Awesome book trailer! On a more serious note, I'm grateful to the institute for making available these great lectures on fascinating topics by renowned scholars to those of us who might otherwise not get a chance to attend such a lecture.
Just finished translating this lovely book to Arabic. I enjoyed every minute while translating it. Can't wait to see the Arabic Translation published. This period of time is so mysterious and has a lot of similarities with nowadays. Will history repeat itself? I believe so. I think that 2022 will be a crucial year that would witness the collapse of several civilizations.
Great presentation. Fascinating subject matter presented by a historian who knows his subject intimately and is able to hit all the key points without getting bogged down by the fine detail - of which there is no doubt a great deal. He uses multidisciplinary sources (and credits them) to give the audience a balanced overview of the of the situation in the late Bronze Age without favoring a particular viewpoint and is honest in admitting where there are gaps in our knowledge of events. Thanks to Dr. Cline and to the Oriental Institute for hosting this event.
He skipped entirely the issue of how the climate is made colder due to massive volcanic eruptions. The other issue was the gigantic tsunamis from the eruption that swept away all previous ports and annihilated most cities along the coasts. We have lived through much smaller eruptions like the one recently as 1994. This happened on the opposite side of the planet from my own mountain here in NY and that winter it was -45 below zero!!! Never so cold before or since and we had a total of over 20 feet of snow, it was hellishly bad. Had to take all my sheep into the house to keep them alive, for example. Had to shovel snow off the roof every other day, it seemed. Santorini explosion was 100 times nastier!
This is the third time I have experienceed this presentation. There is a large lake not far south of Cairo, annually refilled from the western bank of the Nile, which dried so long at this time, the sediment was blown away. This had me research that drought. You only just got there before me. Thank for saving me from all the public speaking you do so well.
I am watching the your lesson s. Im deep a prissier This lessons I am CP I am disabled and I cannot staying in the abraded thank you so much for your support and your team program thanks a lot.
Sou um geógrafo brasileiro, porém fascinado por história antiga. Pensei que apenas a China teve várias idades das trevas. Para mim é uma novidade fascinante um outro período histórico assim no Oriente Médio. Parabéns professor!
In regards to the trade route's, the mineral signature of the copper traced it to N. America......Michigan in particular. The people of those cultures disappeared also. Thank you Mr. Cline for the lecture and thank you "The Oriental Institute" for posting it.
I think a big element that makes the bronze age collapse so memorable is the lack of written sources. We know exactly why the Roman Empire collapsed (at least the facts and dates, there is argument on the ideas and the weight of each fact and date). The bronze age collapse was so total written language itself was wiped out in much of the Mediterranean.
Cracking lecture. loved every minute. A very plausible scenario. History and historical change is messy and Eric Cline made this very clear. Interesting to compare the evidence in the eastern med for drought and Mike Bailee's evidence for colder and wetter conditions in NW Europe. Have climate modellers generated a different circulation model for this period or comets injecting stratospheric material which reduced solar insolation for a number (18 years in NW European tree rings) in the 12 th century BC ?
I could spend my life in college with you history scholars. you got it!!! it was a convergence of catastrophes!!!! such as new geological evidence showing roman collapse may have timed up with a regional era of soil degradation and everything that goes with it.
Yesterday I become interested in bronze age civilization collapse. Today I am watching a lecture on this by foreigner professor from the university at the another side of the world. I live in the future
Great lecturer. Very formative view into this part of history representing a peak in knowledge and interconnectednes. Filled with various details e.g. that tin was the scarcity of the time. It was traded with Afghanistan and hence the route to the Mediterranean was critical to maintain. The civilisation ended because of anything else than one particular reason though, say war, rebellion, earthquake, famine, epidemic, but a combination of such events. As far as I remember, Kenneth Clarke upon reading Edvard Gibbons, concluded that the Roman Empire did not collapse because of one single reason either, but because of fatigue, a natural death you could say. The Bronze Age apparently did not, it was vibrancy against chaos.
Excellent talk. He's a great speaker with very interesting ideas. Watch this on the heels of a documentary like CODE BLACK about things happening today!
Another thing to think about: Each civilization must have been comprised of many tribes/ethnic groups or factions that surely tried to re-establish themselves or take over as things got instable Its very common when empires collapse, another empire essentially takes over........ so when many interconnected civilizations collapse- they likely fracture into factions.... which "didn't make the news" back then so we are likely unaware....... in the ensuing dark ages, I'm sure information about these revolts and uprisings were not written down and thus we have no record
Questions and more questions. 1) drought, famine and possible plague as the collapse is sudden and sequential? 2) administrative skills exclusively in the hands of the elite and priests and the long road back to law and order and organization? 3) Sea invaders=pillage, slaves, wealth...what peoples prospered at this time? Early Athenians re: Plato's account of Solan's Egyptian visit? 4) Invasion and pillaging by known local peoples also seeking food, but not necessarily know by artifact writer? 5) Facing extinction, elite and priests gathered to leave a written history rather than rule over chaos...hence the eventual Abrahamic writings that become the bible?
That last statement he made about cutting down old growth forest to allow renewal was a surprising statement. Deforestation of the region led to desertification drought and famine. Since it is still possible to have conservation efforts bring much of the moist environment back the destruction and climate change has not been undone and the poverty and starvation has not ceased since the cedars of Lebanon were cut. It's been downhill ever since.
Drake Dorosh He wasn't talking about that specific region in the last statement, he was making an analogy with regards wildfires in general. And he was 100% on point. There are, in fact, trees which cannot germinate unless the seeds go through a wildfire. Whole ecosystems rely on cycles of burning away old growth to make way for new growth. Modern forest management doctrine states that you should always allow a wildfire to burn itself out if at all possible. Modern forestry practices instead attempt to protect homes and cities near ongoing wildfires while allowing the fire to burn as much as possible. This was learned after decades of putting out forest fires as quickly as possible led to massive, catastrophic fires (particularly in California, but elsewhere as well) which could not be contained and wrecked havoc. It's an apt analogy.
