Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
Sources – Civilization Collapse
We want to thank the following experts for their help with the video:
Dr. William MacAskill
Associate Professor in Philosophy and Research Fellow at the Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford
He is a co-founder and the President of the Centre for Effective Altruism.
– At its height, the Roman Empire was home to about 30% of the world’s population, and in many ways it was the pinnacle of human advancement.
Even empires often associated with great power such the USSR or the Third Reich included only 9 and 12% of the world’s population at their peaks.
#Scheidel, W. (2021): The Scale of Empire: Territory, Population, Distribution. In: Fibiger Bang, P et al. The Oxford World History of Empire: Volume One: The Imperial Experience
– Its citizens enjoyed the benefits of central heating, concrete, double glazing, banking, international trade, and upward social mobility.
Central heating
#Ionescu, C. et al. (2015): The historical evolution of the energy efficient buildings. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. Vol. 49, pp. 243-253
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2015.04.062
Quote: “Romans also used the heating with burning gases that flows through cavities in the floor or the walls [7]. These elements with high thermal mass actively keep the indoor temperature at a comfortable level for a longer period of time. Windows covered with mica were also an active way to preserve a pleasant temperature of the inside air by trapping the solar radiation. This solution conducted to special design of rooms in Roman Empire, namely “Heliocaminus” [8]. ”
Double-glazed windows
#Miliaresis, I. (2019): Throwing money out the window: fuel in the Forum Baths at Ostia. In: Fuel and Fire in the Ancient Roman World Towards an integrated economic understanding. Pp. 39-50
https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/299262/Fuel_and_Fire_Chapter4.pdf?sequence=3
Quote: “Other window configurations have also been reconstructed for the Forum Baths at Ostia. For example, Connolly & Dodge (1998, 244) contend that the windows of the Forum Baths were double-glazed, but evidence is lacking. The existence of double-glazed windows in the excavations of the Suburban Baths of Herculaneum is attested (Pappalardo 1999, 237–8). Pappalardo discovered that the windows of the caldarium were closed with two fixed wooden frames, set 10 cm apart. Double-glazed windows separated by a heated space of 10 cm have also been suggested in the Baths of Neptune at Ostia, by Broise (1991, 62–3, 64–5, 69). Since such evidence exists in nearby contexts, it is useful to test the effects of double glazing on the heated rooms of the Forum Baths to provide a complete spectrum of possibilities.
(...)
The double row of holes found along the interior of the Preconnesian marble pilasters demonstrates to Broise that a doubleglazed window was supported in this space.10 Thatcher (1956, 209) instead contends that an ornamental grille was secured by the outer holes, while a movable frame was secured by the inner holes.”
Concrete
The performance of Roman builders and Roman concrete were so significant that they are still being researched today to gain knowledge for modern building materials.
#Brune, P. & Perucchio, R. (2012): Roman Concrete Vaulting in the Great Hall of Trajan’s Markets: Structural Evaluation. Journal of Architectural Engineering, Vol. 18 (4), pp. 332-340
https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/%28ASCE%29AE.1943-5568.0000086
Quote: “Roman engineering is widely acknowledged for its legacy of roads, aqueducts, and amphitheaters. Less recognized—but of comparable achievement—are the enormous concrete structures created during the Imperial era (circa 50-300 CE). Indeed, the perceptive use of concrete to create monumental public buildings of daring scale and vaulted entirely in unreinforced concrete is unquestionably one of the Roman engineer’s most significant and enduring accomplishments. Similarly dimensioned structures, with spans exceeding 25 m, were not again realized until over 1,000 years later (Brunelleschi’s dome atop Santa Maria del Fiore) and could not be built under present-day design codes. However, an impressive number of these concrete tours de force remain extant today, some excellently preserved after nearly 2,000 years, including long periods without maintenance.”
#Jackson, M. D. et al. (2013): Unlocking the secrets of Al-tobermorite in Roman seawater concrete. American Mineralogist, Vol. 98 (10), pp. 1669-1687
https://doi.org/10.2138/am.2013.4484
Quote: “Ancient Roman concrete, an extraordinarily durable, high-performance composite constructed from lime and pyroclastic rocks, provides a unique temporal window to address shortcomings in modern concrete longevity and environmental sustainability. The monuments of Rome, such as the Markets of Trajan (96 to 112 CE), are masterpieces of concrete engineering in architectural settings. Roman builders also constructed massive, enduring concrete structures in harbors along the central Italian coast and Mediterranean region. ”
Banking
#Temin, P. (2017): The Roman market economy. Princeton University Press.
