{"id":334,"date":"2007-11-15T11:57:01","date_gmt":"2007-11-15T11:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astraea.net\/blog\/?p=334"},"modified":"2007-12-13T12:14:48","modified_gmt":"2007-12-13T12:14:48","slug":"another-civilisation-destroyed-by-ecological-over-consumption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/another-civilisation-destroyed-by-ecological-over-consumption\/","title":{"rendered":"Another civilisation destroyed by ecological over-consumption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.astraea.net\/holonics\/magazine\/2007\/20070831.html#angkor\">August we heard about new satellite evidence that shows how the ancient Khmer civilisation around Angkor Wat collapsed<\/a> when its consumption of water resources exceeded natural limits.<\/p>\n<p>A new study outlined at the recent Climate and Humans conference in Murcia, Spain, and appearing in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, shows that <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/sci\/tech\/7093685.stm\">one of Western Europe&#8217;s earliest known urban societies may have sown the seeds of its own downfall by humans meddling with the environment<\/a>.\u00a0 Mystery surrounded the fall of the Bronze Age Argaric people in south-east Spain &#8211; Europe&#8217;s driest area, but new data suggest the early civilisation exhausted precious natural resources, helping bring about its own ruin.<\/p>\n<p>It is clear to many that humanity, as a species, is now doing the same with the planet as a whole.\u00a0 We may point to oil as the principal candidate, because it fuelled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.astraea.net\/about\/dtrttrw.html#impact\">extraordinary growth in population, technology and consumption during the past 100 years<\/a>, and oil resources, relative to the rate of consumption,<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hubberts_peak\"> have already peaked<\/a>.\u00a0 But we are also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.astraea.net\/about\/dtrttrw.html#biosphere\">consuming resources that are critical to the functioning of the biosphere<\/a> far beyond the ability of the biosphere to adjust.<\/p>\n<p>The warning from ancient Spain is another that we must eat less, consume less and live within the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.astraea.net\/about\/dtrttrw.html#nature\">laws of nature<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In August we heard about new satellite evidence that shows how the ancient Khmer civilisation around Angkor Wat collapsed when its consumption of water resources exceeded natural limits. A new study outlined at the recent Climate and Humans conference in Murcia, Spain, and appearing in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, shows that one of Western &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/another-civilisation-destroyed-by-ecological-over-consumption\/\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Another civilisation destroyed by ecological over-consumption<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-living"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hwcd-5o","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.astraea.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}