Friday, November 25, 2005

Collapsing the Maya

Roger Sandall in The Culture Cult takes issue with Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
It is simply not the case that the Maya once lived in warm, loving, supportive communities, reciting nature poetry and drinking jasmine tea... and then somehow lost their way. Instead they were doing what bellicose tribal populations have always done--straining the carrying capacity of the land, warring with neighbours, and trying in grisly ways to appease their gods.

(via Arts & Letters Daily)

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