How Did The Collapse Of The Sumerian Civilization

According to Jared Diamond there are five main characteristics that play a part in societal collapse: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly neighbors, and cultural responses (Curren). Many early societies that collapsed experienced these problems such as the Sumerian civilization that was destroyed by their neighbors, the Elamites. Ancient Egyptian civilization was ruined by people infiltrating their country and changing their perspective on religion. The Rapa Nui civilization that began on Easter Island was destroyed by environmental damage caused by irresponsible use of their natural resources. In some way America embodies many of these characteristics yet the vast majority of the population chooses to ignore the
They are credited with advances like the first written human story, The Epic of Gilgamesh, which commented on Sumerian values. Unfortunately, the Sumerian cities were unable to become unified because they believed that they were each representatives of their respective gods which resulted in fighting between themselves. Sumer’s inability to cooperate with one another led to them each developing their own aristocracy which only aided in the collapse of this once culturally rich society. Around 2000 B.C.E. Sumer was attacked by the Elamites who were from what is now southwestern Iran (Guisepi). At this point the Sumerian civilization gradually dispersed and all that remained of their culture was their language. The Sumerians’ decline was primarily caused by their mutual hostility with their neighbors. They were unable to get along with anyone around them which weakened their civilization and allowed for other nearby societies to take
They built their civilization based on art, music, legends and even their own system of writing in a place that seemed very unlikely. At first their society was extremely successful especially in agriculture, their crops were so abundant that they had spare time to invest in other activities. So the Rapa Nui people turned to making statues to commemorate the kings and other important people that had passed away. Unfortunately, the only way to transport these statues was by rolling them on large logs, this combined with their constant need to expand agriculturally led to mass deforestation. The deforestation caused the Rapa Nui culture to suffer, the ground lost its natural humidity and the civilization had to adapt to survive (“History of Easter Island”). While the people did continue to live on Easter Island the culture and civilization ceased to exist, there were no more statues being built and everything the civilization once stood for was now pushed aside by this environmental