http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/keyword/civilizational-decline Inquiries Journal provides undergraduate and graduate students around the world a platform for the wide dissemination of academic work over a range of core disciplines. en-us Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:46:27 -0400 Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:46:27 -0400 http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1905/how-humans-will-end-the-world-a-cautionary-history-of-environmental-and-civilizational-instability By Natalie Novella - After thousands of years of innovation, humankind has shaped the modern world into a new planetary epoch: the Anthropocene. This paper connects the human propensity to carve our comfortable, convenient civilizations into our local environments with the reactionary forthcoming global instability of Earth’s ecosystems. By following the classic theory of civilizational decadence, it is evident human civilization has entered the final phase, the decline and fall. This is due to a paradox, wherein the products of our perceived prosperity, consumerism and wastefulness, hasten advancement towards... Thu, 16 Sep 2021 07:18 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1905/how-humans-will-end-the-world-a-cautionary-history-of-environmental-and-civilizational-instability http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/955/the-classic-maya-collapse-the-importance-of-ecological-prosperity By Katrina Armstrong - The relationship between humans and their environment is a heavily debated, multi-disciplinary discussion that has raised awareness about urgent issues, such as climate change. Earth’s booming population encourages globalization, greed, and over-consumption and has changed the basic composition of the planet, causing humans to continually possess a distorted view of their relationship to nature. This idea can be applied to the Classic Maya, as their success as a thriving civilization rested on their access to the resources around them. Around 900 CE, many of the heavily populated Maya cities... Tue, 30 Sep 2014 04:37 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/955/the-classic-maya-collapse-the-importance-of-ecological-prosperity