The Late Bronze Age Collapse: When Civilization Nearly Ended
I explore the Late Bronze Age Collapse, a catastrophic event in the 12th century BC that shattered interconnected empires across the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. While often called an end of civilization, the reality is more complex, with some states declining slowly while others vanished entirely. We examine the archaeological evidence of destruction layers, the fragile trade networks for bronze, and the uncertain causes behind this seismic shift in human history.
In the broader Mediterranean world, the Late Bronze Age Collapse is the event that probably comes closest to a true 'end of civilization' event – meaningfully more severe than the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West.
- evanjrowley
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.
- Amorymeltzer
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."
- marking-time
The study of the LBAC is compelling these days because of the similarities to our present day situation. Other commenters have noted the the possibility of AI driven collapse, but another possibility is our dependence on oil.
Bronze is the combination copper+tin. Copper is common in earths composition, but tin is much more scarce. The scarcity of tin necessitated the expansive trade networks to acquire the resource. To my way of thinking this correlates to our dependency on oil which while not exactly scarce, is not evenly distributed across the world. Our global supply chain for oil is fragile in the same way that the supply chain for tin was to the bronze age empires.
As for the article: I found the authors use of dating systems inconsistent and confusing. Some references are listed with the BC/AD nomenclature while others omit it entirely leaving the reader confused as which era he is referring to. Also, the use of the BC/AD has been supplanted by the use of the BCE/CE nomenclature in scientific references for 20+ years. This could simply be due to the fact that the author is a historian, but one would think a PhD would know better. All of this made me wonder if perhaps the author relies too heavily on AI.
- timbits98
Given the era, it seems likely that the collapse was the work of multiple angry gods. The author doesn't cover this possibility.
- dllu
> in Spanish, there wasn’t an English version, but it will do
I've just uploaded an English translation to: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moyen_Orient_13e_si%...
If someone can proofread my translations that would be great.
- cineticdaffodil
My pet hypothesis is : That trade networks, in times of collapse- become sort of superspreader networks of downfall. Think about that city state who runs out of food by the sea! It still has all the trading vessels- whats more logic then to go - and take over somebody elses city and ships! Piracy of the damned! Stealing the food from the starving, just to give there families one more day! Following the coast- until you run out of city- and the civilization is gone!It should also not affect the country interior cities - who then would murder the upstart pirates who took over the old capital near the sea..
- tsoukase
As a Greek I feel proud that we passed through all history tides during our high times: multiple cycles of thriving and decline, the last one being the Classical century of 5th BC, then the Hellenistic period of Alexander until we passed the baton of civilization to the Romans.
This lasted for a full thousand years until a little before Jesus birth and it continued in Europe and the rest of the world in the same way for two more until today.
It seems the reasons of decline were most often the boring ones: variable scale fightings and climate change. Any resemblance to modern times is not coincidental.
- usumgallu
I am mobile and not at my main system with my HN login, so I made this temp, but I think I cracked the primary cause and have been slowly working on a paper to submit to the journals...
I was doing geological research trying to show how crustal displacement theory is incorrect, and stumbled upon a paper that elucidated the insight:
There was a localized weakening of the geomagnetic field in the Levant and in the Med (3 actual areas) starting at roughly 1200 and ongoing until about 600! Im pretty sure Im the first person to posit this theory, but the more I steelman against it the more I think I'm onto something, and the implications are huge... because it has more to do with other subjects such as the evolution of religion in the region too. My theories on that are harder to prove but will be the follow up paper, at first Im just trying to focus on the geological proof.
Essentially a localized reduction in geomagnetic shielding allowing increased cosmic ray flux and solar radiation caused destruction, migration, religious interpretations of what was being seen in the sky, and all the war and tumolt that would come along with those...
- wisty
I saw a slghtly odd youtube video by a small creator who thinks it was at least partly because the gods stopped talking to people.
No, hear me out.
Obviously they weren't real, but the Youtuber said (based on sources) people used to talk to the gods, like you might talk to a cat. And the gods spoke back (and we all know cat owners who insist the cat is replying).
As societies became more sophisticated, this stopped. Around the time of the collapse, rulers complained that the gods were silent. The usual interpretation is that the gods did not help, but what if they literally stopped "hearing" the god's replies?
You couldn't have a conversation with Zeus in the town square anymore without people saying you were nuts, unless you were a ruler. But the sophisticated, skeptical societies also became fractured and disloyal (especially when only their rulers were arguing with Zeus over why the peasants weren't taking them seriously), and social institutions (which were stuck in the past) couldn't keep up.
- shevy-java
I think "Collapse" is a strange word because
we talk here about several hundred, if not thousand
of years. A good example is the old roman empire -
it expanded, it grew - until it no longer did and
then it whittled away or lost out to e. g. northern
tribes. Collapse as a word is just weird here really.
Even the old roman empire did not "collapse" per se,
if we ignore big single final battles such as 1453: