Soil Erosion and The Erosion of Civilizations :: Soil Erosion

Soil erosion began with the dawn of agriculture, when people abandoned their hunter-gatherer lifestyles and began employ the land for intensive agriculture, thus removing the protective vegetation cover and festering food crops on disturbed obscenity surfaces. For many civilizations, it is believed that surface slipstream erosion, that can occur unnoticed until it is too late, was a main impart factor for their demise. Soil erosion and other degradative processes have destroyed, over the millennia, as much arable land as is now cultivated. The Phoenicians, the Roman Empire, Mesopotamia, and antiquated peoples of present-day Syria and Lebanon are all believed to have clankd as a solving of deforestation, erosion, and salination in the Middle East. In the Indus valley civilizations have suffered the same fate. The collapse of a 1700-year-old Mayan civilization in Guatemala around 900 A.D. is also attributed to accelerated soil erosion. Mollisols developed on limest one bedrock were easily eroded when the forest was cleared. As the population increased, soil depletion set in and the Maya culture rapidly declined. Soils of second and Central America supported thriving civilization long ahead the European settlers discovered the new world. Incas conserved soil and irrigate by constructing stone-walled bench terraces such as those at Machu Picchu, Peru. The thin surface soil was rapidly washed away, however, once maintenance of the terrace system was neglected. much of Latin Americas export-oriented economy was imposed by frenzy at the time of conquest.