+Drake Dorosh That's a chicken and egg problem. Did the deforestation cause desertification, or was the causation the other way around? It sounds to me like you're willing to accept the idea that human actions can affect the climate. I'm OK with that. What we know is there was a change in climate at about that time. There was less rainfall. I don't know that the cause has been determined. Yes, deforestation was a popular explanation a few years ago, but was it enough?
Roger Merritt Yes I agree with you. I got a little excited when I posted that comment. Dating all the relevant artifacts and piecing together the past must be a daunting task. As we moved out of the last ice age there were lakes and trees and now there is desert. Over the vast stretch of time humans, if we were different creatures who didn't war and build ships but instead farmed forests we could not slow the melting of the glaciers. That is a cycle that is out of our control. We can only adapt or migrate. Besides he had a wonderful lecture and I impulsively jumped on his last words which led me to a pet interest: If Geoff Lawton could plant a small oasis in Lebanon based on runoff could we not dot the middle east with oasises? There are wadis throughout the region and it is what it is. Animal grazing and human need versus the ability of plants to attract and hold moisture. My prejudice is humans are destroyers who make there own destruction but the world is remade with new problems. I watch this ancient history with a hope of finding practical information for the moment. I am a little embarrassed that I stepped into water above my depth.
In Hong Kong, it is regrettable that history-majored students seldom know this book. This book can be regarded as a sight-seeing gadget to reconsider the oblivious history amid Bronze Age and Egyptian Dynasty. We mostly acquire Greek and Roman history only.
I love Neil Sedaka. I did not know he was an Historical expert. He seems to know it all. Bronze age collapsed while he sang "Breaking Up is Hard to Do". Thank God the Beatles came along and started the Iron Age.
One major difference between the Bronze age civilization and our modern one is that ours is truly global; as in the whole globe. That offers us a greater buffer against such a potential collapse but also infers that such a collapse would be that much more catastrophic. The domino effect in such a scenario is rather frightening to think about.
+Old Man from Scene Twenty Four Possibly, but that was still 300 years prior. Do you really think we would take anyone seriously today who blamed current failures on events in the year 1700?
Snagabott Clines dates are not exact for the end of civilization. I'm sure in the 300 year difference there are other factors and events not accounted for. The effects of the Santorini eruption lasted for quite a long time and caused lasting problems, as well as benefits, hundreds of miles, if not a thousand in all directions. "Do you really think we would take anyone seriously today who blamed current failures on events in the year 1700?" Yes, the events of the past do affect the present as well as the future. It doesn't matter if it's 50 years ago or 100, or 1,000. Only a fool ignores the past.
Old Man from Scene Twenty Four "Yes, the events of the past do affect the present as well as the future. It doesn't matter if it's 50 years ago or 100, or 1,000. Only a fool ignores the past." Yes, I agree with this statement. However, my thinking is this: while I agree that the Santorini eruption surely was a massively calamitous event, the effects should have been most visible right after the eruption and then either faded away or become permanent. Tambora in 1815 caused worldwide climatic effects, but they lasted only a few years before they faded. 300 years down the line, any effects from the eruption would have either faded into the background or they were permanent and would had already been adjusted to by the people living in the area.
I thought the current dating of Thera eruption is 1614 plus or minus 14 years, with 95% probability. This dating of Thera eruption was announced with three articles. I'm not sure if this you-tuba-tubu will allow me to post three links, so I will only post the link to the contents of magazine "Science": science.sciencemag.org/content/312/5773.toc The three articles: == New Carbon Dates Support Revised History of Ancient Mediterranean Michael Balter "Science", 28 April 2006: 508-509. == Santorini Eruption Radiocarbon Dated to 1627-1600 B.C. Walter L. Friedrich, Bernd Kromer, Michael Friedrich, Jan Heinemeier, Tom Pfeiffer, and Sahra Talamo Science 28 April 2006: 548. A buried olive tree provides a firm early date for the massive Santorini eruption, facilitating correlations among Bronze Age events throughout the Mediterranean. == Chronology for the Aegean Late Bronze Age 1700-1400 B.C. Sturt W. Manning, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Walter Kutschera, Thomas Higham, Bernd Kromer, Peter Steier, and Eva M. Wild Science 28 April 2006: 565-569. Radiocarbon ages from the Aegean region, along with the new age for the Santorini eruption, revise the inferred relations among Minoan, Egyptian, and Near Eastern cultures.
There are many problems associated with radiocarbon dating. In the case of the Thera Event I believe the current RC date is somewhere between 1650 and 1600 BC. However, ceramic cross-reference with Egypt and the Uluburun shipwreck (dendro dates w/late 18th dynasty) clearly demonstrate the final catastrophic phase of the Thera Event occurred around 1425 to 1400 BC. On the other hand, paleoclimatic reconstructions suggest that the climatic shift associated with the Bronze Age collapse didn't begin until the last quarter of the 13th century. What was not covered in the book was the collapse of the northern European Bronze age societies and the rise of the LBA Urnfield culture which is directly tied to the emergence of the Celts and Italics. Also there is the 12th century collapse of the Shang culture and rise of the Zhou in China. These were tied to the mass movements of populations from the Eurasian steppes.
Hi,Eric Cline used to have 13-14 lectures loaded on you tube under the title Like ''trojan war , fact or fiction'' .I can not find them any more I guess the videos removed last year. Does anyone know if they were uploaded somewhere else? or How can I find them? Thank you
Notice that the Tin mine in Anatolia stopped working around 1186 BC. That it was not restartet means that the Bronse economy had collapsed. It was obviously that the Tin trade network was not cut.