Quote: “The existence of banks in the forum at Rome is first attested in 310 BCE, a century after their development in the Greek world, by the Augustan writer Livy, who perhaps anachronistically calls them argentariae (tabernae, bankers’ shops); by his day the common word for a banker was argentarius (silver- [coin]-man) (Livius IX,40,16; Andreau 1987a, 337–40). By the first century BCE, bankers called nummularii and coactores are sometimes attested, and also coactores argentarii. Andreau and Bürge take the four terms to signify four different types of bank, but it is more likely that argentarius was the generic word for banker, while nummularius and coactor referred to specific functions that an argentarius might or might not carry out as part of his general banking, and which were sometimes carried out on their own as a specialized business.”
Trade
The following book provides extensive information on the trade between Romans and the East and is meant as a general reference for international trade in the Roman Empire mentioned in the script.
#Young, G. K. (2001). Rome’s eastern trade: International commerce and imperial policy, 31 BC-AD 305
Social mobility
Ancient Roman society was very complex. Social mobility was possible, but depended on numerous factors.
Here we want to mention as an example the so-called freedmen, former slaves.
In ancient records, there are numerous reports of the elites who were disgusted with these people.
Former slaves were able to climb the social ladder over various hurdles, sometimes higher and sometimes less high. Thus, they often had to pay a lot of money for themselves and their relatives to gain freedom. Through trade and commerce, it was then possible to gain wealth.
#Barja de Quiroga, P. L. (1995): Freedmen Social Mobility in Roman Italy. Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 44 (3), pp. 326-348
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4436383
Quote: “Literary sources, particularly those of the first century A.D., have presented a uniform image of the freedman as a nouveau riche, an object of scathing jokes and relentless criticism. Freedmen's wealth and the exaggerated luxury that they reportedly displayed offended the Roman intellectual aristocracy who retaliated angrily by reminding them of their servile past and foreign origin. The most celebrated and comprehensive picture is that of Petronius, who depicted Trimalchio, the imaginary freedman of his novel, as the hero of bad taste and economic success. Similar, but briefer attacks can also be found in other Latin authors who variously describe freedmen as uneducated, insolent, bad-mannered, flamboyant and rich dandies. The image we obtain is, thus, the very opposite of the perfect Roman ideal of a poor, austere, prudent citizen.
(...)
Very frequently they had to pay large amounts of money for their freedom and that of their nearest relatives.”
– Rome became the first city in history with one million inhabitants and was a center of technological, legal, and economic progress.
As is often the case with time periods far in the past, there are also different opinions here. Some experts are of the opinion that Alexandria became a city of millions before Rome.
It should also be noted that the table (second source) does not include Asian cities.
However, it is assumed that the first Asian cities of millions emerged in the first millennium.
#The Evolutionary World Politics Homepage (2008): World cities in history: An overview
https://web.archive.org/web/20070402100205/http://faculty.washington.edu/modelski/WcitiesH.htm
Quote: “Which was the city whose population was the first to attain one million? The estimates for Alexandria, c.100 BC, tend to put it in the 500,000 range, with some scholars claiming that it might have reached 1 m. by 200-100 BCE, and that would make it first. But the more conservative guess would probably point to Rome that at the turn to the new millennium likely reached that figure, and held onto, and exceeded, it for some two-three centuries. The next to reach ‘millionaire’ status was Tang era Changan, c.700-800.”
#Morris, I. (2013): The measure of civilization: How social development decides the fate of nations. Princeton University Press.
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691155685/the-measure-of-civilization
– By civilization, we mean a complex society where labor is specialized and social classes emerge and which is ruled by institutions. Civilisations share a dominant mutual language and culture and domesticate plants and animals to feed and sustain large cities, where they often construct impressive monuments.
The exact definition of "civilization" is very controversial and changes depending on the times. However, the quote below gives a first rough overview of widespread characteristics.
#Sullivan, L. E. (2009): The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, p. 73
– Virtually all civilizations end, on average after 340 years.
In the following chart, the life span of various civilizations are compiled and an average of 336 years is reported which we rounded up to 340 years. The data in the chart was taken from two studies which we also cited below.
