This story was originally published byGrist.
Theyponderedthe system of aqueducts, built with concrete that could harden underwater.
Part of whats driving that interest is the question: How could something so big and so advanced fail?
The Motya Charioteer at The British Museum.Photo: Peter Macdiarmid (Getty Images)
And, more pressingly: Could something similar happen to us?
The decline of the ancient Maya in Central America has been linked with a major drought.
Historians, anthropologists, andarchaeologistshave recently tried to fill in that gap.
And the Maya, before that point, had weatheredfive earlier droughtsand continued to grow.
What matters most, the Complexity Science Hubs study posits, is inequality and political polarization.
As pressures rise and society fractures, the government loses legitimacy, making it harder to address challenges collectively.
It really leads to and is at the heart of a lot of other issues.
On the flipside, however, cooperation can give societies that extra boost they need to withstand environmental threats.
This is why culture matters so much, Hoyer said.
What can the modern world learn from, for example, the Mayan city states or 17th century Amsterdam?
said Dagomar Degroot, an environmental historian at Georgetown University.
By these measures, the United States isnt exactly on that path to success.
Inequality is out of control, Hoyer said.
Its not just that were not handling it well.
Around 2010, he predicted that unrest in America would start getting serious around 2020.
Its not always clear how collapse differs from societal change more generally.
The Complexity Science Hubs study suggests that collapse itself could be considered an adaptation in particularly dire situations.
Theres a lot of truth in that, especially because collapse involves violence and destruction and unrest.
This article originally appeared inGristathttps://grist.org/culture/climate-change-societal-collapse-explained/.
Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.
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