When Growth Outpaces Balance

Sometimes the seeds of collapse are sown in the very soil of prosperity. Beneath the ancient city of Troy’s shining walls, the earth quietly cracked under the weight of its ambition. When we think of environmental destruction today, images of oil rigs, coal plants or plastic islands come to mind. But long before industry, ancient societies were already pushing their ecosystems to the brink. One striking example comes from Early Bronze Age Troy – a story of economic brilliance clouded by lasting ecological cost. It is not merely a tale of innovation and success, but a cautionary one about overreach, exhaustion and the hidden costs of unchecked growth.

Between 2500 and 2300 BC, Troy emerged as a centre of power and experimentation in north-western Anatolia (the Asian part of what is now Turkey), centuries before Homer’s Iliad made it legendary. Through years of excavation with the University of Tübingen’s Troy Project, I have come to understand how deliberate choices in production, planning and organization gradually transformed a modest Bronze Age village into a vibrant community with early urban traits. Troy’s monumental stone buildings, orderly streets and distinct residential quarters reflected a society in transition.

Prosperity through extraction

Troy’s wealth was built on relentless extraction. Monumental buildings demanded tons of limestone from nearby quarries. Clay was dredged from once-fertile riverbanks to feed kilns and brick-making. Forests were stripped bare for timber and firewood – the lifeblood of a booming ceramic industry that burned day and night. Agriculture, too, underwent radical intensification. Earlier generations had rotated crops and rested their fields. Troy’s farmers, by contrast, pursued maximum yields through continuous cultivation. Emmer and einkorn (ancient wheat varieties well-suited to poor soils but low in yield and protein) came to dominate the fields. They were hardy and easy to store, but nutritionally depleting.

As farmland expanded onto steep, fragile slopes, erosion took hold. Hills once covered in forest became barren, as archaeobotanical evidence confirms.² Livestock added further pressure. Herds of sheep and goats grazed intensively on upland pastures, tearing up vegetation and compacting the soil. The result was reduced water retention, collapsing topsoil and declining biodiversity. Gradually, the ecological equilibrium that had underpinned Troy’s prosperity began to unravel.

By around 2300 BC, the system began to fracture. A massive fire ravaged the settlement – perhaps triggered by revolt or conflict. Monumental structures were abandoned, replaced by smaller dwellings and modest farmsteads. The centre of power faltered. This collapse is likely to have been driven by a combination of factors: political tensions, external threats and social unrest. But the environmental strain is impossible to ignore. Soil exhaustion, deforestation and erosion would have led to water scarcity, resource scarcity and possibly even famine. Each factor eroded the foundations of Troy’s stability.

In the aftermath, adaptation took precedence over ambition. Farmers diversified their crops, moving away from high-yield monoculture towards more varied and resilient strategies. Risk was spread, soil partially recovered and communities began to stabilise.³ Troy did not vanish – it adjusted and found a new balance for another millennium. But it did so in the shadow of a crisis it had helped create.