In the 12th century BCE, the great Bronze Age Mediterranean civilizations – all of them – suddenly collapsed. Their empires vanished, their cities emptied, their technologies disappeared, and famine reigned. Mycenae, Minos, Assyria, Hittites, Canaan, Cyprus – all gone. Even Egypt fell into steep decline. The Bronze Age was over.
The event should have gone down in history as one of the great cautionary tales, but it did not because its causes were considered a mystery. How do you know what to watch out for? Eric Cline took care of the mystery. An archaeologist-historian at George Washington University, he is the author of “1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed.” The failure, he suggests, was systemic. The extremely complex and richly interconnected global system suddenly fell into chaos.
/"1177 BC: When Civilization Collapsed/" was given on January 11, 2016 as part of the Long Now seminar series. The series was launched in 02003 as a compelling collection of ideas on long-term thinking from some of the world's greatest thinkers. The seminars take place in San Francisco and are organized and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the conferences, you can:
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