Historian Eric H. Cline has multiple books citing this time period, specifically 1117 BCE as the inflection point for the bronze age "collapse", defined by a deterioration of international shipping routes that weakened the nation-states of the era. I've learned about it recently because YouTube began recommending videos about it.
One historical event that Cline focuses on is a severe centuries-long drought. It's something the ACOUP article seems to omit. Cline does not focus as much on destruction of bronze-age sites although there is one port city in particular which is linked to the international trade of the time. Exactly who destroyed it appears to be a mystery but it could be linked to the migration theory that ACOUP dismisses. The migration may have actually come as a result of the previously mentioned drought.
The OP talks about the drought extensively. Quoting:
> there is quite a lot of compelling evidence that period of LBAC [late bronze age collapse], especially the 1190s, was unusually dry in the Eastern Mediterranean, which would have caused reduced agricultural output (crop failures). Interestingly, this would be most immediately impactful in areas engaged primarily in rainfall agriculture (Greece, Anatolia, the Levant) and less impactful in areas engaged more in irrigation agriculture (Egypt, Mesopotamia).³ And, oh look, the areas where LBAC was more severe are in the rainfall zone and the areas where it was less severe are in the irrigation zone.
It injects some really interesting color into the Tanakh/Old Testament - I'm not sure anyone has definitively lined up the Bronze Age Collapse with Biblical events, but it sure seems to have happened somewhere between the Exodus and King David.
One can easily see the events leading to the Exodus being enabled by (or causing, depending on who you ask!) the weakening of Egypt, and the period in Joshua and Judges describes a power vacuum: no centralized king over the area, lots of back-and-forth struggles for control; as the Philistines, sometimes referred to by historians as an actual group of the Sea Peoples, often impose their will with instruments of iron.
The Exodus is an entirely fictional account though, it's not based on any real historical events. Even King David seems to be mostly mythical, though there is some vague evidence of a "House of David" being something some real kings claimed descent from.
Edit: I should say "almost entirely fictional". The main scholarly agreement is that it may record some stories of some small numbers (hundreds, at most some thousands - nowhere near the 600k in the Bible) real semitic slaves' escape from Egypt and migration to the area of Canaan, mixing with the local Canaanite population that were the precursors of the Jewish populations of later Israel and Judah.
Iliad is fictional yet Troy existed. The biblical flood was mythical yet couple of thousand years ago black sea connected to the Mediterranean and probably was not entirely unpeaceful.
Of course it takes incredible levels of incompetence to be lost in sinay for 40 years. But apply exponential reduction for each generation of oral account and you may get to something resembling truth.
I tried to word my original comment in a way that allows a broad range of opinions to make a narrow point; I don't think anything you've said here refutes anything I said. I'm not really here to kick off a serious apologetics fight, though if you want me to engage on your thoughts I could.
(And of the things I mentioned, the Exodus is less likely to line up with the Bronze Age Collapse's chronology anyways. But personally, I think the book of Judges very much feels set in the kind of post-apocalyptic world that the Collapse would have created.)
The drought explanation seems particularly plausible for the Hittites, IMO. They had grain storage, but ~3 years of drought would exhaust that. So if the climate becomes just a bit drier the chance of such a three year run increases enough to likely crash their society.
Today we have a huge buffer from the large use of grain to feed animals. In a crisis it could be diverted as human food, with some effort. Large geographic range from global shipping also smooths out blips. Still, a Toba-like eruption would be bad news.
The standard counter-argument is that the corn grown for animal feed and for ethanol production is not suited for human consumption.
But that's only partially true. We wouldn't eat it directly -- it could still be turned into masa or sugar or some other processed food and then eaten.
The corn grown that’s not for human consumption is only because it’s earmarked for feed or biofuels. Corn is corn. Where I live, 1 in 4 fields is “for human consumption”
It's unlikely that rich countries would experience famine as severely as poor ones and consequently they would probably still demand meat. Grain that could feed people would still feed livestock.
A draw down of animal stocks increases meat supply in the short term. As grain gets more expensive, farmers sell animals for meat rather than keeping them to reproduce.
But “As grain gets more expensive” middle eastern countries (that rely almost entirely on import for their grain source) would start facing grain shortage (due to balance of payment issues) or at least severe deprivation of the poorer part of their population.
