Lecture 4: The Sustainability of Classical Civilization

1
Lecture 4The Sustainability of Classical
Civilization

• Environmental Impacts of Classical Civilization
• Decline and Fall in Ecological Perspective

2
Environmental Impacts of Classical Civilization,
1

• Woodlands deforested or were they?
• Evidence and causes uses of wood
• Critical scholarly dissent
• trees grow back
• distinguishing myth from reporting
• managed landscapes
• Pastures overgrazed or were they?
• Soil erosion/exhaustion
• Loss of biodiversity

3
Environmental Impacts of Classical Civilization,
2

• Woodlands
• Pastures
• Soil erosion/exhaustion really?
• The last step in a chain of depletion
• Locating and dating soil losses
• Natural changes and sustainability
• Loss of biodiversity
• Purposes of ancient hunting
• Evidence of extirpations

4
Decline and Fall in Ecological
PerspectiveWhat needs to be explained?

• Roman political authority broke down in stages
• 3d century crisis
• fiscal-military centralization (Diocletian
  Constantine)
• Barbarian invasions and loss of Roman power in
  west
• Population fell from 15-20 million to 8-10
  million by 600/50
• Economy shrank and ruralized
• Mediterranean cultural zone contracted and became
  Christian (313 tolerated 395 state religious
  monopoly)

5
Decline and Fall in Ecological
PerspectiveEnvironmental Factors

• Distinguish among anthropogenic and natural
  causes as well as environmental effects of
  cultural phenomena. Watch for consequences of
  interactions.

6
Decline and Fall in Ecological
PerspectiveEnvironmental Factors from the
Natural Sphere

• Climatic variations be aware of scale
• Roman optimum ca300/200 bce 200/300ce
• Increasing variability and cooling, 200-500
• The microscopic environment disease pathogens
• Antonine epidemic 164-194 and later
• Plague of Justinian 540-565
• Yersinia pestis
• First Pandemic 540-750
• Endemic malaria

7
Decline and Fall in Ecological
PerspectiveWere there purely anthropogenic
causes?

• Infamous insignificances
• lead pipes -- degenerate rulers
• Imbalances with Nature?
• Deforestation overgrazing ? erosion
• Valley coastal deposition ? malarial marshes
• Soil exhaustion ? breakdown of stewardship

8
Decline and Fall in Ecological
PerspectiveThe loss of human control began in
the cultural sphere (politics, monetary economy)
and spread into a destabilized natural sphere.

• Failure of socio-political hierarchy subjected
  state and economy to local risks
• Local experience the lower Rhone valley
• Local crises and loss of infrastructure
• Environmental degradation followed abandonment
• From sustainability to vulnerability to collapse
• Fatalism