Analyzing The Downfall Of Easter Island And Mayan Civilizations
In today's society, the term progress carries ideologies that advancing and growing is always a step in the right direction. While author Ronald Wright asserts that in some cases too much progress can turn into a trap. A progress trap is the negative consequences that arise as a by-product of advancing. This arises when the consumption of a resource is much greater than the rate that it can be replenished. Drawing from the work of Wright, I will be examining hunting, farming and civilization as progress traps and explaining how these traps lead to the demise of many civilizations. I will be analyzing the downfall of Easter Island and Mayan civilizations. Based on the film Surviving Process this essay will touch upon the importance of learning lessons from past civilizations. I will also how the ideology of process distorts the reality that today's civilization is in the midst of one of the greatest progress traps known to mankind.
Archaeologist, philosopher and historian, Ronald Wright argues that repeatedly, mankind has been attracted by the allure of creating progress, and within the process, has fallen into the trap of creating too much progress. To examine the three types of progress traps, we must get a deeper understanding of the definition of the terms progress and progress traps. In the novel, A Short History of Progress, the term progress is investigated as more than just growth but as an important role to review the event in civilization’s past to present. Progress is a term that describes moving forward to reach a destination or goal. Wright explains that the Victorian ideal of progress has been deeply rooted in our society today, he states that “Our practical faith in progress has ramified and hardened into an ideology…Progress, therefore, has become ‘myth’ within the anthropological sense.” (Wright, 2004, p. 4).
Progress traps can be considered as the opposite of progress. Progress traps are the outcome of resource depletion, meaning consumption of a resource is much larger than the rate that it can be replenished. A progress trap is the negative consequences that arise as a by-product of advancing. When progress achieves a certain height it may start seeming like a dead end, or a progress trap. Wright defines progress traps as “human behaviours that sort of seem to be good things, seem to provide benefits in the short-term, but which ultimately lead to disaster because they’re unsustainable.” (NFB, 2011, 9:15).
The first progress trap was set in the long run-up to civilization, this trap was hunting. Hunting was the main way of life for about two million years in Palaeolithic times. As the stone- aged people perfected the art of hunting, they began killing animals faster than it they could reproduce. This was where the idea of progress turned into a trap, a quote from A Short History Of Progress states, “we became serial killers beyond reason” (Wright, 2004, p. 63). The perfection of hunting led to short-term prosperity, in the long run, humans effectively killed off their food supply. Easy meat equalled more babies, the raising population meant more hunters and more hunters eventually meant fewer games. Wright seems to be pushing that fact that humans are hardwired always to prefer the path of short-term gain, he says, 'our inability to foresee – or watch out for long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering' (Progress p. 108). These developments were responsible for the extinction of the many animals like the mammoth, woolly rhino, giant wombat, giant tortoise and others. As humans lead species after species to extinction, they had fallen into the first progress trap. In the simplest of terms what happened was “they lived high for a while, then starved.” Fortunately, the unconscious experiment of farming carried humans into another age of prosperity.
Then came the Neolithic Revolution which was the invention of farming. At the start of the Neolithic era, humans began influencing flora growth by sowing the most easily reaped plants and the plumpest seeds. This lead to the domestication of plants which progressed at rapid speeds on every continent except Antarctica. The Farming Revolution constructed a completely new mode of subsistence which remains essential to the economy of the world to this day. Agriculture allowed us to flourish and grow, but it came with its consequences. Farming achieved quantity at the cost of quality, more food and more people, but rarely better nourishment or better lives. As humans cultivated plants, the plants cultivated humans.
The longer we stayed with agriculture, the more we depended upon it. As a result of this, humans’ were forced to continue to farm. Humans’ reliance on farming makes them vulnerable because minor natural occurrences, for example as drought and blight could lead to mass starvation. “Humans have built a civilization adapted to the climate we have” therefore our dependency on agriculture is what lead to the second progress trap.
The final progress trap is what Wright introduces as a worldwide civilization. Wright explains that “Civilizations are a specific kind of culture: large, complex societies based on the domestication of plants, animals, and human beings. Civilizations vary in their makeup but typically have towns, cities, governments, social classes, and specialized professions.” (Wright, p. 33). He also refers to civilization as a pyramid scheme. This is because civilization can only continue to thrive as it grows just like a pyramid scheme, gathering wealth from the periphery and borrowing from the future. Wright states, “pyramid sales schemes, thriving only while they grow…such civilization is, therefore, most unstable at its peak, when it has reached maximum demand on the ecology.” (Wright, p. 84). Pyramid schemes start small and gradually grow into a progress trap. The Roman and Mayan Empires are examples of this kind of expansion. These empires continued growing and collect wealth by using up their natural resources and mortgaging the future. When these resources became limited due to overuse, the ecological pyramid structure began to deteriorate, this led to a societal collapse that Wright calls a progress trap. Wright believes that civilization is constantly repeating itself. A civilization that progresses at a rapid pace, without thinking about how much longer can it continue before its resources run out.
