Course Syllabus for HC 434:

Winter Term 2015:

  • Class Meets in Library 42 Tuesday and Thursday
  • There is no required textbook

Course Extended Title: The Role of Natural Disasters in the Facilitation/Cause of Culture Collapse


What does that mean?

    Throughout most of history, cultures tend to expand and conquer leading to various "Empire Waves" that propogate across different geographical regions on timescales of a few hundred years. In addition, even non-expanding cultures will constantly run up against various resource limitations within their own ecosystem. These two dynamics suggest that any culture goes through various phases of robustness. At certain times, cultures are resilient to external stimuli or events. At other times, the culture may be having a variety of difficulties and the randome earthquake, tidal wave, volcanoe, forest fire, drought, etc is essentially is the next pertubation that triggers the wholesale collapse of that culture.

    This trigger event has largely been ignored by most historians and other social scientists, yet the evidence that this is a real effect is quite robust and clear. This course will detail this evidence and how such natural hazard related triggers are the source of at least a dozen famous culture collapses (including Easter Island).


Instructor: G. Bothun, Dept of Physics

  • Office/Lab: 417 Willamette Hall
  • email: dkmatter@uoregon.edu
  • office hours: 10:30-12 Tuesday, Thursday


Team Presentation Coach: Tyler Lantz, Survivor of Spring 2014 Course

Math Required:

  • This course has a small quantitative portionrelated to risk perception, probability and normal distribution statistics.


Grading and Course Requirements:



  • Three Group/Team Assignments -- these 3 assignments will combine for at least 50% of your grade. The class will be broken up in to 4 teams (which are the same for the whole term). Yes, I am aware that most HC students are initially opposed to anytime type of team projects primarily due to the fear that your grade/class performance will somehow be compromised. To date I have taught about 20 HC classes and group work has dominated all of them and the fears of the students will, in the end, not manifest. I also believe that these team exercises are building an important skill that most students do not have.

    If your overly concerned with this, please consult with Tyler and she will convince you that the whole ordeal is survivable. In addition, the team projects/presentations are sufficiently large in scope that no one single person could do all of the components anyway.

  • 3-4 Individual short essay assignments - combined worth about 20% of your grade

  • Comprehensive final -- worth 30% of your grade

  • In class participation -- this is important -- many parts of this class are controversial -- show up with an informed opinion.