#BBC (2019): Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190218-are-we-on-the-road-to-civilisation-collapse
Quote: “In the graphic below, I have compared the lifespan of various civilisations, which I define as a society with agriculture, multiple cities, military dominance in its geographical region and a continuous political structure. Given this definition, all empires are civilisations, but not all civilisations are empires. The data is drawn from two studies on the growth and decline of empires (for 3000-600BC and 600BC-600), and an informal, crowd-sourced survey of ancient civilisations (which I have amended).”
#Taagepera, R. (1978): Size and duration of empires growth-decline curves, 3000 to 600 b.c., Social Science Research, Vol. 7 (2), pp. 180-196
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0049089X78900108
#Taagepera, R. (1979): Size and Duration of Empires: Growth-Decline Curves, 600 B.C. to 600 A.D., Social Science History, Vol. 3, (3/4), pp. 115-138
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1170959?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
– Collapse is rarely nice for individuals. Their shared cultural identity is shattered as institutions lose the power to organize people. Knowledge is lost, living standards fall, violence increases and often the population declines. The civilization either completely disappears, is absorbed by stronger neighbors or something new emerges, sometimes with more primitive technology than before.
The fall of Rome is certainly one of the most popular, but history is full of these cases - before and after Rome.
As diverse as societies are, so are the reasons for their fall, whether natural (such as natural disasters) or human (such as wars). What brought down one civilization only made another stronger.
#Motesharrei, S. et al. (2014): Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies. Ecological Economics,
Vol. 101, pp. 90-102
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615?via%3Dihub
Quote: “The Roman Empire's dramatic collapse (followed by many centuries of population decline, economic deterioration, intellectual regression, and the disappearance of literacy) is well known, but it was not the first rise-and-collapse cycle in Europe. Prior to the rise of Classical Greco-Roman civilization, both the Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations had each risen, reached very advanced levels of civilization, and then collapsed virtually completely.
(...)
A large number of explanations have been proposed for each specific case of collapse, including one or more of the following: volcanoes, earthquakes, droughts, floods, changes in the courses of rivers, soil degradation (erosion, exhaustion, salinization, etc.), deforestation, climate change, tribal migrations, foreign invasions, changes in technology (such as the introduction of ironworking), changes in the methods or weapons of warfare (such as the introduction of horse cavalry, armored infantry, or long swords), changes in trade patterns, depletion of particular mineral resources (e.g., silver mines), cultural decline and social decadence, popular uprisings, and civil wars. However, these explanations are specific to each particular case of collapse rather than general. Moreover, even for the specific case where the explanation applies, the society in question usually had already experienced the phenomenon identified as the cause without collapsing. For example, the Minoan society had repeatedly experienced earthquakes that destroyed palaces, and they simply rebuilt them more splendidly than before. Indeed, many societies experience droughts, floods, volcanoes, soil erosion, and deforestation with no major social disruption.”
– But this modern, globalized civilization is even more vulnerable in some ways than past empires, because we are much more deeply interconnected. A collapse of the industrialized world literally means that the majority of people alive today would perish since without industrial agriculture we would no longer be able to feed them.
In industrialized nations, people are highly dependent on agriculture. For example, one farm in the USA feeds 166 people; in Germany, one farmer feeds 137 people.
#American Farm Bureau Federation (2021): Fast Facts About Agriculture & Food
https://www.fb.org/newsroom/fast-facts
Quote: “One U.S. farm feeds 166 people annually in the U.S. and abroad. The global population is expected to increase by 2.2 billion by 2050, which means the world’s farmers will have to grow about 70% more food than what is now produced.”
The following source is from the German Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE). The translation is: “How many people does a farmer feed?”
#BLE (2021): Wieviel Menschen ernährt ein Landwirt?
– Rome collapsed, but the Aksumite Empire or the Teotihuacans and of course the Byzantine Empire, carried on.
The Roman Empire existed from 44 BCE to 476 CE so it lasted for around 520 years. Aksumite, in comparison, lasted for 1100 years and Teotihuacans for 735 years.
#National Geographic Society. The Kingdom of Aksum. 2021
http://www.nationalgeographic.org/article/kingdom-aksum/
Quote: “A major empire of the ancient world, the kingdom of Aksum arose in Ethiopia during the first century C.E. This wealthy African civilization thrived for centuries, controlling a large territorial state and access to vast trade routes linking the Roman Empire to the Middle East and India.”