Thank you for this lecture and posting. It's indeed interesting and mesmerising; one of the more peculiar thing in this, is that the "invaders", being it Sea People, are not said by any in this huge area where come from. It would had been both easy and natural to say "the Cretans", "the Cypriots", the Myceans" etc. Strange.
I bought and read the book before finding this lecture. I enjoyed both. I was comparing interglacial temperature spikes and drop-offs with civilization collapses and mass migrations. It would seem that this one considers with the drop after the Minoan Warm Period. During these cold snaps you have more earthquakes, droughts, famines, mass migrations and civilization collapses. There were problems after the Roman Warm Period collapsed and after the Medieval Warm Period collapsed. Now that the 20th Century Warm Period has collapsed, we are seeing a similar pattern emerging. Just a thought on history repeating.
5:22 He misrepresents Tainter to say he is only talking about collapse of single societies. Tainter specifically refers to highly interconnected societies and states that individual societies cannot collapse because one of their neighbours will take over. The exception is when they all collapse together, due to the same dynamic of increasing marginal cost of managing complexity. The Bronze Age Collapse is an example of this. Here is an excerpt from The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Tainter, p215 " Collapse is possible only where there is no competitor strong enough to fill the political vacuum of disintegration. Where such a competitor does exist there can be no collapse, for the competitor will expand territorially to administer the population left leaderless. Collapse is not the same thing as change of regime. Where peer polities interact collapse will affect all equally, if and when it occurs, provided that no outside competitor is powerful enough to absorb all. Here, then, is the reason why the Mayan and Mycenaean centers collapsed simultaneously. No mysterious invaders captured each of these polities in an improbable series of fairy-tale victories. As the Mayan and Mycenaean petty states became respectively locked into competitive spirals, each had to make ever greater investments in military strength and organizational complexity. As the marginal return on these investments declined, no polity had the option to simply withdraw from the spiral, for this would have led to absorption by a neighbor. Collapse for such clusters of peer polities must be essentially simultaneous, as together they reach the point of economic exhaustion. "
I am watching the your lesson s. Im deep a prissier This lessons I am CP I am disabled and I cannot staying in the abraded thank you so much for your support and your team program thanks a lot. And I d like to stading more long time and version I am a majoring China’s Buddiesisms I have master of art ‘s degree thanks so much
This was great. Why Archeology & Anthropology are important! But, there's one thing Dr. . Cline didn't mention: during the bronze age there were no nuclear weapons. Just a thought. :)
Nice video, thanks. There appears to have been a plague affecting the Hittites at or around this time as well. Origin: Egypt. Could this have been another of the factors affecting the collapse?
Moving Tin over the silk road from Afghanistan to the Med is challenging, it would dramatically increase cost with duty levied by each city (toll) and exposure the merchant to potential robbery for such a precious commodity. Moving bulks by sea is much more likely (you can move over 30 tons by ship, a ton by cart on dirt track - much slower), it is more likely that Tin was coming from Iberia (that may have also controlled supply from Brittany and Britain into the med) using established ports. We tend to think in modern terms, but maritime trade was prolific before this dark age, it was largely controlled by the Minoans in the Med before this, with their demise their was no-one to bring in Tin to power the Bronze age economy in this region, the infighting between city states which followed may have been a need to acquire sources of metal by conquest. The flow stopped, it took considerable time for the Phoenicans to reestablish these sources after the time of the Seas People.
For the last two decades I've been working on a theory that explains repeated systems collapse/reorganization, in terms of long-term yet rapid cyclical climate change, from warm-wet to cold-dry regimes, associated with Bond Events, which in turn are linked to increased seismicity/volcanism and nested solar cycles.
Such a wide spread collapse seems to imply the involvement of some kind of solar event such as written about by Immanuel Velikovsky in his book, "Worlds In Collision" and the timing is the same. That appearance of invaders such as the Sea People was more of a response to the vacuum created by the Cataclysm.
Can you do a talk/book on Diocletian Roman Emperor 280-301 AD. I think this is the historical beginning of the totalitarian State. Certainly it laid the foundations for feudalism in Europe. And probably the dark ages as well.
No sign of a volcanic eruption somewhere in the world around that time? Like the year without summer in 1816 after an eruption in Indonesia, or the eruption in the 530s (about) in middle America that caused depopulation in northern Europe and maybe is the origin of the Fimbul winter story. Or the Laki eruption on Iceland that may have caused famine and the French revolution.
We definitely have something to learn from this. There are too many similarities in today's society. The main difference apart from technology is the massive 7.3 billion population. I wonder if our collapse will be bigger with a longer dark age.
+Robert Fletcher Almost any event that affects the entire world population is going to take that number down dramatically and fast. It's so clearly not sustainable in the best of times. I think and hope that a serious collapse could be followed by a faster return to better conditions and then a better time, if we can consciously view ourselves as part of our planet's life with stewardship and protection, instead of as its rightful owner, with exploitation and domination. For around a century, however, it'll be horrific.
Collapse would be the best thing for the planet, except for one thing: there are about 500 nuclear power stations on the planet. If they are ever disconnected from the power grid, they only have enough power (they don't power themselves strangely enough) to last a few days, or weeks, at most. Nuclear power stations take decades to decommission, and a fully functioning, strong, global economy, to do so. If we face collapse in the next few decades, nuclear power stations, in meltdown, all over the planet, would create huge swathes of the planet where nobody could live - perhaps even nothing could live. It's a very real danger.
the81kid that is something i never thought of. My daughter is a Navy nuke. I will ask her about this when next i get to talk to her. At least ships do power themselves so long as people who know how to care for them are able to work.
