“Studying the demise of historic civilisations can tell us how much risk we face today, says collapse expert Luke Kemp. Worryingly, the signs are worsening.”

by Luke Kemp

“Great civilisations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.

“So concluded the historian Arnold Toynbee in his 12-volume magnum opus A Study of History. It was an exploration of the rise and fall of 28 different civilisations.

“He was right in some respects: civilisations are often responsible for their own decline. However, their self-destruction is usually assisted.”

“Despite the abundance of books and articles, we don’t have a conclusive explanation as to why civilisations collapse. What we do know is this: the factors highlighted above can all contribute. Collapse is a tipping point phenomena, when compounding stressors overrun societal coping capacity. We can examine these indicators of danger to see if our chance of collapse is falling or rising. Above are four of those possible metrics, measured over the past few decades.”

Read this article in its entirety at the BBC, click here.

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