Category: Collapse Spring 2022

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Easter Island Spring 2022

Easter Island Moai Statues at Rano Raraku under sunny summer sky. Rano Raraku, Rapa Nui National Park, Hanga Roa, Easter Island, Chile.

Moderator

Question 1: How did your family react (behind closed doors)? Do you share the same views as them in regards to the collapse?

  • Many people, especially younger people, have differing political views than their older family members or vice versa. This often can lead to animosity or arguments as well as extreme cases. Diamond noted political and social factors behind the collapse which many people typically have strong opinions on. 

Question 2: How did you/your family connect with others during this time? Isolation as a whole was a factor in the collapse of Easter Island, but did you feel it on a community scale?

  • Relationships with neighbors would probably be the difference in life or death in apocalyptic situations. Even in daily life, having neighbors that look out for each other makes life more bearable. 

Question 3: Did you notice unrest before the tragedy? Were your clan and chief leaders angrier, more concerned?

  • I’m thinking back to the beginning of the pandemic when we all saw memes of a new “cold” going around. Some brushed it off, some began to hunker down. This question can have multiple facets such as political or cultural responses. 

Question 4: How did you get goods and services? Did you feel the strain when resources started to become scarce?

  • If you had a hunch that collapse was inevitable, you may have prepared. If not, you likely would have to trade or find another way of getting the things you need. Diamond wrote about how Easter Island was unprecedentedly isolated and environmentally fragile, making resources increasingly harder to come by. The alternate reading wrote about how the Island was essentially a victim of “Tragedy of the Commons.”

Question 5: Society aside, how did the physical environment around you change?

  • Climate concern probably would go out the window amidst societal collapse, but still be an important aspect of the way people navigated life during collapse. Diamond noted deforestation and decline of bird populations. He also wrote about how the island was environmentally fragile in general.

Character 1: Young Male Hard-laborer

Character Description

The character is a young polynesian man in his mid 20’s. He works to cut down trees and to help move the statues. He is not rich and considered poor due to the amount and quality of food he gets. He has a younger brother, mother, and father, but he came to the island without his family to seek hope for a better life. He works all day cutting trees in 70°F weather.

Brief Essay

The problem for our society collapsing was human environmental impacts and religious/political factors that only we can blame ourselves for the cause. The cause of human environmental impacts were destruction of bird populations and deforestation. When I first came to the island, there were many trees and a forest with birds. The bird population played an important role in society as it was the main animal pollinator and seed dispersers in order to grow more trees. Eventually, I started to see less birds each day in the forest as I was cutting trees. The more the trees were cut, the less it was a forest. The realization that the birds lost their homes as we tried to make Easter Island our home. Deforestation led to the bird population being extinct. Therefore, we caused our own society to collapse by harming the environment. The cause of religious and political factors was the statue that was a competition between clans and commemorating ancestors. The statues that were built were known as moai. The statues were important to our religion and politics as our main focus was building them. They were big stones and it took a lot of my friends and people in my clan to move them. As we figured out how to move a stone from one place to another, it required a lot of wood and rope. Therefore, I had to chop down a lot of trees in order for us to move the stones. Sadly, one day there were no more trees to chop down and led to deforestation. I didn’t realize this because I was so focused on the statues. As the last tree was cut, hope was still there that the trees would grow again but it did not. We also ran out of food, as there were no more chickens and seafood. The higher ranked chiefs and important people got access to more food than we did, they were also fed with higher quality food. As time passed, there was less food available and no more resources on the land.

Character 2: Moai Carver

Character Description

I am a moai carver from Easter Island, it is my responsibility to carve and separate moai, or statues, from the rock known as Rano Raruka tuff.  This rock is by far the easiest carving rock on the Pacific.  One the Moai are carved, a team of movers come in and transport it to its resting place. We work in conjunction with this team to keep a slow but steady stream of statues coming out of this mine. We eat only when we have to, resources have been running low recently, we manage though. 

Brief Essay

The factors that impacted our societies “collapse” are mainly environmental damage and cultural response. Although a case can be made that both of these issues stemmed from our hostile neighbors.  Environmental damage is the base of why our society collapsed. The island was deforested, which led to many factors impacting our society such as a lack of food, lack of resources for building and farming, and a lack of habitat for our prey.  The societies response to these issues spelled just as much trouble for us as the issues themselves, our society failed to adapt quickly enough to these issues and ran ourselves into the ground. An issue that we can into was the fact that Easter Island is a very dry, cool, and windy island, this means that plant life grows much slower than it does on other Polynesian islands. It can be argued that the environmental issues were caused by hostile neighbors, but not in the traditional sense. There is a case to be made that our competition in terms of building our Moai larger and larger than our rival tribes became the sole focus of our society. This led to us purely focusing on winning this somewhat arbitrary competition and running ourselves out of resources. This claim can be argued though as there was also a fair amount of friendliness between the tribes of my island. We help each other with resources that some tribes don’t have access to. It is a mixed bag as most things are, we help each other while also feuding with each other.  My life is relatively monotonous, it is focused on creating food and moving moai. We farm and hunt when we can, and when strength is needed, we are called in to haul Moai from the quarry to their resting place.

