Pretty interesting stuff to go with your morning brew.

A Question of Blame When Societies Fall - New York Times
For an hour I had listened as he, or rather his narrator, described how the inhabitants of Easter Island had precipitated their own demise by cutting down all the palm trees — for, among other purposes, transporting those giant statues — and how the Anasazi of Chaco Canyon and the Maya might have committed similar “ecocide.”

By the time I approached the turnoff for Amerind’s boulder-strewn campus, Dr. Diamond had moved on to the Vikings’ fate. But for the moment my mind was in the grip of “The Thing.”

science