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The irrigation that raised the salt and sank Sumer's harvests
A historian traces how success-like Sumer’s irrigation-can create the conditions of collapse, leaving records that ask: are we different?
The irrigation that raised the salt and sank Sumer's harvests
In this episode, we follow a lecture-to-book argument that links technological success to long-term failure through concrete evidence. It presents the Sumerian case of irrigation-driven salinization alongside other examples to ask whether our civilization might be trapped by its own gains.
Person: Ronald Wright
Date: November 2004
Event: Massey Lectures published as a book by House of Anansi…
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