The Tunisian, Egyptian, Syrian and Libyan revolutions didn't occur at the same moment out of coincidence…
I don't think Bret (the author of ACOUP) omits drought - he leads his section on plausible theories with "period of drying and consistent crop failures". While Bret dismisses the out to in migration/invasion theory, he does support the idea of intra-region migration/warfare (perhaps induced by drought/crop failures).
I'm really annoyed that Patrick gave up on that. I mean, I know he's been doing it a decade, and I can't chain him to a desk, and I'm being entitled, but...
The people of that era would have thought so. The Iliad and the Odyssey (if they have any basis in reality) might be examples of that period seen through a lens of mythology.
Patrick Wyman—of the Tides of History podcast—just put out a new book, Lost Worlds, which is worth a read if this is your bag. The basic premise is that the way ancient history is typically taught, "that we moved linearly from foraging to farming, and then from country farmers to city-dwelling, tax-paying subjects of kings and emperors," is essentially wrong. He goes on:
>All of those developments occurred in an orderly sequence: First farming and village life arrived; then surpluses born of human achievement that created social inequality; then hierarchies with priests and chieftains at the top; then massive monuments, cities, states, and writing to keep track of it all. Geographically, the old story of those developments centered on the Fertile Crescent of western Asia, and to a lesser extent the Nile Valley of Egypt....
>That story is wrong in some respects and incomplete in far more.
It's a constant rise and fall, with innovations and cities/civilizations that both did and didn't succeed often equally valid and appropriate paths to take. Sounds kind of bog-standard, I guess, but it's rife with examples of "Oh yeah here's a 1,500 year-old city, but it was 7,000 years ago and then disappeared so you've never heard of it."
> "Oh yeah here's a 1,500 year-old city, but it was 7,000 years ago and then disappeared so you've never heard of it."
pull it in a bit and you have Ugarit :)
i am convinced if / when AI leads to the collapse of civilization it will be akin to the Late Bronze Age collapse; i.e., not with a bang but a whimper. it was a very delicate economic ecosystem complete with circular dealing; but 3500 years ago people were fighting over Cypriot copper and today we're doing the same only in Lobito (along with Cobalt and Lanthanides) in praise of the almighty god Compute
just to flog the analogy like a Mycenean slave, Compute runs out (with a humorous sidebar where someone tries to put a modern equivalent of arsenic into the chips to perpetuate the self-dealing; hilarity ensues). society collapses (but Musk makes it because like Egypt he has all the gold) and like the Iron Age a Quantum Age comes along out of desperation and the will to survive after yet another Dark Age. if we're lucky.
Our favorite pedant should have a new post up today, I think he posts in the afternoon though. At least, checking in the morning and saying “ah, dang, the acoup post hasn’t come out yet, maybe I’ll reread an old one…” is a Friday morning ritual for me.
In an alternate timeline, The Sea Peoples are Romans sailing to England, the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans. Things became fuzzy when the English themselves became other civilization's Sea Peoples.
The Iron Age can be researched at your Town Center, but the Post-Iron Age isn't a real age, it's just an extra setting on the map settings menu that starts you in the Iron Age with everything already researched.
Seems to be a popular topic.
Historian Eric H. Cline has multiple books citing this time period, specifically 1117 BCE as the inflection point for the bronze age "collapse", defined by a deterioration of international shipping routes that weakened the nation-states of the era. I've learned about it recently because YouTube began recommending videos about it.
For example: https://youtu.be/choxcHXhZhE?is=t5lDwQQpqPsE2k5M
One historical event that Cline focuses on is a severe centuries-long drought. It's something the ACOUP article seems to omit. Cline does not focus as much on destruction of bronze-age sites although there is one port city in particular which is linked to the international trade of the time. Exactly who destroyed it appears to be a mystery but it could be linked to the migration theory that ACOUP dismisses. The migration may have actually come as a result of the previously mentioned drought.
The OP talks about the drought extensively. Quoting:
> there is quite a lot of compelling evidence that period of LBAC [late bronze age collapse], especially the 1190s, was unusually dry in the Eastern Mediterranean, which would have caused reduced agricultural output (crop failures). Interestingly, this would be most immediately impactful in areas engaged primarily in rainfall agriculture (Greece, Anatolia, the Levant) and less impactful in areas engaged more in irrigation agriculture (Egypt, Mesopotamia).³ And, oh look, the areas where LBAC was more severe are in the rainfall zone and the areas where it was less severe are in the irrigation zone.