Sl Meyers As far as I know, nuclear ships would at least emit much less radiation. But radioactive waste from over 50 years of nuclear power around the world will be an enormous, lethal, problem for the next 100,000 years - minimum. Some scientists believe a million years is needed for some radioactive waste to stop being lethal. That's on top of any nuclear power stations in meltdown. If (when - since it's predicted in the next few decades by academics), I am very pessimistic about any civilization coming later. Imagine whoever might be living here in 100,000 years still dealing with the lethal, poisonous, body-destroying radiation that their ancestors created 100,000 years before. Fukoshima went into a limited meltdown, and they estimate that it will take 80 years(!) to clean up. That's with a fully functioning, strong, globalized economy. That's incredible. So imagine what could/will happen with hundreds of meltdowns, and no globalized economy to deal with it. If we were an intelligent species, we would decommission them all right now. Even though that would only reduce the problem, not remove it.
All modern reactors need to be consistent stoked to keep them going. New post 86 Reactors are really quite good at containing any melt down before it can leave the containment area. Now the thousand odd nuclear bombs tested above grounds that has done a number on us.
In history, there is always famine. Because human populations expand faster than agricultural technology. And, cropyields vary from year to year. This in combination regularly has created catastrophic famines throughout history.
How weakened was Egypt after Rameses III? Well, to give you an idea, it basically had a revolving door of foreign occupiers: Nubian, Libyans, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and finally (in terms of the ancient world) Romans.
So, do scholars (Biblical or otherwise) link the Exodus story of the Hebrews into the land of Canaan with the invasion of the Sea Peoples? Makes sense chronologically and contextually I just haven't heard that before. Could help explain the ten plagues...Also, love the reference to "Dayenu" after reeling off the catastrophes that civilization could have survived individually, but not all together. Wonderful lecture thanks for posting for public consumption!
I wonder if the collapse at the end of Old Kingdom Egypt was sort of the same. I also get the feeling that "The year of the hyena" as mentioned at the end of New Kingdome Egypt is part of this disaster. I bought the book.
That was the 2200 BC event in the Mediterranean, which is pretty interesting in itself. The two big empires of the time -- Egypt and Assyria -- both went down hard. Oddly enough, when the drought ended a century later, they both sprang up again in almost the same form as before.
"A perfect storn" Just as today, and we will go down like dominos very, very fast. I do not give us more than fifteen years tops. Nice presenation. I was not aware of this widespread collapse of LBA. i had thought separately for example of Crete and Mycenae collapse as two different events.
As support to your thoughts of the collapse being a combination of events, watch just about any Engineering Disaster documentary (Bhopal would be a good one) and you will find that most, if not all major disasters happen when a series of things happen. In most of these disasters, omit any one event and the disaster never happens. Nature seems to follow the same formula across many disciplines, sort of like fractals, or Fibonacci ratios (if your mathematically oriented).
or omit 1 event and the effect is changed, not cancelled, not lessened, not worsened, but could be. any 1 change in bohpar could have changed timing, weather, etc for good or bad. bit like a shoot at goal that hits the post, an inch 1 way and its in, 1 the other way it misses completely. with out even considering the goalie and other players. it could also rebound and be saved, or rebound and hit in by another player or rebound out. let alone if the ball hits 1 inch higher or lower as well.
Awesome book trailer! On a more serious note, I'm grateful to the institute for making available these great lectures on fascinating topics by renowned scholars to those of us who might otherwise not get a chance to attend such a lecture.
+seraph127 We are glad you are enjoying them!
seraph127
The Oriental Institute and enjoying them enormeously
Thank you for making these lectures available to the public! Very informative.
Just finished translating this lovely book to Arabic. I enjoyed every minute while translating it. Can't wait to see the Arabic Translation published. This period of time is so mysterious and has a lot of similarities with nowadays. Will history repeat itself? I believe so. I think that 2022 will be a crucial year that would witness the collapse of several civilizations.
Wow, 2022 was a crucial year for sure!!!
Which one?
Great presentation. Fascinating subject matter presented by a historian who knows his subject intimately and is able to hit all the key points without getting bogged down by the fine detail - of which there is no doubt a great deal. He uses multidisciplinary sources (and credits them) to give the audience a balanced overview of the of the situation in the late Bronze Age without favoring a particular viewpoint and is honest in admitting where there are gaps in our knowledge of events.
Thanks to Dr. Cline and to the Oriental Institute for hosting this event.
He skipped entirely the issue of how the climate is made colder due to massive volcanic eruptions. The other issue was the gigantic tsunamis from the eruption that swept away all previous ports and annihilated most cities along the coasts. We have lived through much smaller eruptions like the one recently as 1994. This happened on the opposite side of the planet from my own mountain here in NY and that winter it was -45 below zero!!! Never so cold before or since and we had a total of over 20 feet of snow, it was hellishly bad. Had to take all my sheep into the house to keep them alive, for example. Had to shovel snow off the roof every other day, it seemed. Santorini explosion was 100 times nastier!
Well I remember that winter.
Living in the house with sheep.
Im sure you shoveled more than snow. But the sheep were happy Im sure also.
See my comment above. The eruption of Santorini took place in 1628 BCE, more than 400 years before the end of the Late Bronze Age.
Eric Cline
+24491327cfn Glad you enjoyed it!
Great talk. Brings together a lot of recent discussion points and provides some well-needed context.
+garrett tedeman Glad you enjoyed it!
Great lecture. I'm a big fan of Eric Cline.
I feel like I'm getting a great education tuition--free! I ordered this book and can't wait to devour it.
+Daniel Bradford That's great! Glad you are enjoying the videos!
Eric Cline is one of my favorite historian after coming across him last year...such great lectures. Thanks
Thank you! I have thoroughly enjoyed your presentation. I like your engaging style -- you are definitely NOT boring, and the material is interesting.
I am so happy that in this day and age people still are fascinated by the ancient past.
