考古学与未来:工业文明的忧虑

在从考古学角度对玛雅、复活节岛和良渚文明崩溃回顾的基础上,文章从"报酬递减"和"最省力"原理介绍了古代文明崩溃的机制,然后对现代工业文明的发展趋势表示了忧虑.文章认为,今天的地球只不过是一个放大了的玛雅低地和复活节岛.历史教训告诉我们,环境恶化总是文明崩溃的一个前提.面对当代工业文明所面临的人口激增、环境恶化和资源枯竭的严峻形势,我们应该提倡"知足最好"而非"越多越好",避免重蹈古代文明崩溃的覆辙.

Archaeology and the Future: Anxiety about Industrial Civilization

On the basis of archaeological retrospect of the civilization collapse of Maya, the Easter Island and China' s Liangzhu, this paper discusses the dynamics of the collapse of early civilizations in terms of the models of "declining of marginal returns" and "least efforts." Then it expresses an anxiety about the future of current industrial civilizations. Historical lessons tell us that environmental degradation has always been a factor in social collapses. Facing population expansion, environmental deterioration and resources exhaustion, we have to countenance a change from "more is better" to "enough is best," in order to avoid the failure of modem civilizations .