Recently is found out about how sophisticated the bronze age was and most interesting how is how the collapse was so rapid and not accurately explainable.
"1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed" is an excellent book on the subject, and yes - there are definitely uncanny similarities between the Bronze Age world and the one we live in.
This topic has occupied me for the last couple years. It started with "1177, The Year Civilization Collapsed". I went on to read material from archaeologists reporting in a rather dry way on their findings from the time / region.
Some of the things that blow me away is the sheer scale of the late bronze age: The massive cities, the trade fleets, leaders sending each other gifts, the exchange of skills between regions and the massive trade routes for tin, copper and bronze. It completely destroyed the anglo-centric epochism I was taught in school.
And in a short time it all collapsed. We don't see that level of trade, size of ships, cities of that size, level of diplomacy etc etc for well over 1000 years.
You are so true about anglo-centricism.
I dont recall the name, but one indian mathematician travelleled to iraq (during its golden age) where he discussed mathematics with then iraqi scholars and his works are further translated which than reached europeans as arabic numerals.
And to this day the English language calls those numerals the Arabic numerals. How much more acknowledgment could you expect? There's a lot to say about anglo-centrism, this is not part of it.
Though the (misguided)point is that during the "dark ages" things were great elsewhere, calling an Indian invention "Arabic numerals" because that's how they got introduced to Europe is rather Anglo-centric.
There is nothing centered on England about (with open admiration) naming periods (from before the Angles even migrated to Brittania) of histories of other peoples in the Mediterranean region by their sequential metallurgical discoveries.
> In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the “Sea Peoples” invaded Egypt. The pharaoh’s army and navy defeated them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations.
> Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, famine, and the cutting of international trade routes
This emphasizes the need to keep efficient military forces and resilient civil infrastructure even at times when everything is going well and you are as strong as ever.
Something bad may happen without much warning. It actually does, at small scale, as of recently, and shows how poorly the western civilization is prepared.
Interesting. I'm worried that civilization today is one unlucky solar storm away from major disruption and anarchy. Without electricity for an extended period of time, life as we know it would collapse.
I think we get to see a much slower one. With each protest, each natural disaster, each fabricated media outrage, each shift from pragmatism to luxury beliefs, each openly corrupt politician getting away with a slap in the wrist, each case of the justice system working to protect criminals at the expensive of victims, each case of institutions practicing racism under the guise of anti-racism, each open manipulation of fiat currency for the purposes of enriching politicians and government, each bill where only 20% of the money goes to the people and the other 80% is pork, each virtue signal at the cost of reality - every one slowly erodes our organizational capacity as a society to react and meet the contractual obligations of governance.
Our unconscious notices, even if our conscious choses to rationalize or woke it away.
Yes, and the scary thing (as the covid handling in a lot of countries proved) most governments are incompetent to deal with such a disaster. The collapse of civilization, especially in the very integrated and inter-dependent world of today is way closer than most people think, and most government prepared. Ironically it’s countries which doesn’t do too well now but are too dependent one other that might survive better to such even. Also it’s not a if but a when.
One of the important realisations about this topic for me was that humans didn't really evolve a lot during recorded history and a lot of our progress that actually made a difference is based on knowledge and hands-on experience that doesn't get recorded in written form.
Ancient philosophers already had many profound ideas about the world, experts in ancient egypt fixed teeth with tools comparable to those of a today's dentist, engineers had enough experience and insight to build bridges that endured longer than many nations.
It took one ship to block an important canal, one power outage in Texas to take out multiple factories for months, one pandemic(which was not unforeseeable) to completely shift the rules on how many things are done. I don't think it would even take a loss of electricity to see a lot of systems implode. We joked about the toilet paper shortage last year, but it was only funny because it was a relatively unimportant, long-lasting and easy to produce product. It could have been a lot worse.
Makes me wonder if structuring the school curriculum in a way that'll teach everyone to rebuild the technological civilisation from scratch to a fairly advanced level is a good idea.
I think that would be incredibly difficult, but it would heavily depend on the level of "bootstrapping" we would want to target and the degree of communication and coordination assumed. Modern civilization is a product of increasingly specialized and finely coordinated effort. The system is more powerful, yet more fragile.
I got a fascinating perspective on this from the archeological museum in Crete. It proceeded in chronological order, so I was very confused to get to a room of clearly more primitive geometric designs.
It wasn't out of order. Everything clearly collapsed, and their art suddenly got a lot simpler and cruder. I learned a lot from that museum.
> Bronze Age copper mining sites are thought to have been specialized communities of craftspeople and miners that would not have produced their own food, instead requiring food to be provided by outside sources.
This is not a huge surprise, since the mines for copper (and especially tin) were owned and controlled as strategic assets of empires, not "wildcatters." So mining staff were given a food ration, similar to employee cafes today.