Character 3: Moai Carver

Character Description

My character, on Easter Island, is a moai carver at the period when moai carving was beginning to be threatened by deforestation and resources on the island being depleted. I imagine this character is a middle-aged skilled laborer with a family who is less involved in the food/resource production on the island. I am writing my account based on Jared Diamond’s explanation that the deforestation happened mostly due to the inhabitants of Easter Island, the rats they brought, and the geography of the island making it susceptible to deforestation. My character lived on Easter Island from the mid-1500s to towards the end of the 1500s, when the civilization on Easter Island was beginning to decline according to Jared Diamond.

Brief Essay

I carve moai from the stone as I was taught by my father. I enjoy shaping the stone and honoring our ancestors by making these statues of them. Lately some people have been saying that we are running out of trees and some of the farms aren’t yielding as much as they used to, but I think we will be ok. As a child I heard stories from my older family members that said our people used to make boats out of big trees and hunt large animals that lived in the deep waters, and even though we don’t do that anymore we have adapted to that change. There are fewer trees than when I was younger, and I do hope there will still be some as my children grow older.

I have heard that some people think the moai take too many resources to make, or that they are just for the chiefs to show off, but I think they are an important part of our culture. Creating and moving these statues to honor our ancestors brings our community together. Over the generations we have improved in making them, so that now we can make them larger than before. I hope that my son will one day follow in my footsteps as a moai carver, and that my work will go on to be appreciated by future generations.

Character 4: Commoner

Character Description:

My character is a commoner, one of two classes within the community on Easter Island described by Diamond, chiefs and commoners. The commoners farmed, raised livestock, and built structures like houses and the numerous stone statues that were erected across the island. They were involved in the entire process from mining, to transporting, to construction of the stone platforms the statues stood on. 

Brief Essay:

The explanatory factors I’ve seen present in the collapse of the islands society are environmental damage, hostile neighbors, and cultural response. First there was environmental damage from a large, quick increase in the islands population. The forests began to shrink overtime and eventually there were none left at all. Because of the limited resources fighting between groups began over what little was left on our remote island. Hostile neighbors would attack each other and this lead to using the few remaining resources present on the island even faster so other groups could not have them. 

Finally, after loss of resources and fighting between and within different groups the chiefs were overthrown. Cultural response came when the commoners grew tired of their dire situation. The chiefs were tied to religion, being related to the gods themselves and elite members of the society. Once they were overthrown religion left with them. This collapsed traditional society and led to people acting more and more hostile towards each other. As if the bad circumstances on the island weren’t enough on their own, people from other countries visited our island and caused diseases to spread which decimated the population. 

Character 5: Farmer

Character Description 

Agriculture was a difficult life during the decline of the settlements at Easter Island, and it is within this struggling system that my character is found. They live within the dense population of Easter Island, working in the southwestern farms harvesting the few crops that survived the season and managing the chickens. The food grown here supports more than just my character’s family, as the entire island’s diet is based upon agriculture, as the waters surrounding the island do not support any fish.

Brief Essay

Environmental damage is a theme of life at Easter Island, not out of greed or hatred of the environment, instead stemming from necessity. Life is hard on the island, the wind is powerful, rain uncommon, and temperatures are cool. These aspects of the environment have forced us to utilize most of our resources, our most extreme shortage being wood, as trees have entirely disappeared from the island. Not only has the island suffered, but the ecosystem around it as well. When the fish disappeared years ago, we had to increase our dependence on other food sources, one of these sources were the shellfish surrounding the island which were quickly decimated by the demand for food.

I do my best to assist my friends around the island, sharing the crops that do grow, and in return they assist with my work, providing superior tools and extra laboring. Farmers in other parts of the island grow crops within rock gardens, higher up on the island with a better source of water. The whole of the island is a community, each of us providing what we can to each other, especially the wonderful yellow moai which sculptors have provided throughout the island.

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Mayans Spring 2022

Moderator

Question 1: From your kingdom, could you see the temple of another kingdom? Describe a typically journey to another kingdom.

  • The Maya empire consisted of politically divided small kingdoms. They were usually a 2 or 3 day journey from other kingdoms, and it was sometimes possible to see the top of a another kingdom’s temple. 

Question 2: Did you ever experience an attack on your kingdom?

  • There was frequent fighting among kingdoms, especially as lack of rain and fertile soil forced people into smaller areas. Food could not be carried in large quantities, which limited the distance that armies could travel. 

Question 3: If you lived in the valley floor, do you remember the population beginning to increase as more people moved to the lowlands?

  • Drought caused people to move from the hills to the lowlands. This meant that more people were competing for food and space to grow food. 

