Ecoscience: The Greeks and Romans Did It, Too!

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The Mediterranean Basin, once a rich end self-sustaining region, has steadily deteriorated since the time of the Greeks and Romans. Overgrazing by domesticated goats was one of the reasons.
The Mediterranean Basin, once a rich end self-sustaining region, has steadily deteriorated since the time of the Greeks and Romans. Overgrazing by domesticated goats was one of the reasons.
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Environmental activists Anne and Paul Ehrlich. 
Environmental activists Anne and Paul Ehrlich. 

We recently had an opportunity to visit the Mediterranean region and to see for ourselves the present state of this former “Eden” which was the cradle of Western civilization. Our overall impression was that the once rich area is now a badly deteriorated land inhabited by relatively impoverished peoples who, today, are partly dependent for their survival on the influx of tourists coming to see the physical monuments of past civilizations.

The region’s decline from ancient glory has been a complex process, but a major element in the “fall” has been the failure–on the part of the area’s residents–to maintain the ecological systems that supported their rich cultures.

The process began with the marvelous Mesopotamian civilization, which produced the world’s first cities in the area watered by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The society depended utterly on a complex irrigation system that–along with the invention of the plow–allowed its farmers to extract more food from the rich soil than was required for their own families. The resultant surplus made the development of urban centers possible.

Unfortunately, however, irrigation is a temporary game. Sooner or later, silt accumulates in canals, and salts accrue in the soil… processes that are difficult to counter even with modern technology. Lacking the means to solve such problems–and harassed by invaders as well–the civilization of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys collapsed in the first great ecocatastrophe.

The ancient Egyptians were more fortunate than the Mesopotamians. They, too, were dependent on river water for survival, but the annual Nile flood was an enormous blessing to them. The overflowing waters deposited yearly loads of silt on the agricultural lands of the Nile Delta, simultaneously fertilizing the soil and preventing salinization. Egypt, therefore, maintained a high civilization for several thousand years, and served as a granary for Rome as late as the third century A.D.

  • Published on May 1, 1980
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