1A Research

MLA Citation of Article + One sentence summary of the entire article.

Statistical Evidence

(data, facts, statistics)

Testimonial Evidence (authority, experts, quotations)

Emotional evidence

How might someone argue against this source? Do you agree? Does the author(s) commit any fallacies? How would you argue against skeptics?

EXAMPLE

Diamond, Jared. “The Last Americans: Environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization.” Harper's Magazine. 1 June 2003.

Diamond explains that the Mayan civilization collapsed because of their inability to foresee that they were depleting their environmental resources, and he warns that if today’s major governments ignore the need for sustainable policies, we might also be doomed as well.

-Diamond notes, “The reservoirs at the Maya city of Tikal...held enough water to meet the needs of about 10,000 people for eighteen months....Fully 80 percent of Maya society consisted of peasants.”

-Diamond offers research based on skeletons from Copan that were studied for signs of disease and poor nutrition, which showed that their health “deteriorated from A.D. 650 to 850, among both the elite and commoners, though the health of commoners was worse.” As a result, they began fighting for land, just like in Rwanda today.

-Diamond offers the statistic that “between 90 and 99 percent of the Maya population after A.D. 800 disappeared,” as a direct result of warfare and of drought. Though many have assumed that the Maya were peaceful, in fact, there were many different groups of Mayans who engaged in constant warfare, especially for food.

-“Finally, around A.D. 750 there began the worst drought in the past 7,000 years,” which led to their ultimate collapse.

One consisted of population growth outstripping available resources: the dilemma foreseen by Thomas Malthus in 1798. As Webster succinctly puts it in The Fall of the Ancient Maya, "Too many farmers grew too many crops on too much of the landscape."

Diamond asks the important questions, “If all of this reasoning seems straightforward when expressed so bluntly, one has to wonder: Why don't those in power today get the message? Why didn't the leaders of the Maya, Anasazi, and those other societies also recognize and solve their problems? What were the Maya thinking while they watched loggers clearing the last pine forests on the hills above Copán? Here, the past really is a useful guide to the present. It turns out that there are at least a dozen reasons why past societies failed to anticipate some problems before they developed, or failed to perceive problems that had already developed, or failed even to try to solve problems that they did perceive. All of those dozen reasons still can be seen operating today.” After detailing the evidence of the Maya collapse as an analogy for today’s civilizations, he asks these urgent questions, which forces the reader to feel worried for our future.

Some may question Diamond’s evidence since he only draws from the examples of ancient societies. Consequently, he might be accused by skeptics of falling victim to hasty generalization, since he mainly draws from the Mayan society in this article. However, we must take into consideration that this article is only part of a larger argument. In 2011, Diamond published a book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, in which he draws evidence from multiple ancient societies around the world as well as contemporary war-torn communities.

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