In the middle of Europe there is a country that is ancient but hardly known: San Marino. The mini-nation has been surrounded by Emilia-Romagna in the middle of Italy for 1,700 years. The tiny state the size of Bad Nauheim experienced the last persecution of Christians, survived Italian unification and endured 18 years of rule by leftists and communists. But they also have experience with longevity: Rome is not the “eternal city” for nothing; the empire that belongs to it existed for more than 2,000 years. But purely statistically, San Marino probably no longer exists. For about a millennium and a half – to be precise.
It’s the way of things that even the greatest empires come to an end at some point. Now a study by Dutch researchers has examined how old states become and why they then die out. Marten Scheffer from Wageningen University evaluated the history of 615 communities from the past 3,800 years. Result: Mortality is highest at the age of 200. Empires and kingdoms are the longest-lasting, while dynasties collapse the quickest.
“How states and great powers rise and fall is a fascinating mystery in human history,” writes Scheffer. Similar to people and animals, state structures go through a kind of life cycle. When they have just been founded, they are bursting with strength and indestructibility, but then time and the environment gnaw away at the inner constitution until the organism is at some point at an end and no longer has the strength to maintain the necessary cohesion.
The study says that communities also need resilience to survive. “Extreme events such as droughts, earthquakes and invasions leave clear traces for archaeologists and historians. In comparison, vulnerability is more difficult to assess,” says author Marten Scheffer. He attributes the aging process and thus the decreasing resistance to various factors. This includes the exploitation of the immediate environment and the resulting damage such as deforestation or water pollution.
A warning signal for all societies is a population decline. “For European Neolithic societies, it has been determined that collapse was preceded by a critical slowdown in population growth,” the study says. This could be a result of social inequalities, such as an increasing wealth gap, as in North American cultures before Spanish colonization. Increasingly complex state organizations or simply the egotism of the leadership elite – such as the proverbial late Roman decadence – also accelerate the decline.
However, the researchers admit that their theses can so far only be applied to the Eurasian region because only there is sufficient archaeological data available. Modern states from 1800 onwards were also not taken into account in the study. “Nevertheless, it seems plausible that mechanisms similar to those of previous collapses are still at play in the modern globalized world,” writes Scheffer.
There is now a catchphrase for those concerned with the downfall: collapsology. Behind it are a number of researchers from different disciplines: ecologists, sociologists, anthropologists, biologists. In view of the drastically worsening climate change, scientists such as the Frenchman Pablo Servigne and the Briton Jem Bendell are booming.
Some time ago, the latter wrote the paper “Guidelines to guide us through the climate catastrophe,” with which he became the supreme prophet of doom. His thesis: The collapse caused by climate change is imminent. Maybe even in 20 years. In his opinion, “hunger, destruction, migration, disease and war, and in the worst case even complete extinction” are imminent. It is time to draw conclusions from the future, which can hardly be avoided, said Bendell.
Many collapseologists do not share his vehemence and pessimism – if only because the obvious consequence would be to give up.
Sources: PNAS, DPA, Climate Reporter, JimBedell.com