Civilization collapse article

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Civilization collapse article

Postby cheapski » Mon Nov 02, 2009 2:26 pm

This is a good argument for hugging trees!

Peru's Nazca culture was brought down with its trees

Deforestation left nothing to hinder ancient floodwaters on the desert plain, researchers find. Modern Peru could learn from the civilization's collapse, they say.

The Nazca people of Peru -- famous for their huge line drawings on an arid plateau that are fully visible only from the air -- set the stage for their demise by deforesting the plain, allowing a huge El Niño-fueled flood to ravage the Ica Valley about AD 500, researchers have found.

"They died out because they destroyed their natural ecosystem," said archaeologist Alex J. Chepstow-Lusty of the French Institute of Andean Studies in Lima, coauthor of a paper in the current issue of Latin American Antiquity. "As the population expanded, they put in too many fields and didn't protect the landscape. The El Niño wiped away society."


Now it looks like Palmdale!

Image

The region is now "completely empty of any vegetation whatsoever," Beresford-Jones said.

"It's a deflated landscape: The wind has blown away the topsoil, so that features such as canals that were once cut into the landscape are now standing up above it, preserved in hard calcite."


LA Times article
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Re: Civilization collapse article

Postby 2NAKLLR » Mon Nov 02, 2009 3:02 pm

Hey, Palmdale has Joshua Trees!

If you were blindfolded and dropped on this planet and the first thing you saw was a Joshua Tree when you pulled the blindfold off, you'd know exactly where you were.
Hint: Head W.

To the OP. It's ALWAYS El Nino!
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Re: Civilization collapse article

Postby snowtrekker » Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:20 pm

If you're interested in this sort of thing, Jared Diamond's book Collapse analyzes how civilizations' interactions with the environment led to their downfall and how we can learn from their mistakes. It's a very intriguing book.
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Re: Civilization collapse article

Postby cheapski » Tue Nov 03, 2009 12:15 am

I am interested, thanks Snowtrekker. I missed the museum exhibit in LA that was about civilization collapse last year.
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