Question 4: If you lived in the hills, do you remember the population decreasing? 

  • Similar to the above question, drought forced people down from the hills. They had to find food and space on the valley floor, where people were already living. 

Question 5: Did you ever experience first-hand a king breaking a royal promise (extended drought occurred) or a revolt because of it? If not, did you hear stories of this situation nearby? 

In exchange for the support of the peasants, the kings, who claimed to have supernatural powers, were responsible for delivering rain and prosperity. If there was a drought, that was seen as breaking a royal promise and the peasant sometimes revolted. 

Character 1: Mayan King

Character Description

My character for this panel is one of the Mayan kings, I rule during a time of particularly bad drought, and warring feuds with neighboring cities has left my people hungry, thirsty, and looking for someone to pin this on. It is my duty as king to look over and guide the people of my city, and to ensure our prosperity, though looking at recent times this might be difficult…

Essay

My lands have fallen on hard times, we face severe droughts and I fear the gods no longer favor me the way they used to. Oh, how I used to feel as if the rains would bless our lands at my very will! Maybe that feeling is what got me into the situation I find myself in now. So much for being chosen by the gods, they merely laugh at me now! Our water reserves have dried up, and in the rare event that the rains even choose to fall from the heavens the earth mocks me by swallowing it all and keeping it in some dark place beyond my reach. The very earth fails me in the hills, no food can grow there now. I now depend on the maize from the valley fields for our only reliable source of food for the entire city. The people starve and glare at me as if this pleases me. I realize what they must think of me, but it is not as if I have done nothing! I have spent many a sleepless night trying to figure out how to feed a growing people with dwindling food. The hills failing have meant my once proud warriors no longer have the food to carry them into battle and bring our glory to the cities at my borders. Our own lands are now weak and susceptible of those vile kings who I have squabbled with over the years. I look at the great monuments to myself, my ancestors, and to the gods. During the good times these giant tributes would swell my heart with pride, but now they seem to only leer at me with dark reminders of how I’ve failed. The peasants believe I hold back the rains, either through my own malice or through the disfavor of the gods whom I must’ve failed somehow. I wish I could fix things, what I would do to bring the rain back!

All my time now is spent locked in my palace and the administrative areas of the city for fear of what the peasants would do to me if they got their hands on me. I have heard too many tales of what happened to those who have lost control of the rains, I shudder at the thought. My warriors bring me rare catches of venison in the vain hopes that it will somehow fix the problems at hand. I hope so too… I take a long look out over my kingdom, I see the now empty hills that were once filled with plenty, I see the crowd of angry peasants in front of my palace that seems to grow larger every day, and as I sweep my view over my crumbling city, I can just make out a temple from a neighboring king. I can only wonder as to if he has been cursed by the gods the way I have….

Character 2: Mayan Soldier

Character description:

My character is a Mayan soldier. My role in society is to fulfill war orders from our King since there was new competition. Locally, I also had to fight for more land since we were forced to less land because of the droughts.

Brief essay:

I became a soldier after receiving higher status from the commoners in my village. My army is small and we cannot campaign for long distances since we run out of corn pretty quickly. From an outside perspective, it would seem that Mayans all get along and we all live peacefully amongst each other. I am sad to report that this is not the case. We are driven to constant, intense war because of our lessening food supply and how far apart our villages are from each other. With the ongoing drought due to the lack of water cycling because of the deforestation. I have also been a soldier to fight other commoners for land since overpopulation has been occurring and resources are running low. 

Recently, I have been able to work for the military of our king. Warfare also occurs in our society He has sent us orders to capture other Mayan kings and to turn them into the king himself. I hear stories about what happens to the captives after we hand them over, but I do not like to think our king is capable of doing such things. Some cities are also trying to break from the capital, so our military has to go out and bring them back to the kingdom. It does get scary. I frighten for my life sometimes since there is such angriness with the king by the commoners with the droughts we have been having. I do not get it though, he takes care of us…

Character 3: Farmer

Character Description

My character for this assignment is a farmer in the Mayan civilization. I am a peasent in comparison to some other member in our society like kings and warriors. On my family farm I grown corn primarily, but every few years switch to beans to give my land some time to become fertile again.

Brief Essay

During the hard times and collapse of our civilization I witnessed two primarily major threats to our society. First off, As a farmer I spend a lot of time out in my fields harvesting and on my property protecting it from hostile neighbors. I see a lot of struggles in the community through drought and other environmental challenges. The intense droughts and the changing of our climate has made it very hard to provide food for my family and my people. The time period for planting and harvesting is constantly shortening because of the rainy and dry seasons. Even if we do get a good harvest, we have no idea what next year will bring, and what makes this matter worse is that our corn only has a shelf life of around a year.