This is the third time I have experienceed this presentation. There is a large lake not far south of Cairo, annually refilled from the western bank of the Nile, which dried so long at this time, the sediment was blown away. This had me research that drought. You only just got there before me. Thank for saving me from all the public speaking you do so well.
Superb lecture!
Been through it twice. Will ofcourse read the book and then wait for the sequel.
Bravo! Facinating and informative. Thank you For sharing this.
I am watching the your lesson s. Im deep a prissier This lessons I am CP I am disabled and I cannot staying in the abraded thank you so much for your support and your team program thanks a lot.
Sou um geógrafo brasileiro, porém fascinado por história antiga. Pensei que apenas a China teve várias idades das trevas. Para mim é uma novidade fascinante um outro período histórico assim no Oriente Médio. Parabéns professor!
Thank you that was of interest.
An old history teacher
Greetings from POLAND!
Just watch it before exams - gonna help me a lot!
Cheers!
What a guy Eric Cline is. Great history lecture.
+wailinburnin Glad you enjoyed it!
+wailinburnin Glad you enjoyed it!
In regards to the trade route's, the mineral signature of the copper traced it to N. America......Michigan in particular. The people of those cultures disappeared also. Thank you Mr. Cline for the lecture and thank you "The Oriental Institute" for posting it.
Some of the copper.
I think a big element that makes the bronze age collapse so memorable is the lack of written sources. We know exactly why the Roman Empire collapsed (at least the facts and dates, there is argument on the ideas and the weight of each fact and date). The bronze age collapse was so total written language itself was wiped out in much of the Mediterranean.
Definitely going to buy the book now. Great discussion.
"my boy Amun-Hotep III"
Excellent excellent presentation. Very interesting info and the modern comparisions of Bronze and Oil are too similar to ignore.
+timrhicks1234 Glad you enjoyed it!
The Oriental Institute Thank you for posting it. I am hoping to use history and lessons from the past to advance critical thinking in education.
Very well done presentation.
+Calkids Bradley Glad you enjoyed it!
Great presentation! Thanks for sharing.
+Raymond Chandler Glad you enjoyed it!
Read the book & really enjoyed it. I'm happy to see this video where Cline spoke in my hometown.
+wood rackets Glad you enjoyed it!
Cracking lecture. loved every minute. A very plausible scenario. History and historical change is messy and Eric Cline made this very clear. Interesting to compare the evidence in the eastern med for drought and Mike Bailee's evidence for colder and wetter conditions in NW Europe. Have climate modellers generated a different circulation model for this period or comets injecting stratospheric material which reduced solar insolation for a number (18 years in NW European tree rings) in the 12 th century BC ?
I could spend my life in college with you history scholars. you got it!!! it was a convergence of catastrophes!!!! such as new geological evidence showing roman collapse may have timed up with a regional era of soil degradation and everything that goes with it.
Yesterday I become interested in bronze age civilization collapse. Today I am watching a lecture on this by foreigner professor from the university at the another side of the world. I live in the future
Great presentation. I agree with the system collapse hypothesis.
Great lecturer. Very formative view into this part of history representing a peak in knowledge and interconnectednes. Filled with various details e.g. that tin was the scarcity of the time. It was traded with Afghanistan and hence the route to the Mediterranean was critical to maintain. The civilisation ended because of anything else than one particular reason though, say war, rebellion, earthquake, famine, epidemic, but a combination of such events. As far as I remember, Kenneth Clarke upon reading Edvard Gibbons, concluded that the Roman Empire did not collapse because of one single reason either, but because of fatigue, a natural death you could say. The Bronze Age apparently did not, it was vibrancy against chaos.
Excellent talk. He's a great speaker with very interesting ideas. Watch this on the heels of a documentary like CODE BLACK about things happening today!
+Sl Meyers Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the talk!
Ordering it now. I would have gone with "Apocalypse Then" as a title...
collapse of civilization is in some sense the opposite of an apocalypse.
Great great book, revised version even better
Another thing to think about:
Each civilization must have been comprised of many tribes/ethnic groups or factions that surely tried to re-establish themselves or take over as things got instable
Its very common when empires collapse, another empire essentially takes over........ so when many interconnected civilizations collapse- they likely fracture into factions.... which "didn't make the news" back then so we are likely unaware....... in the ensuing dark ages, I'm sure information about these revolts and uprisings were not written down and thus we have no record
Excellent lecture.
Such a presentation!!
Questions and more questions.
1) drought, famine and possible plague as the collapse is sudden and sequential?
2) administrative skills exclusively in the hands of the elite and priests and the long road back to law and order and organization?
3) Sea invaders=pillage, slaves, wealth...what peoples prospered at this time? Early Athenians re: Plato's account of Solan's Egyptian visit?
4) Invasion and pillaging by known local peoples also seeking food, but not necessarily know by artifact writer?
5) Facing extinction, elite and priests gathered to leave a written history rather than rule over chaos...hence the eventual Abrahamic writings that become the bible?
Thank you. I will buy the book.
armchair historian loving this :) thank you for teaching the poor but interested
That last statement he made about cutting down old growth forest to allow renewal was a surprising statement. Deforestation of the region led to desertification drought and famine. Since it is still possible to have conservation efforts bring much of the moist environment back the destruction and climate change has not been undone and the poverty and starvation has not ceased since the cedars of Lebanon were cut. It's been downhill ever since.
Drake Dorosh He wasn't talking about that specific region in the last statement, he was making an analogy with regards wildfires in general. And he was 100% on point. There are, in fact, trees which cannot germinate unless the seeds go through a wildfire. Whole ecosystems rely on cycles of burning away old growth to make way for new growth. Modern forest management doctrine states that you should always allow a wildfire to burn itself out if at all possible. Modern forestry practices instead attempt to protect homes and cities near ongoing wildfires while allowing the fire to burn as much as possible. This was learned after decades of putting out forest fires as quickly as possible led to massive, catastrophic fires (particularly in California, but elsewhere as well) which could not be contained and wrecked havoc.
