The evidence that a prolonged shift in climate was a factor in bringing down the Mediterranean Bronze Age comes from a number of studies, including one published in 2013, showing that cooling sea surface temperatures led to lower rainfall over inland farming areas. So what took all these cultures down at the same time? The story begins, but does not end, with climate change. In this way, the Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, Cypriots, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Assyrians and Babylonians became the economic powerhouses of the ancient world - what Cline calls the " Group of 8." Together they built the first version of a "global" culture using long-distance economic and military partnerships that required advanced - for its day - technologies. Grain and manufactured goods also became part of that transportation web. It was the transport of copper and tin for bronze that helped establish complex trade networks. Egypt of the pharaohs was a Bronze Age civilization as was the Babylonian empire. It is in the Bronze Age that city building, and the sprawling kingdoms they engendered, begins in earnest. At that point, people developed sophisticated metallurgy techniques allowing them to mix copper and tin into an alloy - bronze - strong enough for serious sword blades and other goods. The Bronze Age itself, as opposed to the Stone Age before it, begins somewhere around 3000 B.C. The Late Bronze Age that Cline is interested in stretches from about 1500 B.C. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Subtitle The Year Civilization Collapsed Author Eric H. 2014, Cline responded:Ĭlose overlay Buy Featured Book Title 1177 B.C. When I asked him about the parallels between 1177 B.C. What drove such a complex set of societies to all perish almost all at once? The answers and its lesson, Cline argues, are a story we moderns should not ignore. The question that haunts Eric Cline is why. Then, fairly suddenly, the great web of interconnected civilizations imploded and disappeared. A thousand years before Rome or Christ or Buddha, there existed a powerful array of civilizations in the Near and Middle East that had risen to the height of their glory. Cline in his recent book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. It is humanity's first "global" dark age as described by archaeologist and George Washington University professor Eric H. While that laundry list of impending doom could be aimed at our era, it's actually a description of the world 3,000 years ago. From the Abu Simbel temples in southern Egypt, dating back to the 13th century B.C.Ĭonsider this, if you would: a network of far-flung, powerful, high-tech civilizations closely tied by trade and diplomatic embassies an accelerating threat of climate change and its pressure on food production a rising wave of displaced populations ready to sweep across and overwhelm developed nations.
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