Farming is a hard life. We have no cows or horses, so all of the manual labor is done by me and my sons. We are constantly having to gather water and go back and forth to the markets to sell our produce, which is taking a toll on me. We have no good sources of protein other than the small fish and turtles I have on the farm. The king is of no help to us either, all he wants to do is eat most of our food, build temples for himself, and cut down trees for more plaster.We used to be a prosperous community, but now I do not know how much longer we will last as a society if things keep going the way they are.

Character 4: Farmer in Copán

Character description:

My character is a peasant farmer in Copan. My role in the Mayan society is to grow corn to help feed our king, the nobles, and our army. Although my work is hard, it pays off because a well-fed king means that we will get a very good rainy season. 

Brief essay: 

I have seen the effects of greed on our so-called royalty. While we hunt venison solely for the royals and give up a majority of our harvest, they play games on who can build that largest monument. The king lives a lavish lifestyle by taking all of the commoner’s hard work. However, he has not brought us good rain in months. I envy the city-states up north. I’ve heard rumors that they can easily access the water table due to their lower land elevation. We have to build cisterns and reservoirs by hand. One reservoir can hold water for 10 thousand people for 18 months. Unfortunately, growing crops depends on rain, not cisterns and reservoirs. 

My family and I barely have enough to sustain ourselves with the pitiful amount of maize we can grow on what used to be fertile lands. Since our population boomed, many people moved up to the hills. Their selfish use of trees is causing erosion on the hills. The infertile soil is washing down into the valley, and tarnishing our fertile soil! The increase in population is also causing the need to increase in corn, as it is 70% of our diet. But we cannot keep up with these demands because our soil quality is becoming worse, and we also have no rain thanks to our useless king. 

Why should we be forced to focus on war and building monuments for our nobles when we should be focusing more on growing corn, and finding new ways to get water? It is especially tough on us building these silly monuments because we only have wood and stone tools. These are not as efficient as tools that the rest of Mesoamerica has. I heard they have metal tools that last much longer. What really seals the deal is that we don’t even have large animals to pull carts. Everything is done by man-power. We are exhausted and are starting to become angry at the royalty. I’ve heard that some people are getting together to burn the royal palace down. If only we joined our city states instead of fighting all of the time…

Character 5: Rural Commoner

Character Description:

            My character is a Maya commoner—someone who is a pawn to their ruler and a slave to the land they must work to survive and support their city. I live in Copan, where the water table is inaccessible, and the hills are eroding onto our only viable land. I work the fields, growing maize in the valley bottomland, which never seems like enough for my family. The neighbors have tried to spar with me in order to acquire some of my maize, but I would die to protect my family.

Essay:

            Ah, the beauty of our Maya cities could be seen from the top of many monuments, built in respect to our kings and their noble servants. Throughout the life of our center of innovation, the royalty thrived, feasting on maize, venison, and refreshments, but the same couldn’t be said for the millions of commoners throughout the split kingdoms. Maize made up the vast majority of our diet in many different forms, but the lack of consistent protein sources limited our strength and power. We could’ve conquered every surrounding city had we experienced a more consistent bountiful harvest. Our king instructed us to build a monument to represent his connection with the gods, and I served for years constructing the mountainous monument that stands today—but not without a long and worthwhile struggle. With nothing more than wooden, stone, and obsidian tools, we were at a disadvantage. No pulleys to heave the stone blocks weighing tons, no wheels to push our supplies up to construction, and no domesticated meat sources to nourish our abused and aching bodies.

            This year was tough. With one of the most devastating droughts to ravage our city to date, our food supply is running dry. And our king…what a liar. He claims his relation to the gods would provide us with beautiful rain and prosperity, and his attendance on ritual dates would assure this to be true, but it has been months. Maybe the gods are just unwilling to listen, or maybe they are punishing us! I have watched the hills crumble—a barren wasteland of inarable land slowly sprinkling onto our farms in the valley bottomland. There are few trees to burn to keep us warm. And lack of food to sustain us as war calls grow closer. The gods will protect us…I’m sure of it…they will take the king in return for a plentiful harvest…I hope.

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Norse Greenland Spring 2022

Moderator

Question 1: How do you think an improved relationship with the Inuit people could have helped your society?

  • This question relates to the indifferent (at best) to hostile (at worst) relations between the Norse and Inuit people. The author mentions that, while the two had some customs in common like hunting caribou, the Inuit had much more experience living in arctic conditions and adapted by using seal skin to make kayaks for hunting whales, building winter homes from snow, and burning blubber rather than wood. In modern times, good relations are still just as important to the survival (and thriving) of a society, like the US and Mexico/Canada.

Question 2: What impact did the Inuit attack on the Eastern Settlement hunting party have on your life? It was described in 1379 in Iceland’s Annals. 18 men were killed; 2 boys and 1 woman were taken as slaves.

  • This attack killed 2% of the adult male population, according to the author, and was a massive blow to the settlement they came from. It is interesting to consider how a dwindling society took such terrible news and how different reactions could have hastened/prolonged the abandonment of the Eastern Settlement.

