Re: [Marxism] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/maya-laser-lidar-guatemala-pacunam/
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I was reading an interview with Jason Moore* yesterday where he associates the crisis of European feudalism in the 14th century with the end of the Medieval Warm Period. Reading this exchange I was curious if the same could have affected the Maya - a quick Google search on “medieval warm period maya” turned up this and a number of other relevant articles: http://irows.ucr.edu/papers/irows92/irows92.htm *Moore: “If you look just at the experience of Western Europe over the past thousand years or so, you see that after 300, when the Roman Climate Optimum—that is, the favorable climate for the Roman Empire—came to an end, what happened? Well, Roman power collapses in Western Europe. By 500, the peasants are occupying the villas, repurposing them, re-establishing village life. Life expectancy rises. Gender equality increases. Fertility falls. It is a golden age for everyday people. A similar story occurs about the later Middle Ages, around 1290, when the medieval warm period comes to an end. What happens? The Black Death. Once it hits in the 1350s, Europe’s ruling classes try to reimpose serfdom, but the peasants and workers won’t go for it. They say, hell no, we’re not going back.” [By the way, his first comment suggests that the “dark ages” and the “barbarians” may have gotten a bad rap from historians wistful about the collapse of the Roman Empire which was after all based in substantial part on slavery. The fallacies of a stagist view of history - maybe there’s a problem with the slogan Socialism or barbarism...] https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/raj-patel-jason-moore-history-world-seven-cheap-things-interview On Sat, Feb 3, 2018 at 3:34 PM Louis Proyect via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > POSTING RULES & NOTES > #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. > #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. > #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. > * > > On 2/3/18 3:26 PM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote: > > > Jared Diamond's "Collapse" gives an interesting account of the collapse > of > > the Mayan civilization. ... > > John Reimann > > > > ... > What is missing from Diamond’s analysis, however, is the *cause* of > drought. One would think that an environmentalist would want to address > this question. To discover the answer, you have to turn elsewhere. In > particular, the work of anthropologist Brian Fagan is most instructive. > In a series of books on ancient societies, he focuses on the role of El > Niño-Southern California (ENSO) events in their collapse. > > ... > > full: > https://louisproyect.org/2005/03/22/jared-diamonds-collapse-part-two/ > _ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/fred.r.murphy%40gmail.com _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/maya-laser-lidar-guatemala-pacunam/
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 2/3/18 3:26 PM, John Reimann via Marxism wrote: Jared Diamond's "Collapse" gives an interesting account of the collapse of the Mayan civilization. As far as I can understand it, their civilization was based partly slavery and partly feudal relations. Diamond writes: The Kings' "attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster -- reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by moern American CEO. The passivity of Easter (Island) chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big [environmental] threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels." In his book, Diamond recounts the collapse of various other societies, from the Norse society in Greenland to Anasazi society in America's Chaco Canyon to Easter Island society. He also recounts how a few societies successfully dealt with similar environmental challenges as those that collapsed. What he doesn't point out is that all those societies that survived were non-class societies and all those which collapsed were class societies. In every case of a collapse, what comes clear is that the ruling class had to maintain its methods of extracting wealth from nature because the culture - and hence the justification for their rule - was based on that. John Reimann To begin with in replying to Diamond, it should be understood that Mayan collapse has to be put into some kind of historical context. Even those who agree with Diamond’s skewed analysis have to concede that the collapse was preceded by ten centuries of economic and social viability, marked as it was by feudal oppression. As Mayan scholar Robert Sharer wrote me a couple of weeks ago, every society might strive for such longevity regardless of the ultimate outcome. By contrast, the USA has been existence for less than 250 years but it is already threatening to destroy itself and the rest of the planet. To start with, the Mayan territory was inimical to agriculture. It is a testimony to their ingenuity that they made it so productive for one thousand years. While Sharer believes that it was based on slash-and-burn (swidden) cultivation, scholars adduced by Diamond claim that Mayan population density could have only been allowed through more advanced–and more risky–technology including irrigation and hill slope terracing. Of course, it is highly speculative to estimate population density from over one thousand years ago, but taking Diamond at face value, there is still no question that the underlying soil fertility was poor at best. Although Mayan society had endured drought over its thousand year history, there is evidence that the most severe drought coincides with the collapse. Although Diamond acknowledges that such droughts occurred, he thinks that they were only critical insofar as they coincided with “too many people” in a confined space. What is missing from Diamond’s analysis, however, is the *cause* of drought. One would think that an environmentalist would want to address this question. To discover the answer, you have to turn elsewhere. In particular, the work of anthropologist Brian Fagan is most instructive. In a series of books on ancient societies, he focuses on the role of El Niño-Southern California (ENSO) events in their collapse. In his latest, titled “The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization,” Fagan points to the research done by climatologist David Hodell. By examining titanium traces in the waters off of Venezuela (a very precise way to measure droughts), Hodell concluded that a major ENSO event coincided with Mayan collapse. Archaeologist Dick Gill studied Swedish tree rings and came to similar conclusions. Studying the evidence of Mayan ruins from this period, archaeologist Peter Harrison discovered evidence of cannibalism–a sure sign of a society driven to desperation. Another group of indigenous peoples, the Anasazi, whose social structures were similar to the Mayans, have also been connected to cannibalism. In their case, the findings have taken on a sensational aspect, especially when they are divorced from the climatological and economic circumstances that may explain them. In other words, cannibalism is not seen in the same terms as what happened to the Donner party, but rather as an expression of what Diamond termed “The Golden Age That Never Was.” The scholar most
Re: [Marxism] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/maya-laser-lidar-guatemala-pacunam/
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Jared Diamond's "Collapse" gives an interesting account of the collapse of the Mayan civilization. As far as I can understand it, their civilization was based partly slavery and partly feudal relations. Diamond writes: The Kings' "attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster -- reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by moern American CEO. The passivity of Easter (Island) chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big [environmental] threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels." In his book, Diamond recounts the collapse of various other societies, from the Norse society in Greenland to Anasazi society in America's Chaco Canyon to Easter Island society. He also recounts how a few societies successfully dealt with similar environmental challenges as those that collapsed. What he doesn't point out is that all those societies that survived were non-class societies and all those which collapsed were class societies. In every case of a collapse, what comes clear is that the ruling class had to maintain its methods of extracting wealth from nature because the culture - and hence the justification for their rule - was based on that. John Reimann -- "No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them." Assata Shakur Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
