UC Berkeley

Population-Environment Reference Web Site

a partnership of
 Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Bixby Program, School of Public Health
University of California, Berkeley

and

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego

To go directly to the list of references, click here.

Ecological overload in the past

Even low density of human population can have a destructive ecological impact over time, as occurred with the first human settlement of Australia. Some of the past societies that undermined their own environment are included in the recent book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005 by Jared Diamond). From the southwestern United States and Central America to ancient Iraq and islands in the Pacific and Atlantic, environments have been irreversibly degraded. In every case population growth played a key role, although other important factors including drought (Mayan societies), variations in soil susceptibility to erosion (the Vikings expansion), the presence or absence of productive methods for organizing land use, and the cultural capacity to adapt (Japan) have been important. The current growth in human numbers and wealth is several orders of magnitude greater than any past human challenge to the environment.

The following book by Sing Chew at Humboldt State University reviews historical situations ranging from Ancient Mesopotamia to Malaya, Mycenaean Greece to Ming China, showing the impact of the processes of population growth, intensive resource accumulation, and urbanization in ancient and modern societies on ecological decline. Chew shows how the recurrent themes of deforestation, soil runoff, salination, pollution, familiar to use in the contemporary world, constitute a pattern that has been seen repeatedly throughout human civilization.

References
Axtell, Population growth and collapse in a multiagent model of the Kayenta Anasazi in Long House Valley. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 1999, 2002. 99: p. 7275 - 7279.
Borrie, The population of Tikopia, 1929 and 1952. Population Studies, 1957. 10: p. 229-252.
Chew, Sing C. 2001. World ecological degradation: accumulation, urbanization, and deforestation, 3000 BC-AD 2000. Landham, MD: AltaMira Press.
Description of book
http://www.altamirapress.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&d...
Diamond, Jared. 2000. Ecological Collapses of Pre-industrial Societies. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University.
Lecture proceedings
http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/Diamond_01.pdf
Diamond, Jared. 2005. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York, NY: Penguin Group.
Book
http://www.penguinputnam.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_0670033375,00.html
Dugmore, Tephrochronology, environmental change and the Norse settlement of Iceland. Environmental Archaeology, 2000. 5: p. 21-34.
Flannery, T.F., The future eaters : an ecological history of the Australasian lands and people. 1995, New York: G. Braziller. 423 p.
Flenley, J. and P.G. Bahn, The enigmas of Easter Island : island on the edge. [2nd ed. 2003, Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press. xvii, 256 p., [8] p. of plates
Haas, J. and W. Creamer, Stress and warfare among the Kayenta Anasazi of the thirteenth century A.D. 1993, Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History. xii, 211.
Hardin, The tragedy of the commons. Science, 1968. 162: p. 1243-1248.
Jackson, Historical Overfishing and the recent collapse of coastal ecosystems. Science, 2001. 293: p. 629-638.
Kammen, S., Rambo, Khalil, Preindustrial Human Environmental Impacts: Are there lessons for Global Change Science and Policy ? Chemosphere, 1994. 29(5).
Kirch, Tikopia: The Prehistory and Ecology of a Polynesia outlier. Honolulu Bishop Museum Bulletin, 1982. 238.
LeBlanc, S.A., Prehistoric warfare in the American Southwest. 1999, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. xi, 400 p.
Loret, J. and J.T. Tanacredi, Easter Island : scientific exploration into the world's environmental problems in microcosm. 2003, New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. xii, 240 p.
McGovern, Northern islands, human era, and environmental degradation: a view of socila and ecological change in the meieval North Atlantic. Human Ecology, 1988. 16: p. 225-270.
Mieth, B., Diminution and degradation of environmental resources by prehistoric land use on Poike Peninsula, Easter Island (Rapa Nui). Rapa Nui Journal, 2003. 17: p. 34-41.
Minnis, P.E., Social adaptation to food stress : a prehistoric southwestern example. Prehistoric archeology and ecology. 1985, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. x, 239 p.
Redman, C.L., The archaeology of global change : the impact of humans on their environment. 2004, Washington: Smithsonian Books. xv, 292 p.
Steadman, D., Extinctions of birds in Eastern Polynesia: a review of the record, and comparisons with other Pacific Island groups. Journal of Archaeological Science, 1989. 16: p. 177-205.
Tilburg, J.A.V., Easter Island. 1995, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. p.
Turner, Prehistoric intensive agriculture in the Mayan lowlands. Science, 1974. 185: p. 118 - 124.
Turner, C.G. and J.A. Turner, Man corn : cannibalism and violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest. 1999, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. 547 p.
Webster, D.L., The fall of the ancient Maya : solving the mystery of the Maya collapse. 2002, London ; New York: Thames & Hudson. 368 p.
Yoffee, N. and G.L. Cowgill, The Collapse of ancient states and civilizations. 1988, Tucson: University of Arizona Press. x, 333 p.

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