“The Catastrophe” What the End of Bronze-Age Civilization Means for Modern Times

brusselsjournal.com ^ | Tue, 2009-09-15 09:20 | Thomas F. Bertonneau

[Nikas777]

ping

[ClearCase_guy]

I haven't read this long article, but I skimmed at bit.

For those who have an interest in science fiction, the Neal Stephenson novel "Anathem" may provide some enjoyment. A central concept is that civilizations suffer horrendous collapses every few thousand years or so. In the book, there are monastery-like structures scattered around the world in which virtually no technology is allowed, but within which, enormous learning is encouraged and preserved. Mankind, thus, never loses basic knowledge and a recovery from a catastrophe can be managed in a shortened amount of time.

The book has some interesting ideas.

[the invisib1e hand]

an awful lot of words here competing for my acutely short attention.

However, the premise is relevant -- these are times like those. So I probably should read it.

But I wish someone would just read it for me...

[the invisib1e hand]

not without a precedent in history, I’m told.

[AnAmericanMother]

An interesting theory, but I thought that the sudden decline of the cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean and the subsequent population migrations were triggered by the cataclysmic eruption of Thera. It's thought to have been the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, and it triggered a wide range of climate effects as well as tidal waves, not to mention the legend of Atlantis. We read a good deal about this in my archaeology courses in college, but that's getting longer ago all the time so subsequent scholarship may have headed off in a different direction.

But the first premise, that the catastrophe was "Neither geological nor climatological but rather sociological in character," may be open to challenge.

[Nikas777]

There is a word reading program online for free but I don’t know where to find it - it makes the text sound like on of the old Battlestar Galactica Cylon’s is reading it.

[ClearCase_guy]

Well, sure. The author clearly took some ideas from the role that monasteries played in the Dark Ages after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. I think there are also elements borrowed from Asimov's Foundation series -- you cannot stop a collapse: they are inevitable at some point. But you can focus on improving your ability to pick up the pieces after the collapse occurs.

From my perspective, the modern world has made few overt efforts in that direction.

[Larry Lucido]

Peak bronze?

[the invisib1e hand]

If I was wealthy I’d have a “reader.”

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

These days if sociological collapse occurs, it seems to me, that eventually other forms of collapse would follow, particularly nuclear devastation. These days there may be a number of ways to start the downwards decline but inevitably there is a single common pathway. If resources become critically scarce, those with means to procure those resources will inevitably make use of those means.

[BenLurkin]

Read later

[maro]

Don’t forget Asimov’s classic short story “Nightfall.”

[Nikas777]

I read a theory whose originator I can't remember that stated that when they figured out how to use iron suddenly the demand for tin to make bronze collapsed and the bronze age economies which had been built to sustain the trade also collapsed.

It is not that they ran out of bronze or tin (peak bronze) but bronze was supplanted.

It happened before with the Islamic civilization and the Chinese - when the Europeans went around the Muslims to trade direct with India and China the Muslim world collapsed in power. The same thing happened to the Chinese when the industrial revolution made China's civilization collapse.

[AnAmericanMother]

Something like that ties in with something I heard in one of my archaeology courses -- bronze was much scarcer and more difficult to work than iron, and bronze weapons were limited in availability to a small army of nobility. When the Bronze Age armies of nobles met up with the far larger armies of the Dorian Greeks armed with iron blades (never mind that they had to stop and hammer them back flat after they clocked somebody) they were overwhelmed.

The volcano probably didn't help either.

[Nikas777]

The tin trade may have had Bronze age man discover the Americas and it was kept secret (by the Phoenicians kept their valuable tin ore mines a secret. So when the tin trade collapsed so did this globe spanning culture. So maybe “Atlantis” was the memory of tis bronze age era that collapsed?

[rahbert]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Age

Seems like a tin shortage precipitated the move to iron.

Suprisingly, iron seems to have been known long before it became common, cf India.

[AnAmericanMother]

Since "Atlantis" was an island that suddenly and cataclysmically sank beneath the ocean, odds are it was Thera.

You just don't miss a blowout of that size in the relatively small confines of the eastern Mediterranean. Ash deposits have been found as far away as Egypt and Turkey, and most Aegean islands have a charred layer of soil.

My parents were in the area (on my dad's WWII "victory tour") and visited Thera (modern Santorini). The island is just the surviving rim of an enormous volcanic crater (6-8 miles across), and they have a museum there with all sorts of neat stuff.

[Noumenon]

The Chinese didn’t help themselves by buring their libraries over and over again. Imagine the loss of Alexandria repeated with the transition of virtually every dynasty.

[Nikas777]

I don’t discount the Thera explanation for Atlantis but it is one of many.