#Encyclopedia Britannica. Teotihuacán. 2021
https://www.britannica.com/place/Teotihuacan
Quote: “The area was settled by 400 BCE, but it did not experience large-scale urban growth until three centuries later, with the arrival of refugees from Cuicuilco, a city destroyed by volcanic activity. It is not known whether the basic urban plan also dates to that time. About 750 CE central Teotihuacán burned, possibly during an insurrection or a civil war. Although parts of the city were occupied after that event, much of it fell into ruin. Centuries later the area was revered by Aztec pilgrims.”
Generally, the beginning of the Byzantine Empire is defined with the fall of the last Roman emperor and the end with the takeover of Constantinople by the Ottomans.
#Encyclopedia Britannica (2021): Byzantine Empire
https://www.britannica.com/place/Byzantine-Empire
Quote: “The Byzantine Empire existed from approximately 395 CE—when the Roman Empire was split—to 1453. It became one of the leading civilizations in the world before falling to an Ottoman Turkish onslaught in the 15th century.”
– The last clear example of a rapid global population decrease was the Black Death, a pandemic of the bubonic plague in the fourteenth century that spread across the Middle East and Europe and killed a third of all Europeans and about 1/10th of the global population.
#Ord, T. (2020): The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. P. 124
Quote: “The Black Death devastated Europe. In those six years, between one-quarter and one-half of all Europeans were killed. The Middle East was ravaged too, with the plague killing about one in three Egyptians and Syrians. And it may have also laid waste to parts of Central Asia, India and China. Due to the scant records of the fourteenth century, we will never know the true toll, but our best estimates are that somewhere between 5 percent and 14 percent of all the world’s people were killed, in what may have been the greatest catastrophe humanity has seen.”
It is not possible to know for sure how many people the Black Death killed because current knowledge comes mostly from medieval sources with qualitative statements. In the case of the world population, we then decided on a mean value of 10%. Estimates of the mortality rates are based on extrapolations from the data from well documented regions in Europe, which tend to be more urban populated and have higher rates compared to urban areas. Yet, most of the European population was rural in the fourteenth century. So the extrapolations assuming a homogeneous spread of the disease might lead to higher estimates. Most estimates go between 30% to 60%, the common consensus is that it killed around one third to half of Europe’s population.
The following interactive map is from the accompanying website to the book below and it shows the extent of the spread of the plague at six time points:
#Backman, C. R. (2015): Cultures of the West: A History https://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780190240455/stu_res/ch11/im/
Link to the map: https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/uscompanion/us/static/companion.websites/9780190240455/Map11.5/Map11.5.html
There are recent studies though estimating the death toll with new methods. The following one, for instance, collected fossil pollen samples from sites across Europe and compared the variety to assess how much agriculture was happening within the time frame 1250 to 1450. They inferred the mortality rates with the premise that fields would not have been cultivated under high mortality, which would let plants produce pollen, and by comparing the profiles across regions and time frames, they estimated some rural regions got affected little whereas some others were more badly hit. So the methods predicting the numbers assuming homogeneity across Europe might result in higher estimates.
#Izdebski, A. et al. (2022): Palaeoecological data indicates land-use changes across Europe linked to spatial heterogeneity in mortality during the Black Death pandemic. Nature Ecology & Evolution, Vol. 6, pp. 297–306
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01652-4
Quote: “We used two independent methods of analysis to evaluate whether the changes we see in the landscape at the time of the Black Death agree with the hypothesis that a large portion of the population, upwards of half, died within a few years in the 21 historical regions we studied. While we can confirm that the Black Death had a devastating impact in some regions, we found that it had negligible or no impact in others.”
For further references, check a recent book providing extensive account of the plague in light of current evidence:
#Aberth, J. (2020): The Black Death: A New History of the Great Mortality in Europe, 1347-1500
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-black-death-9780199937981?cc=de&lang=en&
– While the old societies were massively disrupted in the short term, the intense loss of human lives and suffering did little to negatively impact European economic and technological development in the long run. Population size recovered within 2 centuries, and just 2 centuries later, the Industrial Revolution began.
In the course of the 16th century, the European population returned to the level it had reached in 1300 (over 80 million, before the Black Death).
With the beginning of the 18th century (and thus over the period of the beginning industrialization) the population grew rapidly. From about 115 million (around 1700) to almost 200 million (around 1800).
#OWID (2021): Population
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?time=1200..1804&country=~Europe
– 140,000 people were killed and 90% of the city was at least partially incinerated or reduced to rubble.