Question 3: How did the extreme and unpredictable weather variations impact your life?

  • With fog, ice, rains, strong winds, and snow affecting survival, it must have been a challenge to stay alive and have access to the resources they need. Scarcity and supply chain failures can hinder societies even today like with COVID, especially when the Norse were not as familiar with arctic survival.

Question 4: Could you connect the actions of your people to their consequences in the environment, and would you have been able to change, even if you could?

  • Even if the Norse knew what was happening, they might not have been able to change if there were (seemingly) no alternatives, or if it was too late by the time they realized. This would still be relevant today with the conditions that contribute to societal collapse, especially with climate change/carbon emissions that corporations are responsible for and not the individual.

Question 5: What role did religion play in your life as society collapsed?

  • Religion not only affected how the Norse viewed outsiders who did not practice their religion (which in turn affected their survival), but I can only imagine what it felt like to pray to your god with no response as your family and friends suffered and died. They must have felt abandoned and condemned as the weather snuffed crops, starved livestock, and blew their soil away.

Character 1: Iron Smithy

Character Description

My character would have been a blacksmith creating weapons and other tools in an iron smithy. They would have been burning high amounts of wood to produce the charcoal to extract iron from the bog. 

Essay

When firewood had become more scarce, I realized that my bog iron would have to be just used for weapons and armor. I had opted to craft simple things out of different materials. I started with using chipped stone to create farming tools. Gods, they lost their edge so rapidly compared to the iron I’m used to. It also took longer, from shearing sheep to harvesting hay. It wasn’t just a lack of firewood anymore, but soon food was becoming scarce. With the grasses not growing, there isn’t food for the herding animals to eat. The grazing animals were unable to survive the cold winter. We cannot sustain this way of living for the coming winters. The native people have somehow learned to live with these challenges. Perhaps, we should have learned their ways or begun trade systems with them instead of passing them off and being hostile towards them. 

Character 2: Norse Hunter

Character description: 

I am Hans a Norse hunter.  I help hunt for food in the harsh winters because there isn’t enough food for my family and others in the settlement.  I have a small wooden boat because wood is very scarce here.  I wish I had better weapons for hunting, but I make arrowheads out of caribou antlers because it is very hard to get iron because it is so scarce. 

Brief Essay:

I wish I were a better hunter.  I work so hard working long hours in the cold hunting seals.  I watch the Inuit hunters catching all kinds of seals and whales in their boats made with animal skin, but my boat is not as good, and I am not having much luck hunting.  The Inuit people had these funny looking tools for hunting.  I go out with other hunters, and we hunt for seals.  We don’t have big enough boats to catch whales.  I never figured out how to hunt for a ringed seal.  In really bad winters when there weren’t enough other kinds of seals, it would have been nice to be able to catch ringed seals.  There were a lot of them under the ice, but I never figured out how to catch one successfully.  I knew the seals were their because I saw Inuit people pulling like 4 of them out of the water and carrying them back to their homes.  Winters are rough in my village.  There is not enough food, and there is not enough wood for building, heating, and lighting houses.  I like our houses that have walls made of turf.  The Inuit people have these weird ice cube houses that they live in, so our houses are so much better. 

Character 3: Farmer

Character’s Role in Society:

My character is a farmer that works to raise sheep and other livestock to have food and furs to trade with my village. I have acres of land where my sheep graze and when their hide gets too long I shave it and make it into blankets to survive the harsh winters here.

Brief Essay:

I’ve always been a simple farmer. I tend to my livestock, make blankets after I shear my sheep, and trade with my fellow village members to ensure I have food to survive. Lately, however, things have been taking a turn for the worse. When we first moved here, my village cut down many of the trees in the area for wood, and I use the area to allow my livestock to graze. However, none of the trees have grown back, and I fear that I only have myself to blame for that, as my livestock have trampled the area flat for the last few years. Not only that, but I can always see movement in the woods, like there are people there. Not only that, but a few of my sheep have turned up dead near the edge of the grazing area. When we arrived here so long ago, I hadn’t thought that implementing our own ways into a harsh and unknown environment may have not turned out well, but not we begin to see the consequences of our actions. As I have less sheep to shear, I can no longer provide the blankets that so many of my people rely on. As it only gets colder and colder, I fear that this coming winter may be my last.

Character 4: Farmer

Character Description: 

My character is a farmer, dependent on raising sheep, cows and planting vegetation. Due to the horrible climate, I’ve had to switch on and off between farming and hunting wild caribou and hare for survival. In addition to feeding my family, my role in this society is to help provide food to the rest of the settlement in exchange for other goods. My character understands the horrible conditions we are all living in, and is willing to help out the rest of the society in any way he can. But when it comes down to it, it’s everyman for himself. 

