Jared Diamond Collapse Summary

In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond describes the experiences of seafaring Vikings and Polynesians. For each group, Diamond argues that the environment played a key role in these people’s success or failure. In this paper, I will first briefly overview the environment’s role in the Polynesian case of Mangareva and the Viking case of Inuit as recounted in Diamond. I will then examine the sources in chapter 6 of Merry Wiesner’s text, Discovering the Global Past, to see whether those sources support or call into question Diamond’s environmental explanations for success or failure.
The Polynesians settled on Easter Island in 1200 A.D, they were few in number and they practiced farming for survival. A region …show more content…
They inhabited Greenland and imitated the Europeans lifestyle. The group failed due to some reasons, the Vikings caused soil erosion by excessive cutting down of the tree, excess farming, and logging. As a result, they lacked food and charcoal and they were left bare without good knowledge in making iron. The land experienced climatic changes, “because of the harsh winter’s ad short growing seasons” neither of the groups could really rely on their crops to grow. (Weisner 140). Their neighbor, the Inuit did not receive fatal changes. They also had problems with their neighbors as the Inuit killed the Vikings during the warfare and blocked the norse from accessing the fjords sending the price seal, which the Vikings thought were good (Diamond, 2005). The Vikings had nothing apart from the scorn and they refused to learn how to adapt to live in cold weather and how to explore the …show more content…
There was an increase in the use of technology and systematic farming. Some crops were harvested with the use of farming products, reducing the damage of such crops by adverse weather condition. The increased production of grains resulted in some problems such as they were easily attacked and affected by pest and diseases. The problem of famine was experienced in the most part of the region. Moreover, as the result, it caused war or civil strife. Forest area continued to be attacked and the more land was cultivated, the more the forest reduced, leading to change in the global climate. Because of the population increased, there was the need for industrialization (Wiesner, 2012). Immigration changes in the population changed world migration pattern, they had to move from different parts of the region to a new region, and this resulted in colonization and the spread of Christianity. Because of immigration, there was racial discrimination that resulted in war amongst the Polynesians and the Vikings (Wiesner,