Book Review: Collapse

By Jared Diamond I read Collapse over the Christmas break. While the book is not exactly heart-warming stuff, it's fascinating. As a sequel to Germs, Guns, and Steel, the book deals with how societies destroy themselves. From Easter island to the Maya and the mediaeval Viking settlers of Greenland, Diamond looks at how ecological mismanagement can drive peoples to extinction. The example that stood out for me was the comparison of the Greenland Inuit with the Vikings who attempted to settle the island. While the Norse settlement managed to cling to a fringe existence for some 400 years before a combination of climate and ecological degradation extinguished them, the Inuit colonized the North American and finally the Greenlandic Arctic. although there was contact between the Inuit and the Norse in Greenland, why did the Viking descendants not choose to learn from their Arctic neighbors? Why did they ultimately prefer death to adopting Inuit ways? You will need to read the book to find out. But one thing is for certain: Diamond's account of societal collapse due to ecological devastation is both chilling and frightening a propos of the ecological challenges we too face.