Brief Essay: 

I started off as a successful farmer becoming owners of one of the largest farms in the Eastern Settlement. At first I was able to sustain sheep, cows and goats with the large open pasture created by the loggers in the settlement. I utilized the sheep to make and sell wool clothing and used the dairy from the cows to make dairy products. However, I found it more and more difficult to grow any vegetation and provide hay for my animals as most of the settlement dug up most of the turf for their houses. As we used up the turf, grass for grazing became more and more scarce, while the herds of animals continued to grow. As the animals stomped and grazed through their pastures the soil became more and more eroded. I could no longer care for the cows and goats, I sold them either as food or to other nearby farms with the capabilities to care for them. The environmental damages caused by the animals and the entire settlement made my life difficult as a farmer. 

            Soon after having to give up my cows and goats, the weather completely changed. The days got colder and colder. It rained heavier and heavier with every passing day. It soon became completely difficult to plant and harvest any vegetation. I spent most of my resources trying to maintain and care for the herd of sheep I still had. As it got colder, Norwegian boats stopped importing goods and purchasing my wool. I was unable to purchase any timber or iron, which I needed for warmth and new farming tools. Every farmer in the settlement was facing similar issues. When the storms settled down, we would barely make ends meet plus some, in time for the next seasons of storms. Life as a farmer became more horrible and painful, I think it’s time for a change in scenery.

Character 5: Woodworker

Character Description

My character is a wood worker whose family lived on this land since the first settlements, collecting the Siberian driftwood that came to shore and utilizing the local willow trees to make small, household objects. However, the scarcity of the trees leaves him wondering how he can survive.

Brief Essay

Damn it all, I can’t work in these conditions! The trees are all but gone, the driftwood has dried up, and I have nothing left to carve. How many times have I moved from settlement to settlement, searching for somewhere- anywhere- with enough trees to keep me afloat? Those imports from Norway are getting more and more expensive, and I can no longer afford them. How much longer can I search? I can’t bear to give up this business- my father was a wood worker, as was his father before him, and so on and so forth for generations. I cannot be the one who leaves our ways to die, so I must find something. We’ve lived on this land since the beginning, back when it was a whole new world brimming with potential. Now scarcely anything remains- and those damn Inuit people live on without a care in the world. Bah, forget them! We’re Greenlanders- a proud, strong, noble people. A few challenges aren’t enough to stop us- so we’ll keep going. It may look grim now, but this is our home- and we’ll be here for the next hundred, no, thousands of years! Somewhere out there is a new grove, some more resources for us to use- all we must do is find it.

Character 6: A Worried Farmer

Character Description

My character is a farmer that depends on farming, sheep, woods, and vegetation that grew in the environment. Due to climate change, my farm animals are not the same as before. The long winter and rainy summer days have made my life suffer. 

Brief Essay

I was good at farming. I used to have cows and sheep that would graze on a sunny day. Enjoy the glimpse of sunlight on a good summer day. I would work on my farm when my sheep and cows would graze. I used to work in the field all day now since the summer has become a drought. The rivers and streams are not the same as they used to be before. Instead of farming more, I have to think of animals to feed. The winters are much longer, and summers have worsened because of heavy rainfall, which takes away the nutrition. I tried to sell some of my animals, but no one wanted them because they faced the same problem. At this moment of time, I might go and hunt for food for myself. Somehow, I need to survive in this madness. The other farmers consider the same. Linving as a farmer is really difficult at this moment of time.

Posted on

Anasazi Spring 2022

Moderator

Question 1: Why do you believe these specific societies (Anasazi etc.) collapsed? What about this location (southwestern U.S.) added to this?

  • The southwest is a particularly difficult area to inhabit. The land tends to be dry and what life/species it does support are limited. Mainly due to the little rainfall that occurs, not many organisms can survive in desert or desert-adjacent areas. This includes humans, as little drinkable water, few edible plants, difficulty with agriculture, and few sources of meat make for a difficult life.
  • “Despite these varying proximate causes of abandonments, all were ultimately due to the same fundamental challenge: people living in fragile and difficult environments, adopting solutions that were brilliantly successful and understandable “in the short run,” but that failed or else created fatal problems in the long run, when people became confronted with external environmental changes or human-caused environmental changes that societies without written histories and without archaeologists could not have anticipated” (131).

Question 2: How might this location have been beneficial to these societies as compared to others?

  • While environmental factors may not have been on the Anasazi’s (or other society’s) side, there were some perks of living in the southwest. One upside is that there was less fight over land in this area. Due to lack of resources, not many other groups of people desired the same land. This meant not only were there fewer disputes between native peoples in this are as compared to the northeast, but also fewer with those from expanding European societies.

Question 3: Why did some of these societies resort to cannibalism? Is cannibalism justified for these people?

