Colapso

Ter em atenção o que vai sendo descoberto pela história, é, também, um modo de contrariar a complacência dos tempos. A citação abaixo de uma entrevista no New York Times, a Heidi Cullen, Into the Limelight, and the Politics of Global Warming, lembra-nos que as civilizações colapsam por outras razões que não as apontadas, usualmente, nos manuais - o livro de Jared Diamond, Collapse, é disso que trata (o bold é meu).

"For my thesis, I studied droughts and the collapse of the first Mesopotamian empire — the Akkadian civilization. I was able to show that a megadrought at roughly 2200 B.C. played a role in its demise. I found the proof by examining the sediment cores of ancient mud. When one looked at the mud from the period around the Akkadian collapse, one found a huge spike in the mineral dolomite. That substance is an indicator of drought.

Q: What’s the point of knowing this? A: Because until recently, historians, anthropologists and archaeologists were reluctant to say that civilizations could collapse because of nature. The prevailing theories were that civilizations collapsed because of political, military or medical reasons — plagues. Climate was often factored out. And yet, indifference to the power of nature is civilization’s Achilles’ heel."