JDG said:
I can see no obvious correlation between civilizations that
collapse and
civilizations that are highly religious. One could just as easily
ask "Was their Polynesianness integral to their collapse?" (You
may be
offended, but is it any more offensive than asking if religion was
integral to their collapse?)
Another, much more logical question, would be: "was memorial building
integral to their collapse?" In this case, one might connect
America's penchant for Memorial building to the Easter Islanders'
proclivity for the same.
I can only suppose that their religiosity was a factor contributing
to their use of such a large fraction of their resources for the
construction of moai.
But in any case, I agree that being highly religious is not
necessarily an indication of societal fragility. The strongest
counterexample is ancient Egypt, which was one of the most
pervasively religious societies in history, and also one of the most
enduring. Indeed, as I said earlier in this discussion, a more or
less politically independent and unified Egyptian civilisation lasted
for around three thousand years, and the culture of ancient Egypt
continued for a further thousand years under various foreign
dominations.
(Although it would be hard to argue that Egyptian religion was
responsible for the end of Egyptian civilisation, the increasing
power of the priesthood of Amun was certainly a factor in the
collapse of centralised political power at the end of the New
Kingdom. This shift in power from king to priests was apparent to
pharaohs as early as Amenhotep III in the mid 18th dynasty and was
very probably behind the monotheistic religious innovations of his
son Akhenaten during the famous Amarna period. Pharaohs would
continue to grapple with the problem of taming the priesthood of Amun
throughout the Third Intermediate Period and into the Late Period.)
Egyptian culture was finally destroyed by Christian fanaticism under
the later Roman Empire, but I don't suppose we're considering
extrinsic causes here so I won't say more about that.
It seems to me that the real problem isn't religion as such but
ideological inflexibility in the face of rapidly changing conditions.
Here, the ancient Egyptians had a substantial advantage over the
Easter islanders as the Nile valley was a much more stable
environment under perturbations caused by human activity. Even so,
like the Romans, the Egyptians were rather good at adapting their
social, political and economic structures to internal and external
changes while still presenting a facade of unbending conservatism.
Consider, for example, the contrast between the policies adopted by
the Saite kings of the 26th dynasty - which would have been entirely
alien and distasteful to the pharaohs of the New Kingdom, let alone
the Middle or Old Kingdoms - and their entirely conventional
portrayal in statuary and inscriptions. Unfortunately, I'm not sure
really have the evidence to establish the flexibility or otherwise of
Easter polynesians when confronted with potentially disastrous
changes to their social and environmental situation, but we will be
able to do so for other cases that we'll discuss later.
Rich, who wonders when he started defending religion...
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