
The Fire Last Time: The Bronze Age Apocalypse - smacktoward
http://thebreakingtime.typepad.com/the_breaking_time/2009/01/the-fire-last-time-bronze-age-collapse.html
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alpyne
The most recent edition[1] of the Long Now Monthly Seminar series[2] focuses
on this:

    
    
      Eric Cline: 1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed
      Released: Jan 12, 2016
    
      Consider this, optimists. All the societies in the world can 
      collapse simultaneously. It has happened before. In the 12th 
      century BCE the great Bronze Age civilizations of the 
      Mediterranean —all of them— suddenly fell apart. Their 
      empires evaporated, their cities emptied out, their 
      technologies disappeared, and famine ruled. Mycenae, Minos, 
      Assyria, Hittites, Canaan, Cyprus — all gone. Even Egypt fell 
      into a steep decline. The Bronze Age was over. The event 
      should live in history as one of the great cautionary tales, 
      but it hasn’t because its causes were considered a mystery. 
      How can we know what to be cautious of? Eric Cline has taken 
      on on the mystery. An archaeologist-historian at George 
      Washington University, he is the author of 1177 B.C.: The 
      Year Civilization Collapsed. The failure, he suggests, was 
      systemic. The highly complex, richly interconnected system of 
      the world tipped all at once into chaos.
    

[1] [https://overcast.fm/+lWf-Pr7g](https://overcast.fm/+lWf-Pr7g)

[2]
[http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast/](http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast/)

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chx
Yes and the book unlike the article clearly states it was not only the Sea
Peoples, not at all. Superb interesting book.

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simonh
Barring apocalyptic natural disaster, the similarities with modern times are
seriously overblown. Hordes of Somali pirates are going to topple
civilizarion? Really? Even Mexico is a haven of good governance and the rule
of law compared to pretty much any nation in the world prior to the industrial
revolution. The modern world is fantastically stable compared to any previous
era in history. Our modern distributed, globalised just-in-time economy simply
wouldn't be possible if it wasn't. Yes the high level of optimisation in the
modern economy is a potential source of vulnerability, but I believe we have
massive economic and technological resources available to overcome such risks.
The waves of migrants from the Middle East and Africa aren't coming to Europe
to raze our cities, they're coming looking for jobs.

~~~
earljwagner
While the modern state is indeed stable, environmental change has an impact
even if not through apocalyptic natural disaster.

A long term drought contributed to the civil war in Syria[1]. It may be the
first of many around the world.

Both Ebola and Zika are exacerbated by global climate change[2][3].

According to the link, Egypt survived as a state for a century longer before
it too fell. That was after transforming from a civil society to martial law.
With the threat to pregnancy posed by Zika, I'm reminded of the propaganda in
"Children of Men": "The World Has Collapsed: Only Britain Soldiers On"

1\. [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/earth/study-
links-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/earth/study-links-syria-
conflict-to-drought-caused-by-climate-change.html)

2\. [http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2014/09/04/how-climate-
change-i...](http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2014/09/04/how-climate-change-is-
exacerbating-the-spread-of-disease/)

3\. [http://www.vox.com/2016/1/20/10795562/zika-virus-cdc-
mosquit...](http://www.vox.com/2016/1/20/10795562/zika-virus-cdc-mosquitoes-
birth-defects)

~~~
jgeada
"A long term drought contributed to the civil war in Syria". Maybe. However,
two planned competing and mutually exclusive major oil pipelines, both routing
through Syria, each sponsored by a different superpower, are likely to have
led to the civil war even if the area had been an environmental paradise.

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Houshalter
People weren't protesting in the streets against the regime because they were
concerned about oil prices. They were upset because they didn't have jobs or
couldn't afford food, and the countries around them were having revolutions
first.

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acqq
Wikipedia is more balanced and I believe more realistically shows what's
really known about the subject, namely, less than what the author assumes:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages)

Also, we know about "Sea Peoples" really little and only from Egyptian
sources:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples)

The "The Bronze Age Apocalypse" seems also a clickbait, as it seems it's only
Greek lands that declined at that time.

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bergie
Not only Greece, but also pretty much all of Levant and Mesopotamia was
destroyed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse)

~~~
acqq
> pretty much all of Levant and Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia? It doesn't seem right. From your link:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse)

"The Late Bronze Age collapse was a transition in the Aegean Region,
Southwestern Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean"

See the map:

[https://martinhumanities.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/map01-0...](https://martinhumanities.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/map01-02.jpg)

That is, there was a lot of destruction, but that didn't result in a few
centuries of "dark age" like in Greece:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syro-
Hittite_states](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syro-Hittite_states)

~~~
mason240
Only because new groups came to dominance in Anatolia and Mesopotamia.

The Late Bronze Age Collapse is a real thing that affected more than just
Greece and the Aegean.

