Unsustainable Mining Development and the Collapse of Some Ancient Societies: Economic Reasons

Clement Tisdell and Serge Svizzero ()
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Serge Svizzero: CEMOI - Centre d'Économie et de Management de l'Océan Indien - UR - Université de La Réunion

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Abstract: The literature explaining social collapse mainly focuses on factors such as wars, climate change or disease, as exemplified by numerous examples of collapses which have occurred during the Late Bronze Age in the Near East and in the South-eastern Mediterranean region. This paper aims at demonstrating that collapse can also have economic reasons. Indeed, collapse may be the outcome of an economic growth process which is inherently unsustainable. More precisely, we claim that several ancient societies collapsed because their form of economic development eventually proved to be unable to sustain their standard of living. It is believed that the Únĕtice societies (which existed in the central European Early Bronze Age) were among those that collapsed for that reason. Two different simple models are presented to demonstrate how agricultural economies of this type which introduced bronze mining and metallurgy were unable to sustain their economic development.

Keywords: unsustainable development; Bronze Age; elite; economic surplus; mining productivity; Únĕtice culture. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro and nep-his
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Published in International Journal of Research in Sociology and Anthropology, 2019, 5 (3), pp.20-28. ⟨10.20431/2454-8677.0503003⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02274889

DOI: 10.20431/2454-8677.0503003

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