It's an apt analogy.
+Drake Dorosh That's a chicken and egg problem. Did the deforestation cause desertification, or was the causation the other way around? It sounds to me like you're willing to accept the idea that human actions can affect the climate. I'm OK with that. What we know is there was a change in climate at about that time. There was less rainfall. I don't know that the cause has been determined. Yes, deforestation was a popular explanation a few years ago, but was it enough?
Roger Merritt
Yes I agree with you. I got a little excited when I posted that comment. Dating all the relevant artifacts and piecing together the past must be a daunting task. As we moved out of the last ice age there were lakes and trees and now there is desert. Over the vast stretch of time humans, if we were different creatures who didn't war and build ships but instead farmed forests we could not slow the melting of the glaciers. That is a cycle that is out of our control. We can only adapt or migrate.
Besides he had a wonderful lecture and I impulsively jumped on his last words which led me to a pet interest: If Geoff Lawton could plant a small oasis in Lebanon based on runoff could we not dot the middle east with oasises? There are wadis throughout the region and it is what it is. Animal grazing and human need versus the ability of plants to attract and hold moisture. My prejudice is humans are destroyers who make there own destruction but the world is remade with new problems. I watch this ancient history with a hope of finding practical information for the moment. I am a little embarrassed that I stepped into water above my depth.
Great lecture!
In Hong Kong, it is regrettable that history-majored students seldom know this book. This book can be regarded as a sight-seeing gadget to reconsider the oblivious
history amid Bronze Age and Egyptian Dynasty. We mostly acquire Greek and Roman history only.
Mins 50:22 priceless comparative study!
Great lecture.
+MUSA Kickball Glad you enjoyed it!
I love Neil Sedaka. I did not know he was an Historical expert. He seems to know it all. Bronze age collapsed while he sang "Breaking Up is Hard to Do". Thank God the Beatles came along and started the Iron Age.
That trailer was cool!!
One major difference between the Bronze age civilization and our modern one is that ours is truly global; as in the whole globe. That offers us a greater buffer against such a potential collapse but also infers that such a collapse would be that much more catastrophic. The domino effect in such a scenario is rather frightening to think about.
just saw the trailer. Instant alt tab to amzn. Will arrive the day after tomorrow
I feel the eruption of Santorini in 1500BC is a contributing catalyst to the series of disasters.
+Old Man from Scene Twenty Four Possibly, but that was still 300 years prior. Do you really think we would take anyone seriously today who blamed current failures on events in the year 1700?
Snagabott
Clines dates are not exact for the end of civilization. I'm sure in the 300 year difference there are other factors and events not accounted for. The effects of the Santorini eruption lasted for quite a long time and caused lasting problems, as well as benefits, hundreds of miles, if not a thousand in all directions.
"Do you really think we would take anyone seriously today who blamed current failures on events in the year 1700?"
Yes, the events of the past do affect the present as well as the future. It doesn't matter if it's 50 years ago or 100, or 1,000. Only a fool ignores the past.
Old Man from Scene Twenty Four "Yes, the events of the past do affect the present as well as the future. It doesn't matter if it's 50 years ago or 100, or 1,000. Only a fool ignores the past."
Yes, I agree with this statement.
However, my thinking is this: while I agree that the Santorini eruption surely was a massively calamitous event, the effects should have been most visible right after the eruption and then either faded away or become permanent. Tambora in 1815 caused worldwide climatic effects, but they lasted only a few years before they faded. 300 years down the line, any effects from the eruption would have either faded into the background or they were permanent and would had already been adjusted to by the people living in the area.
I thought the current dating of Thera eruption is 1614 plus or minus 14 years, with 95% probability.
This dating of Thera eruption was announced with three articles. I'm not sure if this you-tuba-tubu will allow me to post three links, so I will only post the link to the contents of magazine "Science":
science.sciencemag.org/content/312/5773.toc
The three articles:
== New Carbon Dates Support Revised History of Ancient Mediterranean
Michael Balter
"Science", 28 April 2006: 508-509.
== Santorini Eruption Radiocarbon Dated to 1627-1600 B.C.
Walter L. Friedrich, Bernd Kromer, Michael Friedrich, Jan Heinemeier, Tom Pfeiffer, and Sahra Talamo
Science 28 April 2006: 548.
A buried olive tree provides a firm early date for the massive Santorini eruption, facilitating correlations among Bronze Age events throughout the Mediterranean.
== Chronology for the Aegean Late Bronze Age 1700-1400 B.C.
Sturt W. Manning, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Walter Kutschera, Thomas Higham, Bernd Kromer, Peter Steier, and Eva M. Wild
Science 28 April 2006: 565-569.
Radiocarbon ages from the Aegean region, along with the new age for the Santorini eruption, revise the inferred relations among Minoan, Egyptian, and Near Eastern cultures.
There are many problems associated with radiocarbon dating. In the case of the Thera Event I believe the current RC date is somewhere between 1650 and 1600 BC. However, ceramic cross-reference with Egypt and the Uluburun shipwreck (dendro dates w/late 18th dynasty) clearly demonstrate the final catastrophic phase of the Thera Event occurred around 1425 to 1400 BC. On the other hand, paleoclimatic reconstructions suggest that the climatic shift associated with the Bronze Age collapse didn't begin until the last quarter of the 13th century. What was not covered in the book was the collapse of the northern European Bronze age societies and the rise of the LBA Urnfield culture which is directly tied to the emergence of the Celts and Italics. Also there is the 12th century collapse of the Shang culture and rise of the Zhou in China. These were tied to the mass movements of populations from the Eurasian steppes.