#International Committee of The Red Cross (ICRC) (accessed June 2022): Hiroshima & Nagasaki
#Tomonaga, M. (2019): The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A Summary of the Human Consequences, 1945-2018, and Lessons for Homo sapiens to End the Nuclear Weapon Age. Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, Vol. 2 (2),pp. 491-517
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25751654.2019.1681226
Quote: “Under the two gigantic mushroom clouds, approximately 280,000 citizens in Hiroshima and 240,000 in Nagasaki were suddenly thrown into chaos and agony. A total of approximately 140,000 in Hiroshima (Hiroshima 1971) and 73,000 in Nagasaki (Nagasaki, 1977) died instantaneously or within five months due to the combined effects of three components of physical energy generated by nuclear fissions: blast wind (pressure), radiant heat, and ionizing radiation. A total of more than 210,000 remaining victims, 140,000 in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki, survived the first five months of death and agony and became hibakusha.”
#U.S. Department of Energy (accessed June 2022): The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima. The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/hiroshima.htm
Quote: ”Nearly every structure within one mile of ground zero was destroyed, and almost every building within three miles was damaged. Less than 10 percent of the buildings in the city survived without any damage, and the blast wave shattered glass in suburbs twelve miles away.
(...)
No one will ever know for certain how many died as a result of the attack on Hiroshima. Some 70,000 people probably died as a result of initial blast, heat, and radiation effects. This included about twenty American airmen being held as prisoners in the city. By the end of 1945, because of the lingering effects of radioactive fallout and other after effects, the Hiroshima death toll was probably over 100,000. The five-year death total may have reached or even exceeded 200,000, as cancer and other long-term effects took hold.”
– But against all odds, they made a remarkable recovery! Hiroshima’s population recovered within a decade, and today it is a thriving city of 1.2 million people.
While the population after the war was about 137,000. In the mid-1950s, it again reached a level (1955: about 360,000) that was roughly equivalent to the pre-war population (1942: about 420,000).
#City of Hiroshima (accessed June 2022): Statistical Profile
Quote:
3 Population
Population changes
Hiroshima's municipalization (1889) 83,387
Maximum prewar population (1942) 419,182
Minimum postwar population (1945) 137,197
Population surpasses 1 million (1985) 1,024,072
Population by census (2020) 1,200,754
#UN (1963): Demographic Yearbook 1962, p. 341
https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic-social/products/dyb/dybsets/1962%20DYB.pdf
– One thing that’s different from historic collapses is that humanity now has unprecedented destructive power: Today’s nuclear arsenals are so powerful that an all-out global war could cause a nuclear winter and billions of deaths.
The following paper uses various nuclear war scenarios to analyze how the oceans are affected. The authors conclude that a nuclear El Niño phenomenon (“Nuclear Niño”) would be the result.
El Niño is Pacific weather phenomenon that occurs about every 4 years and causes heavy, sometimes catastrophic, rainfall and fisheries failures in South America.
The ash released into the atmosphere by a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, for example 150 TG of soot, 1 Tg = 1012 grams = 1 megaton), would disrupt winds, precipitation, and ocean currents to such an extent that a year-long El Niño could result.
#Coupe, J. et al. (2021): Nuclear Niño response observed in simulations of nuclear war scenarios. Communications Earth & Environment, Vol. 2 (18)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00088-1#Fig1
Quote: “We show that global cooling can generate a large, sustained response in the equatorial Pacific, resembling an El Niño but persisting for up to seven years. The El Niño following nuclear war, or Nuclear Niño, would be characterized by westerly trade wind anomalies and a shutdown of equatorial Pacific upwelling, caused primarily by cooling of the Maritime Continent and tropical Africa. Reduced incident sunlight and ocean circulation changes would cause a 40% reduction in equatorial Pacific phytoplankton productivity. These results indicate nuclear war could trigger extreme climate change and compromise food security beyond the impacts of crop failure.
(...)
We focus on a scenario of nuclear war between the United States and Russia as described by Robock et al. and Coupe et al., simulated as a 150 Tg soot injection in a layer between 300 hPa and 150 hPa of the atmosphere over those two countries over seven days, starting on 15 May. Hereafter, this case is referred to as NW-150Tg.”
– Our knowledge of our own biology and how to manipulate it is getting so advanced that it is becoming possible to engineer viruses as contagious as the coronavirus and as deadly as ebola.
