The Dow hitting 20,000 might sounds like great news to you, but to anthropologist Arthur Demarest, it's an ominous echo of what he's seen befall the Maya, the Aztecs, and the Inca: a spectacular apogee followed by collapse. Demarest studies the decline of civilizations. He says his research has shown that societies that avoid total disintegration undergo some other kind of major political or economic crisis.

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