"Your books and articles are excellent resources for stimulating
lively and insightful class discussions, and also give our
students exposure to international issues that directly impact
their lives." -Keith Cooper, Dean of Research, Cook College,
Rutgers University Chapter 1. the Economy and the Earth: Lessons
from the Past In The Collapse of Complex Civilizations, Joseph
Tainter describes the decline of early civilizations and
speculates about the causes. Was it because of the degradation
of their environment, climate change, civil conflict, foreign
invaders? Or, he asks, "is there some mysterious internal
dynamic to the rise and fall of civilizations?"33 As he ponders
the contrast between civilizations that once flourished and the
desolation of the sites they occupied, he quotes archeologist
Robert McC. Adams, who described the site of the ancient
Sumerian civilization located on the central floodplain of the
Euphrates River, an empty, desolate area now outside the
frontiers of cultivation. Adams described