Dwelling on Earth – Jay Griffiths
Emergence Magazine Podcast
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The Unbreakable Cycle
The fertile crescent, the cradle of the Mesopotamian civilizations in what is now Iraq, was extensively farmed and over-irrigated to the point that the earth turned white with salt which rented the land infertile and desolate. An increasingly fragile soil couldn't feed an increasingly large population, and soil erosion peaked just as the Mayan civilization collapsed about 900 CE. Rome famously destroyed Carthage as the story goes by deliberately salting the earth. In northern China, forest land was stripped and cleared and the top soil was destroyed. This resulted in a massive famine that was a major factor in the deaths of half a million people in 1920 to 1921.
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