John Day, Distinguished Professor Emeritus in LSU's College of the Coast & Environment, has collaborated on a new analysis of societal development with Joel Gunn of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, William Folan of the Universidad Autonoma de Campeche in Mexico, and Matthew Moerschbaecher of the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinators Office. Gunn and Folan are Mayan archaeologists and Moerschbaecher is a graduate of LSU's oceanography program. They report that over the past 10,000 years humanity has experienced a number of foundational transitions, or "bottlenecks." During these periods of transition, the advance or decline of societies was related to energy availability in the form of a benign climate and other factors.
* This article was originally published here
