Word: anasazi
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...help us, because ours is not the first society to face environmental challenges. Many past societies collapsed partly from their failure to solve problems similar to those we face today--especially problems of deforestation, water management, topsoil loss and climate change. The long list of victims includes the Anasazi in the U.S. Southwest, the Maya, Easter Islanders, the Greenland Norse, Mycenaean Greeks and inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent, the Indus Valley, Great Zimbabwe and Angkor Wat. The outcomes ranged from "just" a collapse of society, to the deaths of most people, to (in some cases) everyone's ending up dead...
...prone to collapse than others. Fragility varies even within the same country: for instance, some parts of the U.S., including Southern California, where I live, are especially at risk from low rainfall and salinization of soil from agriculture that is dependent on irrigation--the same problems that overwhelmed the Anasazi. Some nations occupy more fragile environments than do others. It's no accident that a list of the world's most environmentally devastated and/or overpopulated countries resembles a list of the world's current political tinderboxes. Both lists include Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Nepal, Rwanda and Somalia...
...those in power and the long-term interests of everybody: chiefs were becoming rich from processes that ultimately undermined society. That too is an acute issue today, as wealthy Americans do things that enrich themselves in the short run and harm everyone in the long run. As the Anasazi chiefs found, they could get away with those policies for a while, but ultimately they bought themselves the privilege of being merely the last to starve...
...that the past is present everywhere at Lake Powell. The topography has been shaped by 2 billion years of geologic activity. Dinosaurs that walked the earth 150 million years ago have left tracks in Glen Canyon. Scattered along the lake's canyon walls are ancient petraglyphs chiseled by the Anasazi pueblo dwellers some 700 years ago. The lake is named after Major John Wesley Powell, a Civil War veteran who led the first scientific expedition into this region in 1869. Some of the rocks here still bear his initials. At night, I showed our girls the fluffy film...
...Researchers discovered the Anasazi tribe may have been...