The issue of "Biosecurity" has been brought back into focus by the COVID-19 pandemic as it showed our vulnerability to these kind of events.
Several aspects need to be considered:
Risks posed by research on natural viruses or the modification of these,
accidental releases,
bioterrorism.
#de Bretton-Gordon, H. (2020): Biosecurity in the Wake of COVID-19: The Urgent Action Needed. CTC Sentinel. Vol. 13 (11), pp. 11-17
https://ctc.usma.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/CTC-SENTINEL-112020.pdf
Quote: “While overwhelming evidence points to SARS-CoV-2 spontaneously spreading to humans, the advances in synthetic biology and the growth in the number of Level 3 and 4 biocontainment facilities around the world storing deadly viruses mean there is also the very real possibility that in the future, bad actors will try to engineer or steal/obtain a highly transmissible and highly virulent virus and unleash it onto the world. Another risk is accidental releases from such biocontainment facilities.
(...)
Advances in synthetic biology have created tools that could be put to malevolent use. In the last two decades, scientists synthesized the poliovirus from its genetic sequence, recreated the 1918 Spanish flu virus, and succeeded in modifying the H5N1 avian flu virus so that it resulted (in a research laboratory) in airborne transmission among mammals.”
– Increasingly the risk of global pandemics is much higher than in the past.
Not only are we now able to genetically manipulate pathogens to make them more deadly. Human activities such as deforestation, climate change or loss of biodiversity will bring us more pandemics in the future.
#IPBES (2020): IPBES Pandemics Workshop Report
Quote: “Pandemics have their origins in diverse microbes carried by animal reservoirs, but their emergence is entirely driven by human activities. The underlying causes of pandemics are the same global environmental changes that drive biodiversity loss and climate change. These include land-use change, agricultural expansion and intensification, and wildlife trade and consumption. These drivers of change bring wildlife, livestock, and people into closer contact, allowing animal microbes to move into people and lead to infections, sometimes outbreaks, and more rarely into true pandemics that spread through road networks, urban centers and global travel and trade routes. The recent exponential rise in consumption and trade, driven by demand in developed countries and emerging economies, as well as by demographic pressure, has led to a series of emerging diseases that originate mainly in biodiverse developing countries, driven by global consumption patterns.”
#Ord, T. (2020): The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity.
Quote: “It is not twentieth-century bioweaponry that should alarm us, but the next hundred years of improvements. A hundred years ago, we had only just discovered viruses and were yet to discover DNA. Now we can design the DNA of viruses and resurrect historic viruses from their genetic sequences.”
– There are 1 billion agricultural workers today so, even if the global population fell to just 80 million, it is virtually guaranteed that many survivors would know how to produce food.
Looking at the issue from a different angle (second source), it can be said that in the developing world alone, around 2 billion people have experience of food production through living on small farms.
#OWID (accessed June 2022): Number of people employed in agriculture, 1991 to 2019
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-people-employed-in-agriculture?country=~OWID_WRL
#Rapsomanikis, G. (2015): The economic lives of smallholder farmers. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286934484_The_economic_lives_of_smallholder_farmers
Quote: “About two-thirds of the developing world’s 3 billion rural people live in about 475 million small farm households, working on land plots smaller than 2 hectares. Many are poor and food insecure and have limited access to markets and services. Their choices are constrained, but they farm their land and produce food for a substantial proportion of the world’s population. Besides farming they have multiple economic activities, often in the informal economy, to contribute towards their small incomes.”
– Maize is 10 times bigger than its wild ancestor; ancient tomatoes were the size of today’s peas.
Both plants belong to the genus Zea, and teosinte is used to refer to the wild precursor of today's corn (Zea mays L. ssp. mays).
#Doebley, J. et al. (1990): Genetic and morphological analysis of a maize-teosinte F2 population: Implications for the origin of maize. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 87 (24), pp. 9888–9892
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.87.24.9888
Quote: “The teosinte ear is composed of 5-10 (or more) distichously (in two ranks) arranged cupulate fruit cases (Fig.2A and C). [...] The maize ear is also constructed from cupules (Fig.2D). It is composed of generally 100 or more polystichously (in many ranks) arranged cupules that are hidden from view by the kernels (Fig.2B and D). In maize, there may be 4-10 or more ranks of couples.”
