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We’re Witnessing the Fall of the Biggest Empire in History
And it’s going to be spectacular
Every empire in the history of civilisation has collapsed.
The Roman Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire.
Each of them seemed unconquerable and immutable in their time.
But due to wars and internal instability, they each fell, sometimes swiftly and dramatically.
There is no reason to think our current global empire will be any different.
Entire civilisations have disappeared.
The ancient Maya outstripped their resources through intensive agriculture.
Soil depletion and deforestation wiped them out.
It’s been suggested a similar fate befell Easter Island: deforestation and the stripping of resources led to famine and cannibalism on a catastrophic scale.
There is a human tendency to look at the ‘natural world’ around us, the world we know, and assume that’s the way it’s always been.
That forests have always been forest and deserts have always been deserts.
But that’s not the case.
Take Iceland (below). It was once covered in trees until the Vikings stripped them all.
Same with the British Isles. Far from being the idyllic rural landscape often romanticised, the rolling hills and moors which cover much of the UK are ecological dead zones caused by catastrophic deforestation (below).
Entire regions have been turned into deserts by the historical communities who used to live there.
The Sahara, for example, was a lush green oasis 11,000 years ago. Rivers, lakes, grasslands and forests covered the region.
Antelopes roamed the rich pastures. Crocodiles swam in the rivers.
