down to the rise of settled Aramaean kingdoms of the mid 10th century...

Arthur Demarest in Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization using a holistic perspective to the most recent evidence from archaeology, palaeoecology, and epigraphy, argues that no one explanation is sufficient but that a series of erratic, complex events, including loss of soil fertility, drought and rising levels of internal and external violence led to the disintegration of the courts of Mayan kingdoms which began a spiral of decline and decay. He argues that the collapse of the Maya has lessons for civilization today.

Generally, explanations for the collapse of civilization have shifted from inherent biological analogies to more systemic ecological understandings which show that sustainable cultures fail to be built. Ernst Haeckel coined the term oekologie in 1866. ... Sustainability is an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future. ... Culture (from the [[Latin)) cultura stemming from colere, meaning to cultivate), generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. ...

There have thus been many reasons put forward for the collapse and fall of such civilizations, including

• climatic changes
• destruction of the environment - deforestation, loss of soils, desertification, water crisis, etc.
• changes in military technology
• loss of organizing spirit
• decline in creativity
• collapse of long distance trade routes
• barbarian invasion crossing the borders of a civilization
• declining returns of complexity
• declining capacities of the ruling class
• the rise of superstitious and counterproductive beliefs
• pandemic, pestilence and plague
• astronomical or volcanic catastrophe

Not all these factors are contradictory, and more than one factor is often used concurrently with others. From an examination of the evidence it would seem that the collapse of a civilization usually occurs after a long period of growth, in which the population becomes vitally dependent upon resources that are in danger of depletion or are in otherwise short supply. Eventually, some change, which in previous times could have been coped with, becomes a catalytic factor which, starting with small effects, reaches some kind of tipping point, to magnify in some form of societal collapse [2]. Deforestation is the conversion of forested areas to non-forest land use such as arable land, urban use, logged area or wasteland. ... Loess field in Germany For the Alternative Metal band, see SOiL. Soil, comprising the pedosphere, is positioned at the interface of the lithosphere with the atmosphere, and hydrosphere. ... Ship stranded by the retreat of the Aral Sea Desertification is the degradation of land in arid, semi arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors including climatic variations, but primarily human activities. ... A third of the worlds countries are now water stressed as one in five people (1. ... Look up Barbarian in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see Volcano (disambiguation). ...

Future Fall of Civilization

Viewing the growth of world populations since the 17th century, and the depletion of the Earth's most easily available resources of energy and other raw materials, a number of writers have pointed to the vulnerability of the Western Civilization to collapse in the near future. Some have considered that a reformation of the Global Industrial Growth Civilization under Chinese leadership may replace leadership by the USA and Western European powers. Others believe that the earth will undergo a Malthusian collapse and a planet wide dark age of a kind greater and more catastrophic than any previously seen; the latter scenario would most likely relate to an ecological disaster, such as a collapse of food supply arising from massive desertification and/or climate change. Other elements of such an ecological disaster could be pollinator decline affecting crop productivity of some world regions. material is the substance or matter from which something is or can be made, or also items needed for doing or creating something. ... For alternative meanings for The West in the United States, see the U.S. West and American West. ... A common understanding of Western Europe in modern times. ... An ecological crisis occurs when the environment of a species or a population changes in a way that destablizes its continued survival. ... Ship stranded by the retreat of the Aral Sea Desertification is the degradation of land in arid, semi arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors including climatic variations, but primarily human activities. ... Pollinator decline is based on observations made at the end of the twentieth century of the reduction in abundance of pollinators in many ecosystems worldwide. ...

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References

• Greer, John Michael "How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse" ([3])