The closest wild relative of today's tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is considered Solanum pimpinellifolium, with fruits smaller than 1.5 cm.
#Blanca, J. et al. (2012): Variation Revealed by SNP Genotyping and Morphology Provides Insight into the Origin of the Tomato. PLOS ONE 7(10)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0048198
Quote: “Tomato, Solanum lycopersicum, is divided into two widely distributed varieties: the cultivated S. lycopersicum var. lycopersicum, and the weedy S. lycopersicum var. cerasiforme. Solanum pimpinellifolium is the most closely related wild species of tomato.
(...)
The wild species, S. pimpinellifolium, has a bushy growth type and inhabits the coastal regions of Ecuador, Peru and northern Chile. Its fruits are red and smaller than 1.5 cm in diameter.”
– But then again, we are thinking in larger time frames. Industrialization originally happened 12,000 years after the agricultural revolution.
This revolution, also called the Neolithic Revolution, was particularly characterized by the cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals. It began about 12,000 years ago, probably triggered by climate change and population growth.
New survival strategies, such as stockpiling, meant that people no longer had to constantly change their location. Permanent settlements emerged, the environment was changed (e.g., arable land), new technologies emerged, and art and culture grew. At the same time, new diseases and conflicts emerged.
Then, in the middle of the 18th century, the next civilizational upheaval took place: From an economy dominated mainly by crafts and agriculture to industry and mass production.
#Herrera, R. J. & Garcia-Bertrand, R. (2018): The Agricultural Revolutions. Ancestral DNA, Human Origins, and Migrations
https://www.sciencedirect.com/book/9780128041246/ancestral-dna-human-origins-and-migrations
Quote: “The agricultural revolution is the name given to a number of cultural transformations that initially allowed humans to change from a hunting and gathering subsistence to one of agriculture and animal domestications. Today, more than 80% of human worldwide diet is produced from less than a dozen crop species many of which were domesticated many years ago. Scientists study ancient remains, bone artifacts, and DNA to explore the past and present impact of plant and animal domestication and to make sense of the motivations behind early cultivation techniques. Archeological evidence illustrates that starting in the Holocene epoch approximately 12 thousand years ago (kya), the domestication of plants and animals developed in separate global locations most likely triggered by climate change and local population increases. This transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture occurred very slowly as humans selected crops for cultivation, animals for domestication, then continued to select plants and animals for desirable traits. The development of agriculture marks a major turning point in human history and evolution. In several independent domestication centers, cultivation of plants and animals flourished according to the particular environmental conditions of the region, whereas human migration and trade propelled the global spread of agriculture. This change in subsistence provided surplus plant food that accumulated during the summer and fall for storage and winter consumption, as well as domesticated animals that could be used for meat and dairy products throughout the year. Because these new survival strategies no longer required relocation and migration in search of food, humans were able to establish homesteads, towns, and communities, which, in turn, caused rapid increases in population densities and lead to the emergence of civilizations. This dependence on plant and animal domestication entailed a number of other environmental adaptations including deforestation, irrigation, and the allocation of land for specific crop cultivation. It also triggered various other innovations including new tool technologies, commerce, architecture, an intensified division of labor, defined socioeconomic roles, property ownership, and tiered political systems. This shift in subsistence mode provided a relatively safer existence and in general more leisure time for analytical and creative pursuits resulting in complex language development, and the accelerated evolution of art, religion, and science. However, increases in population density also correlated with the increased prevalence of diseases, interpersonal conflicts, and extreme social stratification. The rise of agriculture and the influence of genetics and culture (gene–culture coevolution) continue to affect modern humans through alterations in nutrition, predisposition to obesity, and exposure to new diseases.”
#Britannica (accessed June 2022): Industrial Revolution
https://www.britannica.com/event/Industrial-Revolution/The-first-Industrial-Revolution
Quote: “Industrial Revolution, in modern history, the process of change from an agrarian and handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing. These technological changes introduced novel ways of working and living and fundamentally transformed society. This process began in Britain in the 18th century and from there spread to other parts of the world.”
– But a lot of the technological, scientific, and cultural knowledge stored in the world's 2.6 million libraries, would survive the catastrophe.
More than two-thirds of the libraries are located in schools and are thus widely scattered around the globe. Of course, the level of information in school libraries is different from that in the nearly 100,000 academic ones. But it can be said that no matter where you are in the world, knowledge is not far away.
#IFLA (2021). Library Map of the World