It injects some really interesting color into the Tanakh/Old Testament - I'm not sure anyone has definitively lined up the Bronze Age Collapse with Biblical events, but it sure seems to have happened somewhere between the Exodus and King David.
One can easily see the events leading to the Exodus being enabled by (or causing, depending on who you ask!) the weakening of Egypt, and the period in Joshua and Judges describes a power vacuum: no centralized king over the area, lots of back-and-forth struggles for control; as the Philistines, sometimes referred to by historians as an actual group of the Sea Peoples, often impose their will with instruments of iron.
The Exodus is an entirely fictional account though, it's not based on any real historical events. Even King David seems to be mostly mythical, though there is some vague evidence of a "House of David" being something some real kings claimed descent from.
Edit: I should say "almost entirely fictional". The main scholarly agreement is that it may record some stories of some small numbers (hundreds, at most some thousands - nowhere near the 600k in the Bible) real semitic slaves' escape from Egypt and migration to the area of Canaan, mixing with the local Canaanite population that were the precursors of the Jewish populations of later Israel and Judah.
Iliad is fictional yet Troy existed. The biblical flood was mythical yet couple of thousand years ago black sea connected to the Mediterranean and probably was not entirely unpeaceful.
Of course it takes incredible levels of incompetence to be lost in sinay for 40 years. But apply exponential reduction for each generation of oral account and you may get to something resembling truth.
I tried to word my original comment in a way that allows a broad range of opinions to make a narrow point; I don't think anything you've said here refutes anything I said. I'm not really here to kick off a serious apologetics fight, though if you want me to engage on your thoughts I could.
(And of the things I mentioned, the Exodus is less likely to line up with the Bronze Age Collapse's chronology anyways. But personally, I think the book of Judges very much feels set in the kind of post-apocalyptic world that the Collapse would have created.)
We dont know that.
Are you saying we have no evidence that Exodus happened, or that we have real evidence that it did NOT happen?
Shameless plug for my favourite YouTuber of all time https://youtu.be/aq4G-7v-_xI?si=GviYcvEtOAJ1mln7
The drought explanation seems particularly plausible for the Hittites, IMO. They had grain storage, but ~3 years of drought would exhaust that. So if the climate becomes just a bit drier the chance of such a three year run increases enough to likely crash their society.
Today we have a huge buffer from the large use of grain to feed animals. In a crisis it could be diverted as human food, with some effort. Large geographic range from global shipping also smooths out blips. Still, a Toba-like eruption would be bad news.
> Today we have a huge buffer from the large use of grain to feed animals.
This, plus the gigantic amount of agricultural land being used for biofuel production (almost as much as cattle food).
The standard counter-argument is that the corn grown for animal feed and for ethanol production is not suited for human consumption.
But that's only partially true. We wouldn't eat it directly -- it could still be turned into masa or sugar or some other processed food and then eaten.
The corn grown that’s not for human consumption is only because it’s earmarked for feed or biofuels. Corn is corn. Where I live, 1 in 4 fields is “for human consumption”
Filed corn is harvested at a different time resulting in a dryer product.
But yes if people get hungry enough, field corn easily qualifies as actual food.
Aren't there different varieties of corn?
Yes, and they are all edible. But not all are palatable.
Who ever thought the idea of biofuel was a good one? Is it just as much a blatant jobs program as it seems?
It's unlikely that rich countries would experience famine as severely as poor ones and consequently they would probably still demand meat. Grain that could feed people would still feed livestock.
A draw down of animal stocks increases meat supply in the short term. As grain gets more expensive, farmers sell animals for meat rather than keeping them to reproduce.
But “As grain gets more expensive” middle eastern countries (that rely almost entirely on import for their grain source) would start facing grain shortage (due to balance of payment issues) or at least severe deprivation of the poorer part of their population.
The Tunisian, Egyptian, Syrian and Libyan revolutions didn't occur at the same moment out of coincidence…
I don't think Bret (the author of ACOUP) omits drought - he leads his section on plausible theories with "period of drying and consistent crop failures". While Bret dismisses the out to in migration/invasion theory, he does support the idea of intra-region migration/warfare (perhaps induced by drought/crop failures).
The fantastic Fall of Civilizations podcast also had an episode about it: https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/01/21/episode-2-...
Ha, beat me too it. FoC is a great channel.