  • Particularly in southwestern U.S. agriculture is difficult (116). Soil doesn’t support many plant species and rainfall is limited. Due to this food sources are limited both from plants and the animals that would feed on those plants. When food is scarce, societies must adapt, and there is evidence of cannibalism. This may have been a significant part of the Anasazi people’s diet, without which the society may have collapsed much sooner. However, there were strategies to make agriculture easier, such as irrigation (117-118). Perhaps cannibalism was a good source of meat and protein, but was it necessary?
  • As the societies collapsed even fewer food sources were available, here evidence of cannibalism is especially strong (129). In this desperate situation could it be justified?

Question 4: How were these societies advanced? What technologies and knowledge did they possess that was particularly interesting or innovative? Or what made these societies not advanced compared to others around the same time?

  • “…Anasazi stone houses, dams, and irrigation systems…” (116) The Anasazi and other societies living in the southwestern U.S. had to adapt to their environment. It is believed that the native people of this area originated from further south (Mexico) and were hunter gatherers. I it is believed that crops such as corn, squash, and beans came to the U.S. with them. In order to support these crops they established irrigation systems, necessary for agriculture in this area. There were three alternative types of agriculture established by societies in the southwest, such as the Hohokam, to successfully grow crops in this difficult location. The first strategy involved planting crops on high elevations where rainfall was more common. The second solution was to plant crops where ground water was close to the surface and plant roots could reach it on their own. The third approach to agriculture consisted of collecting water runoff and using irrigation systems to direct it to the crop fields (118).

Question 5: Has history (public education/general knowledge) been accurate towards these societies? What was your initial understanding of these societies before reading the chapter? What about now? Do you think they have been portrayed fairly? Why?

  • “Nevertheless, many or most European and American anthropologists, brought up to regard cannibalism with horror in their own societies, are also horrified at the thought of it being practiced by peoples that they admire and study, and so they deny its occurrence and consider claims of it as racist slander” (128). Many history books and commonly taught historical events are inaccurate. There is a saying “the winners write the history books” that I think is important to consider. Oftentimes, especially with minorities, history is fairly one-sided and depicts individuals or entire societies as something that they are not. Whether making them out to be vicious cannibals or intelligent innovators, for example, public education usually does not provide the whole story.

Character 1: Customs Post Receiving Manager

Character Description

My character was an import receiving manager for the royal court, in the Anasazi capital city in Chaco Canyon. As with all with the privilege of living a life of luxury in the dependent capital, he is related to either royalty or clergy, but with the relatively low population levels of Anasazi society, even the most elite must contribute in order to fill all the roles needed to keep the gears of such a complex system turning.

Essay

Ever since I began my apprenticeship at 12 years old, I’ve coordinated imports and exports to the capital city from the villages beyond the canyon walls. I’ve lived in my own pueblo with my family at the entrance to the pass, as it’s impractical to travel back and forth to the palace every day. Still, I live in luxury with servants tending to my every need. Throughout my teenage years, imports grew, the canyon sent corn outward to the empire, and the city prospered. Farm fields sprawled up and down every mountain. But then as I entered my 20s, I noted a trend, as was part of my job: housing and fortifications occupied more land in the canyon, the farm fields received less water to produce less corn, and the city began importing from the empire while exporting nothing.

Now in middle age, it worries me ever more that the city can’t sustain itself without imports, because the priests seem to have lost their connection to the rain god. The Chaco arroyo stopped irrigating the fields long ago, then without rain, the water in the soil began to dry out. The villages, focused on survival just as we are, send us no luxury goods such as jewelry, furniture, and clothing, but only less and less food. We make what we can from the raw materials we’re still sent, to appropriately glorify the gods and their divinely appointed king, but our art is growing less fine and less inspired as those in the capital had to learn to produce it themselves. We continue to pray and make offerings to the rain god, but I fear if they do not respond soon, we may starve. The villages are growing restless: the laborers entering the canyon are beginning to express doubt in our rain god’s power, and wonder if it’s worth continuing to offer him their limited corn.

Character 2: A Middle-Manager Farmer

My character: farmer, middle manager of operations.

My character is a farmer for the Chaco Anasazi, and he lives not in the main Chaco valley, but in a medium-small nearby satellite settlement. His job is to farm the land (i.e., plant crops and harvest), to monitor the local conditions for erosion, rainfall, arroyo cutting, and soil conditions, and assist in making sure surplus food makes it back to the main settlement. He is therefore not in charge of the farming operation, but does have a say in what gets planted, where, and when, and is privy to some of the political and managerial information in so far as it relates to running the settlement. I chose to place my character very late in the Anasazi settlement, when it was very large, and just approaching the major drought which would eventually collapse the society.

First person:

My life was fairly easy, all things considered. Our civilization was doing quite well, and my location in a satellite farming and logging settlement gave us more immediate access to food in wetter years. However, towards the end of my life, we started to experience drier and drier years, and food started to become harder to come by: a few seasons we had to borrow extra food from other settlements, and we had nothing to send back to the main settlement. Of course, we did our fair share to do the same for others: in some very wet years, other settlements had irrigation problems due to arroyo cutting. Of course, this implies a fairly effective and comprehensive supply chain, and this brought us much security and access to more luxury goods—in those drier years, I don’t know what we would have done without access to the surpluses of other encampments.

