In a recent issue, Radikal daily published a news story titled: "It was a civilization as developed as Ancient Egypt; they disappeared 3600 year ago". The story told the destiny of the Caral-Supe, central of the earliest civilization of South America. Caral-Supe existed 5000 years ago; at the same age with the Ancient Egypt. In this respect, can it be considered as the first shrinking city of the world, just as Detroit in USA has shrank by half since 1950? Have you ever thought about this? Why did they just leave those giant cities? I believe the issue is closely related with climate change. Today, let us observe the fate of Teotihuacan city and then conclude with climate change and environment.
I have never seen Caral-Supe. But I visited Teotihuacan near to Mexico City a couple of weeks ago. I imagine people saying "We have the Ephesus just within the earshot". But such is life. For instance, you do not think visiting the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara but certainly happen to have visited the Natural History Museum of Smithsonian Institute in Washington. The first issue is you do not have as much spare time here as you have there. Second, it definitely rains and museums are the best shelters for tourists. At least the museum knowledge of a tourist and climate conditions are closely related with each other. No one ever visits a museum in a sunny and moderate day. Anyway, let us go back to the main issue.
Teotihuacan is gigantic. People have left behind gigantic monuments. It is not possible to climb over those giant pyramids without getting out of breath and dizzy. At least this was the case for me. What is more, I was almost ten years younger back then. It is a trouble climbing up; each step is half meters. And it is another trouble looking down; you get dizzy. And to go down, you have to hang on to someone. I will admit that I waited down while people climbed over the pyramids. The conclusion to be reached here is: That day, it was not raining in Teotihuacan.
Urban Age meeting organized this week in Istanbul by London School of Economics was mainly on growing cities of the world. According to this, 3 out of 6.5 billion people on the earth leave in urban areas. In 2030, urban population will exceed 4.2 billion people. The world is becoming urbanized. And urbanization is problem. However, as "shrinking cities" project suggests, a series of cities in USA has been shrinking. Detroit and Philadelphia are at the top of the list. The reason is quite simple: people do not have the means to linger on in these cities anymore.
It is first wise to point out the thing that did not change since Teotihuacan to today. Homo sapiens leave a living space once they believe that they cannot linger on there anymore. Our ties with cities are always based on the same principle: We live where we find food. In this sense, it is not possible to say that human are different than other species. This is the first point to touch upon. Second point is: Cities are not left suddenly, but the population decreases gradually. So, what is that gradually making cities impossible to live in? So, the third point will be: The thing that makes cities impossible to live in, and forces homo sapiens to pack and leave for another city is that "amount of energy to be spent to generate one unit of energy" increases gradually as population increases. Isn't this in a way what 'where ever we find the food to survive' issue exactly implies? If a squirrel cannot derive from a nut the energy it spent to eat the nut, it cannot survive. The same also applies for homo sapiens. Child skeletons found deep under Teotihuacan and which had the signs of malnutrition points directly to this problem. And this problem will take us to the fourth point which we have to examine comprehensively.
To linger on, homo sapiens tries to exploit more and more deeply the nature within a certain environment. In his "Collapse", Jared Diamond lists eight main factors of environmental collapse. These factors can be summarized as follows: With the rise in population, resident societies tend to destroy their habitat. With this lens, climate change is a highly natural result of the modernization and urbanization of the world. When left alone, this is what can be expected from homo sapiens. And this is the fourth point.
Fifth point is related with the association of the issue with thermodynamics. In 1930s, 100 barrels of oil could be produced spending energy equivalent to one barrel of oil. This rate of 1 to 100 reached 1 to 36 by 1990s. What does this mean? Today, energy equivalent to one barrel of oil is spent to generate energy equivalent to twenty barrels of oil. Once this rate turns into 1 to 3, there is no chance for our species to maintain its life. So, what does this mean? Technologic infrastructure must be altered permanently for the survival of the human race on earth. And let this be the fifth point to be emphasized.
Otherwise, the ultimate result is already observable in Teotihuacan. It is nothing but possible that in 2050 Detroit becomes a Teotihuacan.
End of our homo sapiens can mainly be just as Ozymandias poem of Shelley. Traveler finds a large shattered sculpture sunk in the sand. On the pedestal, it says "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, and despair!" On that colossal wreck, sands stretch far away boundless and bare.
In this context, climate change is highly serious.
This commentary was published in Referans daily on 07.11.2009
