1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Eric Cline, PhD). The book is excellent and a fun read (rare for history). Here is a Youtube on it. I plan to watch it later today.
1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Eric Cline, PhD). The book is excellent and a fun read (rare for history). Here is a Youtube on it. I plan to watch it later today.
ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
DGUtley (02-23-2019),Helena (02-23-2019),MisterVeritis (02-23-2019),MMC (02-23-2019),Orion Rules (02-23-2019)
1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed
Leftists, huh?
History does not long Entrust the care of Freedom, to the Weak or Timid!!!!! Dwight D. Eisenhower ~
Here's a reviewer's summary: Before the Fall
...Cline’s book is a detailed but accessible synthesis of the findings and hypotheses of researchers concerned with the societies that developed around the Mediterranean throughout the second millennium B.C., with a special focus on the late Bronze Age, which came to an end in the decades just before and after the high drama of 1177....
...Cline devotes more than half of the book to surveying the world that was lost in or around the year in his title — with particular emphasis on the exchanges of goods that brought the Egyptian and Hittite empires, and the Mycenean civilization over in what we now call Greece, into closer contact. Whole libraries of official documents show the kings exchanging goods and pleasantries, calling each “brother,” and marrying off their children to one another in the interest of diplomatic comity. When a ship conveying luxury items and correspondence from one sovereign to another pulled in to dock, it would also carry products for sale to people lower on the social scale. It then returned with whatever tokens of good will the second king was sending back to the first — and also, chances are, commercial goods from that king’s empire, for sale back home.
The author refers to this process as “globalization,” which seems a bit misleading given that the circuits of communication and exchange were regional, not worldwide. In any case, it had effects that can be traced in the layers of scattered archeological digs: commodities and artwork characteristic of one society catch on in another, and by the start of the 12th century a real cosmopolitanism is in effect. At the same time, the economic networks encouraged a market in foodstuffs as well as tin — the major precious resource of the day, something like petroleum became in the 20th century.
But evidence from the digs also shows two other developments during this period: a number of devastating earthquakes and droughts. Some of the cities that collapsed circa 1177 may have been destroyed by natural disaster, or so weakened that they succumbed far more quickly to the marauding Sea Peoples than they would have otherwise. For that matter, it is entirely possible that the Sea Peoples themselves were fleeing from such catastrophes. “In my opinion,” writes Cline, “… none of these individual factors would have been cataclysmic enough on their own to bring down even one of these civilizations, let alone all of them. However, they could have combined to produce a scenario in which the repercussions of each factor were magnified, in what some scholars have called a ‘multiplier effect.’ … The ensuing ‘systems collapse’ could have led to the disintegration of one society after another, in part because of the fragmentation of the global economy and the breakdown of the interconnections upon which each civilization was dependent."...
The book certainly sounds interesting, scholarly. I'll take a look at the video later.
Thanks.
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler
Peter1469 (02-23-2019)
That was fantastic.
When was our 1177? @Peter1469, In your estimation, where are we in the the century march towards collapse? Also, which country strikes you as being parallel to Egypt, which survives, but is never great again?
You are wrong about police.
Peter1469 (02-23-2019)
We do know know when, if ever another 1177 BC will happen again. It could- say from a large meteorite strike or nuclear war, but humanity will continue. Other powers would rise.
So far as powers from that period that are not so great today I would look to what is now Turkey, Greece, and the Levant region.
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Helena (02-23-2019)
I believe we're due. Soon. As to what year historians and archaeologists in the future might pinpoint as the beginning of the end, I wouldn't be able to do anything more than hazard a wild guess. I do think we are in that century, however.
No, that's not what I meant. I meant in terms of parallels to the globalization then to what we have now, What is the modern equivalent or what is your guess as to what nation or region would be a fair equivalent to Egypt?
You are wrong about police.