Some falls for others to rise. The rule of living beings....
Cline sold a copy of the book to me on the virtue of the 52 minute "book trailer."
I bought that book and read it. It was pretty informative.
I was looking for some time in history, to compare with our own western turmoil. And by George I've found it!
Thanks for that. What is curious is that the people abandoned these places forever. Strange.
Great video!
Hi,Eric Cline used to have 13-14 lectures loaded on you tube under the title Like ''trojan war , fact or fiction'' .I can not find them any more I guess the videos removed last year. Does anyone know if they were uploaded somewhere else? or How can I find them? Thank you
Notice that the Tin mine in Anatolia stopped working around 1186 BC. That it was not restartet means that the Bronse economy had collapsed.
It was obviously that the Tin trade network was not cut.
I had a pair of sandals that looked just like those. I bought them at a little stand in a village on Crete back in the 70's
I bought mine at Tom McCan, North Star Mall, San Antonio, Texas....1968
The more things change, the more they stay the same. :)
Thank you for this lecture and posting. It's indeed interesting and mesmerising; one of the more peculiar thing in this, is that the "invaders", being it Sea People, are not said by any in this huge area where come from. It would had been both easy and natural to say "the Cretans", "the Cypriots", the Myceans" etc. Strange.
Egyptians are like a Bronze Age to the Byzantines, who survived the migration period and carried ancient culture through centuries later.m
he seems like such a passionate scholar. he always makes that "i'd probably only survive 24 hours back then" joke every lecture hah
I bought and read the book before finding this lecture. I enjoyed both. I was comparing interglacial temperature spikes and drop-offs with civilization collapses and mass migrations. It would seem that this one considers with the drop after the Minoan Warm Period. During these cold snaps you have more earthquakes, droughts, famines, mass migrations and civilization collapses. There were problems after the Roman Warm Period collapsed and after the Medieval Warm Period collapsed. Now that the 20th Century Warm Period has collapsed, we are seeing a similar pattern emerging. Just a thought on history repeating.
5:22 He misrepresents Tainter to say he is only talking about collapse of single societies. Tainter specifically refers to highly interconnected societies and states that individual societies cannot collapse because one of their neighbours will take over. The exception is when they all collapse together, due to the same dynamic of increasing marginal cost of managing complexity. The Bronze Age Collapse is an example of this. Here is an excerpt from
The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Tainter, p215
" Collapse is possible only where there is no competitor strong enough to fill the political vacuum of disintegration. Where such a competitor does exist there can be no collapse, for the competitor will expand territorially to administer the population left leaderless. Collapse is not the same thing as change of regime. Where peer polities interact collapse will affect all equally, if and when it occurs, provided that no outside competitor is powerful enough to absorb all. Here, then, is the reason why the Mayan and Mycenaean centers collapsed simultaneously. No mysterious invaders captured each of these polities in an improbable series of fairy-tale victories. As the Mayan and Mycenaean petty states became respectively locked into competitive spirals, each had to make ever greater investments in military strength and organizational complexity. As the marginal return on these investments declined, no polity had the option to simply withdraw from the spiral, for this would have led to absorption by a neighbor. Collapse for such clusters of peer polities must be essentially simultaneous, as together they reach the point of economic exhaustion. "
I am watching the your lesson s. Im deep a prissier This lessons I am CP I am disabled and I cannot staying in the abraded thank you so much for your support and your team program thanks a lot.
And I d like to stading more long time and version
I am a majoring China’s Buddiesisms
I have master of art ‘s degree thanks so much
Thank you I've been wondering what happened in 1200.... well layout.
Those darn sea people, they just cannot stay out of trouble!
This was great. Why Archeology & Anthropology are important! But, there's one thing Dr. . Cline didn't mention: during the bronze age there were no nuclear weapons. Just a thought. :)
Well-done!
Nice video, thanks. There appears to have been a plague affecting the Hittites at or around this time as well. Origin: Egypt. Could this have been another of the factors affecting the collapse?
Moving Tin over the silk road from Afghanistan to the Med is challenging, it would dramatically increase cost with duty levied by each city (toll) and exposure the merchant to potential robbery for such a precious commodity. Moving bulks by sea is much more likely (you can move over 30 tons by ship, a ton by cart on dirt track - much slower), it is more likely that Tin was coming from Iberia (that may have also controlled supply from Brittany and Britain into the med) using established ports. We tend to think in modern terms, but maritime trade was prolific before this dark age, it was largely controlled by the Minoans in the Med before this, with their demise their was no-one to bring in Tin to power the Bronze age economy in this region, the infighting between city states which followed may have been a need to acquire sources of metal by conquest. The flow stopped, it took considerable time for the Phoenicans to reestablish these sources after the time of the Seas People.
For the last two decades I've been working on a theory that explains repeated systems collapse/reorganization, in terms of long-term yet rapid cyclical climate change, from warm-wet to cold-dry regimes, associated with Bond Events, which in turn are linked to increased seismicity/volcanism and nested solar cycles.
Such a wide spread collapse seems to imply the involvement of some kind of solar event such as written about by Immanuel Velikovsky in his book, "Worlds In Collision" and the timing is the same. That appearance of invaders such as the Sea People was more of a response to the vacuum created by the Cataclysm.
Can you do a talk/book on Diocletian Roman Emperor 280-301 AD.
I think this is the historical beginning of the totalitarian State.
Certainly it laid the foundations for feudalism in Europe.
And probably the dark ages as well.
Perhaps that's Joseph Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies".
What chronology is used to get at the year 1177 bc??
I think Rohl is right about the Chronology, Which makes Ramesses III sometime after 850 B.C.
No sign of a volcanic eruption somewhere in the world around that time? Like the year without summer in 1816 after an eruption in Indonesia, or the eruption in the 530s (about) in middle America that caused depopulation in northern Europe and maybe is the origin of the Fimbul winter story. Or the Laki eruption on Iceland that may have caused famine and the French revolution.
