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arose, and where metallurgy, writing, and state societies first developed. Thus, peoples of the Fertile Crescent enjoyed their head start of thousands of years over the rest of the world. Why, after leading the world for so long, did the Fertile Crescent decline, to the point where today it is poor except for its oil reserves and the name “Fertile Crescent” is a cruel joke? Iraq is now anything but the leader in world agriculture. Much of the explanation has to do with deforestation in the low-rainfall environment of the Fertile Crescent, and salinization that permanently ruined some of the world’s oldest farmlands (see the two books written or edited by Charles Redman, and cited under Further Readings for the Prologue, for discussion and references).

The most famous monumental ruins in Africa south of the equator are those of Great Zimbabwe, consisting of a center with large stone structures in what is now the country of Zimbabwe. Great Zimbabwe thrived in the 11th to 15th centuries, controlling trade between Africa’s interior and its east coast. Its decline may have involved a combination of deforestation and a shift of trade routes. See David Phillipson, African Archaeology, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Christopher Ehret, The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002).

The earliest cities and large states of the Indian subcontinent arose in the third millennium B.C. in the Indus Valley of what is now Pakistan. Those Indus Valley cities belong to what is known as Harappan civilization, whose writing remains un-deciphered. It used to be thought that Harappan civilization was terminated by invasions of Indo-European-speaking Aryans from the northwest, but it now appears that the cities were in decline before those invasions (Plate 41). Droughts, and shifts of the course of the Indus River, may have played a role. See Gregory Possehl, Harappan Civilization (Warminster, England: Aris and Phillips, 1982); Michael Jansen, Maire Mulloy, and Günter Urban, eds., Forgotten Cities of the Indus (Mainz, Germany: Philipp von Zabern, 1991); and Jonathan Kenoyer, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization (Karachi, Pakistan: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Finally, the enormous temple complexes and reservoirs of Angkor Wat, former capital of the Khmer Empire, constitute the most famous ruins and archaeological “mystery” of Southeast Asia, within modern Cambodia (Plate 42). The Khmer decline may have involved the silting up of reservoirs that supplied water for intensive irrigated rice agriculture. As the Khmer Empire grew weak, it proved unable to hold off its chronic enemies the Thais, whom the Khmer Empire had been able to resist while at full strength. See Michael Coe, Angkor and the Khmer Civilization (London: Thames and Hudson, 2003), and the papers and books by Bernard-Philippe Groslier cited by Coe.

Chapter 10

If you decide to consult these primary sources on the Rwandan genocide and its antecedents, brace yourself for some painful reading.

Catharine Newbury, The Cohesion of Oppression: Clientship and Ethnicity in Rwanda, 1860-1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) describes how Rwandan society became transformed, and how the roles of the Hutu and the Tutsi became polarized, from precolonial times to the eve of independence.

Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999) presents in mind-numbing detail the immediate background to the events of 1994, then a 414-page account of the killings themselves, and finally their aftermath.

Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998) is an account of the genocide by a journalist who interviewed many survivors, and who depicts as well the failure of other countries and of the United Nations to prevent the killings.

My chapter includes several quotations from Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of Genocide (New York: Columbia University