Norman Yoffee: The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations: New Perspectives

Shallit Lecture given at BYU on September 16, 2011. Recent attempts to explain the "collapse" of ancient states and civilizations have argued that people's own decisions and policies resulted in environmental destruction and accompanying social and economic catastrophes. These accounts resonate in our modern world in which we are concerned with global warming, over-fishing, aridification and concomitantly with actions that might lead to sustainability and resilience. But did ancient states really "collapse"? How do we explain political and socio-economic change in the past? What can we learn from the past? This lecture presents some new archaeological discoveries and new perspectives on the fate of ancient civilizations.

Видео Norman Yoffee: The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations: New Perspectives канала BYU Department of Anthropology