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Chris Higgins
Jared Diamond on Why Societies Collapse
by Chris Higgins - November 4, 2008 - 5:24 PM

If you’ve gotten enough election coverage, why not spend eighteen minutes watching Jared Diamond talk about societal collapse? You may know Diamond from his books Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse. Aficionados admire his spectacular combover. But anyway, Diamond’s greatest contribution is his studious framework for understanding societal collapse. (Although in this talk he has five areas in his framework, by 2005’s Collapse it’s up to eight.) Hear Diamond talk through an example of his framework, examining the Greenland Norse societal collapse in this TED Talk from February 2003. (He also discusses this collapse in detail in Collapse.)

Highly recommended for students of history, ecology, migration, and sustainability.

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Comments (4)

  1. He’s also got another book called “The Third Chimpanzee” that’s a good read.

    How about that! The captcha has (a variant spelling of) my last name. Neat!

    posted by James on 11-4-2008 at 11:49 pm

  2. hes lucky hes such an interesting guy, otherwise hed never get away with that comeover, guns germs and steel ruled

    posted by Patrick on 11-5-2008 at 12:11 am

  3. Read his books in college, and have continued to do so once I graduated. While GG&S is a favorite, Collapse was a really good read!!

    posted by Jessica on 11-5-2008 at 10:43 am

  4. This guy is INTELLIGENT. the closest thing we’ve got to a true soothsayer. looks like its high time to get going on this, or else archeologists of the future will be digging through our material culture and scratching their heads as to why we didnt see what we were doing. (as long as we don’t completely destroy any chance of life on earth during our lifetime)

    posted by Kristina on 11-5-2008 at 3:44 pm

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