Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow:
Many past societies collapsed or vanished leaving behind monumental ruins. The monumental ruins left behind by those past societies hold a fascination for all of us. We marvel at them when, as children we first learn of them through pictures. When we grow up, many of us plan vacations in order to experience them at first hand. We feel drawn to their often spectacular and haunting beauty, and also to the mysteries that they pose. The scales of ruins testify to the former wealth and power of their builders. Yet the structures had to be abandoned and builders vanished. But how could such happen?
It has long been suspected that those mysterious abandonment's were, at least partly triggered by ecological problems. People inadvertently destroyed environmental resources on which their societies depended. This unintended ecological suicide has been confirmed by discoveries made in the recent decades by archeologists, historians, climatologists and paleontologists. Today many people feel that environmental problems overshadow all the other threats of global civilization.
a) What are monumental ruins?
b) What happens when a child looks at the pictures of those monumental ruins?
c) What interest do people in general find when they visit such sites?
(d) What do the ruins speak of their builders?
e) Who commits ecological suicide and how?