Read "Collapse": Prologue: A Tale of Two Farms (pp. 1 - 25)

Terms/Concepts/Ideas to Know

• Collapse
• Ecocide
• Fragility
• Resilience
• Comparative Method/Natural Experiment
• Input Variables/Output Variables
• Plan of the Book
• Processes through which past & present societies have undermined themselves
• Major Controversy facing study of past collapses
• Factors contributing to collapse (Five-point framework)
• Names of some of the societies presented in the book
• Reasons why a people may fall into the trap of overexploiting their environmental resources
• Role of technology, modern medicine, & globalization in collapse of today’s societies
• Topic, scope and purpose of the book

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