In the text Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond, he talks about the Maya society and how they collapsed. The Maya was one of the most advanced society during their time. There were many things that contributed to their collapse. One of the things that caused their society to collapse was their environmental problem. The Mayas caused climate and environmental changes by deforestation and erosion. Because they cut down the trees in the forest to make more space to harvest crops, the amount of rainfall decreased and caused a drought in many areas. Another thing was political power. Instead of coming together to figure out a solution to the problem, the different kingdoms fought amongst each other. The Maya society was divided politically mainly because of food supply. Corn was the most dominant crop. The humid climate made it difficult to store the corn for more than a year. The Mayas didn’t have any form of transportation so humans had to carry the products on their backs.
The Maya society story is similar to what we are going through today. Instead of saving energy we are wasting it. The farmers in the Maya society used more farmland to make more food than they needed and that caused a drought because they cut down the forest in order to have that farmland. America is doing the same thing the only difference is that we’re using a lot of oil to make products that we really don’t need.
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