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by chewz
2394 days ago
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This subject is discussed in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond.[1] Some topics that the article didn't mention is that: a) Norse in Greenland continued internal infighting losing (in such a small population) able men due to duels and revenge killing b) They had been spending much of the efforts during short summer on costly expeditions to aquire walrus-tusk ivory instead of obtaining timber and other necessities. c) The upper class had been directing most resources into vanity projects like large cathedral and exchanging walrus-tusk ivory for luxury imports like wine, fine clothes etc.. It is still beyond me why living in Greenland by the sea they had refused to eat fish. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose... |
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-- Globalization: Elephant ivory from Africa, newly available, crowded out walrus-tusk ivory from the market. And Greenland's ivory sales were reduced in the wake of the plague. (Ivory was their foreign-exchange product.)
--Climate fluctuations, decades-long.
It's cool to learn a little more above the lived experience of those people. I imagine they argued with each other all the time about whether to spend their efforts getting stuff they could SELL or stuff they could USE. Figuring that out is hard enough for us, and we have perfect information about markets compared to them. Imagine how hard it must have been for them.
According to Diamond the Norse outposts in Greenland lasted five hundred years. That's a hundred years longer ago than the first English settlers clawed a foothold around Massachusetts Bay. A lot can happen in five hundred years! I suspect saying "it was this - " or "it was that - made them collapse" leads to gross oversimplification.