What is unsettling is that in 1100 BC, empires could run a mine, and in 2021 the most powerful country in history can't mine or process today's equivalent, rare earths.
Let that sink in for a minute - 3,000 years later, the navel-gazing US is behind pre-Classical empires who worshipped the Sun god.
Another point is that Bronze Age empires typically specialized in one or two of metals (copper and/or tin), gold, trading, food or slaves, etc. so that copper/tin miners would trade for most of their food.
So some of the food for miners actually came from distant trading partners. This resulted in inter-empire brittleness, and ultimately contributed to the Bronze Age collapse, where all of the empires of the time declined, with most disappearing. The art of reading was lost for 500 years.
(For those unaware, bronze is an alloy of 7/8 or more copper and 1/8 or less of tin. These metals have low melting points, so you can make weapons without a high-temperature blast furnace as needed for iron, but whereas iron is commonplace, copper is rare and tin is as rare as uranium.
So if your empire didn't have copper or tin, you were forced to trade for it or lose any battles, similar to China and American microchips under Trump. After humans figured out how to melt iron, there was a great democratizing effect since any village could find enough iron to make cheap weapons.)
Yes it's incredible that Pompeii residents had piped in running water to their houses and fast food. Slaves were able to earn their freedom and own property. This was over 2000 years ago.
The eruption of Vesuvius was in 79 AD, so less than 2000 years ago, but if you'd like to know about a much earlier site that had these amenities (and more, like possible public street lighting), you should read about Mohenjo Daro in present-day Pakistan.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse
Makes you wonder how fragile advanced civilisation might be.
(Generally speaking I really recommand this podcast, it has been recommanded on HN before, which is how I first heard of it)
EDIT: 33min in first episode, I can attest its quite good
Some of the things that blow me away is the sheer scale of the late bronze age: The massive cities, the trade fleets, leaders sending each other gifts, the exchange of skills between regions and the massive trade routes for tin, copper and bronze. It completely destroyed the anglo-centric epochism I was taught in school.
And in a short time it all collapsed. We don't see that level of trade, size of ships, cities of that size, level of diplomacy etc etc for well over 1000 years.
Could you elaborate on the worldview you were taught?
There is nothing centered on England about (with open admiration) naming periods (from before the Angles even migrated to Brittania) of histories of other peoples in the Mediterranean region by their sequential metallurgical discoveries.
i'm flabbergasted.
1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691208015/11...
> In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the “Sea Peoples” invaded Egypt. The pharaoh’s army and navy defeated them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations.
> Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, famine, and the cutting of international trade routes
Something bad may happen without much warning. It actually does, at small scale, as of recently, and shows how poorly the western civilization is prepared.
Our unconscious notices, even if our conscious choses to rationalize or woke it away.
The fuse is lit.
Ancient philosophers already had many profound ideas about the world, experts in ancient egypt fixed teeth with tools comparable to those of a today's dentist, engineers had enough experience and insight to build bridges that endured longer than many nations.
It took one ship to block an important canal, one power outage in Texas to take out multiple factories for months, one pandemic(which was not unforeseeable) to completely shift the rules on how many things are done. I don't think it would even take a loss of electricity to see a lot of systems implode. We joked about the toilet paper shortage last year, but it was only funny because it was a relatively unimportant, long-lasting and easy to produce product. It could have been a lot worse.
It wasn't out of order. Everything clearly collapsed, and their art suddenly got a lot simpler and cruder. I learned a lot from that museum.
This is not a huge surprise, since the mines for copper (and especially tin) were owned and controlled as strategic assets of empires, not "wildcatters." So mining staff were given a food ration, similar to employee cafes today.
What is unsettling is that in 1100 BC, empires could run a mine, and in 2021 the most powerful country in history can't mine or process today's equivalent, rare earths.
Let that sink in for a minute - 3,000 years later, the navel-gazing US is behind pre-Classical empires who worshipped the Sun god.
Another point is that Bronze Age empires typically specialized in one or two of metals (copper and/or tin), gold, trading, food or slaves, etc. so that copper/tin miners would trade for most of their food.
So some of the food for miners actually came from distant trading partners. This resulted in inter-empire brittleness, and ultimately contributed to the Bronze Age collapse, where all of the empires of the time declined, with most disappearing. The art of reading was lost for 500 years.
(For those unaware, bronze is an alloy of 7/8 or more copper and 1/8 or less of tin. These metals have low melting points, so you can make weapons without a high-temperature blast furnace as needed for iron, but whereas iron is commonplace, copper is rare and tin is as rare as uranium.
So if your empire didn't have copper or tin, you were forced to trade for it or lose any battles, similar to China and American microchips under Trump. After humans figured out how to melt iron, there was a great democratizing effect since any village could find enough iron to make cheap weapons.)
[0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/archaeologists-...
https://longnow.org/seminars/02016/jan/11/1177-bc-when-civil...