In any case, our removal from the main settlement allowed our settlement to avoid some of the in-fighting we would get wind of occasionally; often, we heard it had to do with political disagreements, and, occasionally, over jealousy that the political leaders were so well-off despite performing comparatively less manual labor than the rest of us. It was this need for more labor—in our case, not only to farm, but to haul wood from further and further destinations to the main village—that did create some tension even in our own village. Some argued that soon we would have no trees left, and that the greed of the central villagers would destroy our own way of life. No matter though, as I reached my end of life before these conflicts and the drought ever really came to a head. I worried for my children, and I assume they must have left for more fertile lands.

Character 3: Pottery Maker

Character description: 

My character is a Pottery maker in Chaco Canyon. They live a modest lifestyle using water, clay, wood, fire, paints, and turquoise to create beautiful pots for higher class citizens. They do business within the Anasazi capitol and to other neighboring citizens, so they play a large role in commerce and the economy. With the drought and the decreasing number of trees in the nearby area it becomes more difficult to create the works of art and find all the resources they need. 

Essay: 

I began painting at a very young age, so my place in society was clear as a pottery maker. I would start my day by collecting all the supplies that I required. Clay from the floodplain, paints from grinding up colored dried clay, and making a fire from the wood I had collected the previous day. I sold my pottery within Chaco Canyon to higher class citizens than I am, but I make a decent amount of money to support myself through the seasons. I can buy food from farmers or gather other necessities that my family requires to survive. 

As I got older, I started to realize that the resources I required were getting more difficult to obtain. The alluvial plain where I collected my clay was almost entirely dried up. I had to start digging deeper and searching further past my normal gathering grounds. It made my pottery take much longer to produce, but I was still making the same amount per pot, so my income greatly decreased. I thought that was the worst that could happen, and it was only a matter of time before we were blessed with rain once more. Then I began to realize it was taking me further into the mountains to get wood for my fires. I tried buying wood from local merchants, but the prices had increased so much that I couldn’t afford to just buy it. At this point it now takes me 3 times longer to produce one piece of pottery than it had in previous years. I am struggling to feed my family and due to the drought, the farmer has little to no food and the trees we would collect nuts from have already been chopped down. I see that both rich and poor are struggling, and I only hope that our hardships will end soon.

Character 4: Builder

Character description:

I am a builder in charge of gathering materials and resources for the construction of buildings. I am higher on hierarchical status because my job is very important with our growing population. The trees are becoming harder to find. 

Essay: 

Diamond’s factor that most applies to me is Environmental Damage. We have been consistently harvesting trees in our canyon. Because our population is rapidly increasing, these trees are neeed as resources to build more homes. Soon, we ran out of trees in our area. My duty is now to help gather trees from other mountains, this is a very grueling task and becoming more difficult each month. we are harvesting faster than they grow.

Because of my hard work, I need food for energy. Recently our food source has been affected by the unpredictable weather patterns, sometimes we have a drought which prevents food for eating, other times we are flooded and agriculture is ruined. The weather is not balanced at all. Our food supply is running short.

Character 5: 12-year-old Girl

Character description:  

My character is a 12-year-old girl, and her parents are both farmers. They live in a society called Mesa Verde. She would follow her mother around and learn to do traditional women’s work like working in the fields and cooking. My character lived during the time when Anasazi settlement was starting to increase in food production and population.  

Brief essay:  

My life was simple. I spent most of my time with my mother. When my father went to work on the field, I would follow my mother around and watch her every move. I remember watching her make baskets and with those same baskets she would use them to gather food. With her knowledge, I was able to learn how to make baskets, gather food and cook. I also learned how to make warm clothing from animal skins to keep us warm during the cold nights/season. I recall our civilization living at high grounds while other societies lived in lower grounds. I asked my father why do we live on higher ground, and he said we get more rainfall on higher elevations compared to lower elevations. I remember my father coming home smiling. I asked him what happened that’s making you smile like that? He replied, “Rain!” There was a time when we received a good amount of rainfall, and during that time we have been getting more food. Also, that was when my mother told me I was going to be an older sibling.  

A few years have passed, the weather has been getting colder. It was affecting our food production, so we had to rely on nearby neighbors to give us some of their shares. Our community didn’t only receive but we also gave our neighbors some goods as well, like good quality stones for tool making and turquoise for making ornaments. As more years passed, it was getting harder and harder to get resources. This caused civil unrest and warfare. It was horrible to see people fight over resources, especially within my community. At this point, our community has exhausted our resources. We don’t have much food left due to cold weather, little to no rainfall, soil fertility has been exhausted, our neighbors cut down all the trees, and arroyo cutting. This caused our family and other families to leave our society and find a better home.