The Collapse of Complex Societies

New Studies in Archaeology

By: Joseph A. Tainter

Narrated by: Brian Arens

Political disintegration is a persistent feature of world history. The Collapse of Complex Societies, though written by an archaeologist, will therefore strike a chord throughout the social sciences. Any explanation of societal collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all such societies in both the present and future. Dr. Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2,000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan, and Chacoan collapses.

©1988 Cambridge University Press. Produced and published by Echo Point Books & Media, an independent bookseller in Brattleboro, Vermont.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©1988 Joseph A. Tainter (P)2024 Echo Point Books & Media, LLC

Poor Analysis

His basic thesis can be summed up as “complex society becomes less sustainable because things become too complex. And then it collapses.”

This is obviously simplistic, not true and unhelpful. As in things only get more complex exponentially in human societies as technology compounds on each other (e.g. the number of transistors in a computer system. the number of photovoltaic wafers that can be produced for the same unit price, etc. etc.) and there hasn’t been any intrinsic reason why those trends do not continue. The advancements in things like compute and energy certainly didn’t stop growing because “it got too complicated”.

I would recommend Ray Dalio’s “The Changing World Order” instead, which attributes collapse to decadence and overreach as the internal causes plus external causes beyond one’s control. It is far better researched and reasoned than this superficial attempt of an analysis.

Overly academic

Although I found the book overly academic, and even pedantic and hard to listen to because it was like reading a textbook, the information is excellent and Dr. Tainter really knows his stuff.

Great Book

Very well written and narrated. Chocked full of information but gets you so hooked you cant put it down. Highly recommend.