Has anyone found a good lecture on the urban collapse from the middle Bronze Age?
The book trailer was dope
We definitely have something to learn from this. There are too many similarities in today's society. The main difference apart from technology is the massive 7.3 billion population. I wonder if our collapse will be bigger with a longer dark age.
+Robert Fletcher Almost any event that affects the entire world population is going to take that number down dramatically and fast. It's so clearly not sustainable in the best of times. I think and hope that a serious collapse could be followed by a faster return to better conditions and then a better time, if we can consciously view ourselves as part of our planet's life with stewardship and protection, instead of as its rightful owner, with exploitation and domination. For around a century, however, it'll be horrific.
Collapse would be the best thing for the planet, except for one thing: there are about 500 nuclear power stations on the planet. If they are ever disconnected from the power grid, they only have enough power (they don't power themselves strangely enough) to last a few days, or weeks, at most. Nuclear power stations take decades to decommission, and a fully functioning, strong, global economy, to do so. If we face collapse in the next few decades, nuclear power stations, in meltdown, all over the planet, would create huge swathes of the planet where nobody could live - perhaps even nothing could live. It's a very real danger.
the81kid that is something i never thought of. My daughter is a Navy nuke. I will ask her about this when next i get to talk to her. At least ships do power themselves so long as people who know how to care for them are able to work.
Sl Meyers
As far as I know, nuclear ships would at least emit much less radiation. But radioactive waste from over 50 years of nuclear power around the world will be an enormous, lethal, problem for the next 100,000 years - minimum. Some scientists believe a million years is needed for some radioactive waste to stop being lethal. That's on top of any nuclear power stations in meltdown. If (when - since it's predicted in the next few decades by academics), I am very pessimistic about any civilization coming later. Imagine whoever might be living here in 100,000 years still dealing with the lethal, poisonous, body-destroying radiation that their ancestors created 100,000 years before.
Fukoshima went into a limited meltdown, and they estimate that it will take 80 years(!) to clean up. That's with a fully functioning, strong, globalized economy. That's incredible. So imagine what could/will happen with hundreds of meltdowns, and no globalized economy to deal with it.
If we were an intelligent species, we would decommission them all right now. Even though that would only reduce the problem, not remove it.
All modern reactors need to be consistent stoked to keep them going.
New post 86 Reactors are really quite good at containing any melt down before it can leave the containment area.
Now the thousand odd nuclear bombs tested above grounds that has done a number on us.
I must buy the book.
In history, there is always famine. Because human populations expand faster than agricultural technology. And, cropyields vary from year to year. This in combination regularly has created catastrophic famines throughout history.
I was listening to this when this 'news' story popped up in my Facebook news feed. Karma is funny!
Christopher Carroll ... that's not karma.
+John Cochran Jr Serendipity seems more apt. Agreed not karma.
very interesting
Hey, where can I get the trailer?
How weakened was Egypt after Rameses III? Well, to give you an idea, it basically had a revolving door of foreign occupiers: Nubian, Libyans, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and finally (in terms of the ancient world) Romans.
So, do scholars (Biblical or otherwise) link the Exodus story of the Hebrews into the land of Canaan with the invasion of the Sea Peoples? Makes sense chronologically and contextually I just haven't heard that before. Could help explain the ten plagues...Also, love the reference to "Dayenu" after reeling off the catastrophes that civilization could have survived individually, but not all together. Wonderful lecture thanks for posting for public consumption!
the scholars agree. there was no period of egyptian slavery for hebrews, therefore no exodus. it is all myth.
+rahowhero X this includes most biblical 'scholars', cept the truly deluded american pseudo "scholars"
Great!!
Starts at 4:15
That video cracks me up.
Nick PoeFascinating and actual. I ordered the book in England.
The topic is even more relevant now... A century they said, sounds like it
Good video to fall asleep to.. 😪😪😪
I wonder if the collapse at the end of Old Kingdom Egypt was sort of the same. I also get the feeling that "The year of the hyena" as mentioned at the end of New Kingdome Egypt is part of this disaster. I bought the book.
That was the 2200 BC event in the Mediterranean, which is pretty interesting in itself. The two big empires of the time -- Egypt and Assyria -- both went down hard.
Oddly enough, when the drought ended a century later, they both sprang up again in almost the same form as before.
"A perfect storn" Just as today, and we will go down like dominos very, very fast. I do not give us more than fifteen years tops. Nice presenation. I was not aware of this widespread collapse of LBA. i had thought separately for example of Crete and Mycenae collapse as two different events.
In your cuneiform tablet images, that's all the same tablet I think. Is that a pretty typical slide technique?
Yes. It is simply a representative picture.
what about Velekovsky ?
As support to your thoughts of the collapse being a combination of events, watch just about any Engineering Disaster documentary (Bhopal would be a good one) and you will find that most, if not all major disasters happen when a series of things happen. In most of these disasters, omit any one event and the disaster never happens.
Nature seems to follow the same formula across many disciplines, sort of like fractals, or Fibonacci ratios (if your mathematically oriented).
or omit 1 event and the effect is changed, not cancelled, not lessened, not worsened, but could be. any 1 change in bohpar could have changed timing, weather, etc for good or bad. bit like a shoot at goal that hits the post, an inch 1 way and its in, 1 the other way it misses completely. with out even considering the goalie and other players. it could also rebound and be saved, or rebound and hit in by another player or rebound out. let alone if the ball hits 1 inch higher or lower as well.
+rahowhero tis sometimes hard to work out odds for something that didnt happen......too many unknown variables.
Absolutely hilarious. Definitely recommend this
As for Greece, they started civilization, so now they think they have a right to end it too.