Wright acknowledges the downfall of past civilizations such as the Rapa Nui of Easter Island, the Sumerians, the Mayans, and the Romans as prime examples of the danger of the progress trap. The first civilization I will be examining is Easter Island. Easter Island was a small space of land rich in trees, there was 16 million of them. A small group of Polynesians settled in and began to farm. When they arrived, they burned down woods, opened spaces, and began to multiply. In the 1600s it was at the height of its civilization. Influenced by what anthropologists call an “ideological pathology,” the people of Easter Island continued along their path to ecological disaster and population crash. The Rapanui peoples were intent on their projects, so much so that they underestimated the number of resources they had. The civilization found itself plunging further and further into a progress trap built by their consumption of finite resources. They could not avoid starvation on their barren, treeless island. They quickly became the victims of their ingenuity, therefore the society succumbed to misery. What was once an untouched, verdant paradise became a treeless wasteland.
Another civilization which over time fell victim to their success was the Mayans. During the 900 A.D., the Maya civilization was at its peak, dominating central America. The demise of the Mayans had many contributing factors, one being deforestation. The Maya practiced basic subsistence agriculture which is also known as slash-and-burn agriculture. Nasa researcher Tom Sever states, 'they had to burn 20 trees to heat the limestone for making just 1 square meter of the lime plaster they which used to build their tremendous temples, reservoirs, and monuments.” The deforestation contributed to a major drought causing temperatures to rise and rainfall to decrease. This made it difficult for them to grow food and store water during the dry season leading the Mayans to starvation.
The reason we learn about our past is so we avoid repeating the mistakes we had previously made. We take those mistakes and view them as a lesson to grow. Wright states that 'Archaeology is the best tool for looking ahead.” Wright pushes his audience to understand that although progress is typically positive, progressing too much can lead to major societal issues. To avoid repeating history's mistakes we need to look at many things environmentally and economically. For instance, looking at rates of consumption and comparing it with the rate which we can replenish. Society views technological growth as advancement but realistically growth is only positive when there is space for it.
Following examples from the film, “Surviving Progress” I will analyze how the ideology of progress can distort the fact that our civilization is in the midst of the biggest progress trap in human history. In the film “Surviving Progress” Wright asserts his theory,
“In defining progress, I think it’s very important to make a distinction between good progress and bad progress. I mean, things progress in the sense that they change. Both in nature and human society, there appears to be a clear trend towards increasing complexity as change proceeds. We tend to delude ourselves that these changes always result in improvements, from the human point of view.” (NFB, 2011, 1:03).
Meaning that the term progress could have two meanings. This is what distorts the ideology of the term progress. We as a society need to acknowledge that we need to consider that too much progress could be more harmful than helpful.
Climate change and extreme weather are both examples of progress traps shown in the film Surviving Progress. “Scientific studies reveal that the rate of this change has increased dramatically over the last few decades.” (NFB, 2012, p. 5). This is due to anthropogenic causes, such as emissions of greenhouse gases like the burning of fossil fuels for energy and transportation. According to a study done by the United Nations “From 1880 to 2012, the average global temperature increased by 0.85°C, oceans have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished and the sea level has risen.” (United Nations, 2019). Over the past few decades there has been a noticeable increase in extreme weather such as drought, forest fires, hurricanes, etc. One of the most recent example of extreme weather is the Australian forest fires.
Civilization has led to unsustainable population growth and the concentration of wealth. From the film Surviving Process we see how today's civilization is in the midst of a progress trap. This can be credited to society's misunderstanding of the term progress. For society to progress in what Wright defines in a “good” way we must acknowledge past mistakes and use them as lessons to move forward. Society needs to change the ideology of the term progress. Rather than viewing progress as an advancement, we need to consider both the positives and negatives aspects of this progress. We can also learn to grow by obtaining knowledge on the demise of civilizations to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Hunting, agriculture and civilization played a major role in how some civilizations collapsed. Overconsumption of resources was another issue leading to environmental degradation and loss of resource bases. Overall progress traps are experienced when, through human ingenuity, we achieve a short-term social or technological improvement that turns out to be a backward step in the long run.