I've seen lots to crazy theories behind the cause if it, but never a denial
that it happened. I guess I've seen it all now.

~~~
acqq
The wide destruction of the cities is indisputable, I just don't have the
impression that the comparable long-term effects outside of the area known as
the ancient Greece existed. The more centuries of "dark ages" (effective
illiteracy) that ensued seem to be characteristic only to that ancient Greece
area?

For example, Phoenicia had a high point exactly at the time of Greek "dark
ages":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia#High_point:_1200.E2....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia#High_point:_1200.E2.80.93800_BC)

Re Mesopotamia there were already the links.

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my_first_acct
A book about the period, published in 2014: "1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization
Collapsed" by Eric Cline. As both the book and the OP make clear, the collapse
did not take place in the course of a single year, despite the catchy title.

~~~
creshal
It's a highly recommendable read, IMO. A shame it doesn't go in more depth
about the LBA before the collapse.

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alexandrerond
Very interesting. The Western Anatolia cities suffered turmoil until the
arrival of the Roman empire in 2nd century BC (the usual low profile wars,
Persian invasion, then Alexander the great...). Additionally there's not a
site in this area which wasn't shaken to the ground by one or several
earthquakes in the same period.

It's amazing to find surviving structures, and luckily archaeologists are
still excavating and re-erecting many amazing sites.

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jhonovich
One theory I have read is that advances in producing iron (a new technology at
that time) helped shift how wars were fought and the balance of power between
older methods of war and newer ones using iron instruments / swords, etc.

I am not sure if this is factually correct but it was an interesting theory to
explain such a fundamental shift / breakdown in the status quo.

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sageikosa
The best theory about combat styles I read was about the shift from chariot
mounted archers to massed infantry.

Prior to the collapse the regional powers in the Levant measured might by the
length of their chariot lines. The speculation was that skirmishers (possibly
from the western Mediterranean basin) were employed to clean up after a
volley-pass, and that these skirmishers realized that the horses would go down
as easily as wild game, took that knowledge back to their homelands and
returned en force.

Iron weapons aren't quite as good as bronze (or so I am told), but can be
produced more readily and cheaply and thus can equip a larger force.

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bryanlarsen
Indo-European, African and American civilizations all experienced collapses,
sure. But to argue it is inevitable requires explaining the lack of Chinese
collapses. They experienced turmoil, being conquered, et cetera but in my
limited understanding of their history, there were no outright collapses.

~~~
acqq
It's interesting to appreciate that the Chinese had their ethical views
completely different than the Abrahamic religions at least as early as 2500
years ago (all quotes from Wikipedia):

"Some of the basic Confucian ethical concepts and practices include rén, yì,
and lǐ, and zhì. Ren ("humaneness") is the essence of the human being which
manifests as compassion, it is the virtue-form of Heaven.[15] Yi is the
upholding of righteousness and the moral disposition to do good. Li is a
system of ritual norms and propriety that determines how a person should
properly act in everyday life according to the law of Heaven. Zhi is the
ability to see what is right and fair, or the converse, in the behaviors
exhibited by others. Confucianism holds one in contempt, either passively or
actively, for failure to uphold the cardinal moral values of ren and yi."

Also, even competing ideologies weren't as primitive:

"Taoism tends to emphasize various themes (...) such as naturalness,
spontaneity, simplicity, detachment from desires, and most important of all,
wu wei (inaction)"

Also, the obligation of the rulers:

"If the emperor did not behave according to proper ritual, ethics, and morals,
he could disrupt the fine balance of these cosmological cycles and cause
calamities such as earthquakes, floods, droughts, epidemics, and swarms of
locusts"

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douche
It's worth noting that the Abrahamic religions have only been in the
ascendancy in the Mediterranean and Middle East for approximately 1500 years.
Before then, there was considerably more variation.

Likewise, it would be a similar generalization to assume that Chinese thought
has always stayed on the rails of Confucianism. There's Mohism, Legalism,
Daoism, various schools of Buddhism (some of the pants-on-head-crazy
Millenarian variety), clumps of Islam, Christianity (again, sometimes pants-
on-head-crazy, see the Taiping...) as well as shamanistic and animalistic
traditions retained by various invading foreign dynasties.

~~~
acqq
> the Abrahamic religions have only been in the ascendancy in the
> Mediterranean and Middle East for approximately 1500 years

Judaism transitioned to the form familiar to the current one 2500 years before
now. Christianity became a state religion more than 1600 years before now,
Islam started its conquests some 1300 years before now.

> it would be a similar generalization to assume that Chinese thought has
> always stayed on the rails of Confucianism

And nobody claimed that. Just that all Chinese schools of thought weren't so
primitive as the Abrahamic ones. I quoted Confucianism and Taoism in my post.

That the Abrahamic ideologies managed to poison even Chinese territories isn't
anything to brag about, in my humble opinion.

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YeGoblynQueenne
A very interesting historical period and an untapped source of great source
material for fiction of all sorts :)

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eru
Compare
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Crisis)