Eric Cline has an interview on "Tides of History" podcast.
I'm really annoyed that Patrick gave up on that. I mean, I know he's been doing it a decade, and I can't chain him to a desk, and I'm being entitled, but...
I think it's a popular topic because so many people are wondering when our civilization will fall.
> deterioration of international shipping routes
like a closing of a certain straight that was essential for a large percentage of a necessary resource?
Given the era, it seems likely that the collapse was the work of multiple angry gods. The author doesn't cover this possibility.
The closest to that would be the ideas in “ the origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind”
The people of that era would have thought so. The Iliad and the Odyssey (if they have any basis in reality) might be examples of that period seen through a lens of mythology.
How so? Are the Greek the sea people then?
Myths don’t have natural or human causes. Instead you have wars caused by divine rivalry (e.g. the Judgement of Paris).
Maybe Troy was actually destroyed by the Sea Peoples, but that probably wouldn’t make as much at the box office.
People have always downplayed the number of things their gods can get angry about, while it often escalates beyond sustainability.
>Late Bronze Age Collapse
It was a little late but it had to happen sooner or later.
For those in power there may not be many other opportunities to set the standard for archaic leadership, so better get it while they can.
As we have seen :\
Patrick Wyman—of the Tides of History podcast—just put out a new book, Lost Worlds, which is worth a read if this is your bag. The basic premise is that the way ancient history is typically taught, "that we moved linearly from foraging to farming, and then from country farmers to city-dwelling, tax-paying subjects of kings and emperors," is essentially wrong. He goes on:
>All of those developments occurred in an orderly sequence: First farming and village life arrived; then surpluses born of human achievement that created social inequality; then hierarchies with priests and chieftains at the top; then massive monuments, cities, states, and writing to keep track of it all. Geographically, the old story of those developments centered on the Fertile Crescent of western Asia, and to a lesser extent the Nile Valley of Egypt....
>That story is wrong in some respects and incomplete in far more.
It's a constant rise and fall, with innovations and cities/civilizations that both did and didn't succeed often equally valid and appropriate paths to take. Sounds kind of bog-standard, I guess, but it's rife with examples of "Oh yeah here's a 1,500 year-old city, but it was 7,000 years ago and then disappeared so you've never heard of it."
> "Oh yeah here's a 1,500 year-old city, but it was 7,000 years ago and then disappeared so you've never heard of it."
pull it in a bit and you have Ugarit :)
i am convinced if / when AI leads to the collapse of civilization it will be akin to the Late Bronze Age collapse; i.e., not with a bang but a whimper. it was a very delicate economic ecosystem complete with circular dealing; but 3500 years ago people were fighting over Cypriot copper and today we're doing the same only in Lobito (along with Cobalt and Lanthanides) in praise of the almighty god Compute
just to flog the analogy like a Mycenean slave, Compute runs out (with a humorous sidebar where someone tries to put a modern equivalent of arsenic into the chips to perpetuate the self-dealing; hilarity ensues). society collapses (but Musk makes it because like Egypt he has all the gold) and like the Iron Age a Quantum Age comes along out of desperation and the will to survive after yet another Dark Age. if we're lucky.
i'll see myself out
Our favorite pedant should have a new post up today, I think he posts in the afternoon though. At least, checking in the morning and saying “ah, dang, the acoup post hasn’t come out yet, maybe I’ll reread an old one…” is a Friday morning ritual for me.
Beware the Sea Peoples
There's a Portuguese saying "há mouro na costa" which is literally "there are moor at the coast" and means that there is something fishy going on.
The Moors existed about 1900 years after the Sea People of the Bronze Age.
I don’t think they’re implying the moors are responsible for the Bronze Age collapse, merely drawing parallels.
In an alternate timeline, The Sea Peoples are Romans sailing to England, the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans. Things became fuzzy when the English themselves became other civilization's Sea Peoples.
I would wager that almost every civilization has been some other civilization’s sea people at some point in it’s history.
If invaders appear out of ‘nowhere’, it’s usually by boat or on horseback.
Well, at least not civilizations where dreams dry up.
The Bronze Age was the third best age.
The Iron Age can be researched at your Town Center, but the Post-Iron Age isn't a real age, it's just an extra setting on the map settings menu that starts you in the Iron Age with everything already researched.
After the one where humans first harnessed water power, the Dam Age, and when we started wearing clothes, the Garb Age.