Ranging from the highlands of New Guinea to the Pitcairn and Henderson Islands, from Greenland and Iceland to Rwanda and the Maya, from Haiti and the Dominican Republic to the US southwest and China - with many an additional stop-off in between. The diversity of the case studies he uses (both past and present) is extraordinary. There is only so much about the middens on Easter Island or the soil structures of Greenland that one needs to know to embrace a particular collapse hypothesis. This pursuit of objectivity drives him into a depth of detail that on several occasions clearly impedes the narrative line he is seeking to develop. Each collapse or near-collapse throws up a different balance of those key factors.ĭiamond is at pains to stress the objectivity he has brought to bear on a sequence of collapse scenarios that often continue to generate serious controversy, and for the most part (until the final chapter) leaves it up to the reader to draw down any conclusions from these scenarios that may be relevant to our own societies today. It turned out to be a lot more complex, with several equally influential factors involved, such as climate change, the presence of hostile neighbours, any involvement in trade, and a host of different response mechanisms on the part of those facing potential collapse. He admits to having started out on this inquiry assuming it would prove to be straightforward abuse of their physical environment that precipitated their demise.

They are linked by Diamond's inquiry into what caused some of these societies (such as the Mayan civilisation or the people of Easter Island) to collapse, while others facing similar challenges managed to survive.

In Collapse, Jared Diamond uses that elemental power of nature as his background, but fills his foreground with an astonishing cavalcade of different peoples and cultures from across the planet.

Collapse jared