In the late summer I had a break in my comic about Phill as I needed to make some money on 3d modelling, and also because of my not-to-grand health condition. So while modelling in front of my computer I used some time to educate myself in a part of history that I had never really quite grasped - the so called Bronze Age Collapse.
From the historical sources and from what seemed a rather sudden change in the archaeological findings between c. 1200 and 1150 BC - it has been theorised that all the large civilisations in the Mediterranean suffered some unknown blow that entirely wiped them all, except Egypt, out. I had read a bit about the Sea People once, but it all sounded a bit fantastical and always mixed up with tales of Atlantis and the like. So I tried to find sober discussions of the phenomenon.
So to make it easy for you I have collected two interesting things:
Eric Cline, archaeologist PhD, with his hypothesis of what could be the reason for the collapse. In this video he talks about his ideas, and it is a very good introduction to the period.
The other is a BBC 4 discussion led by Melvyn Bragg. In the last part of the program the guests come up with the surprising idea that the collapse maybe didn't happen at all.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07fl5bh
The truth is that we know so very little and people are prone to guessing! So maybe Mitchell and Webb's guess is as good as anyone?
@katharaisdrill, I somehow ended up watching the entire length of the first video because it was so damn interesting. The Bronze Age is one of those periods I didn't realize just how little I knew about.
This is interesting and informative stuff. His final explanation that all the different explanations are simultaneously correct, they all hit the area and no civilization could possibly weather that many (metaphorical) storms.
I find it weirdly reminiscent of the Fukushima catastrophe where two simultaneous natural disasters hit the nuclear power plant; nobody could have fortified against that!
That in turn makes it weirdly prescient; our future is full of potential catastrophes ranging from about 15 flavours of environmental collapse to paleolithic plagues resurging out of the melting permafrost to bees going extinct to water scarcity to a robot war with Boston Dynamics products (facetious, yes, but come on! Have you seen that Spot Mini video?)
We make movies and we watch episodes of Black Mirror that tackle each of these one at a time -- but the real world is messy and full of second-order effects that bounce and reverberate off each other. What if our doom isn't going to one of those but all of them hitting us at once? Mad Max with cheetah robots and a giant meteor hanging in the sky.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yes, we would be a bit better off than the Hittites or the Mycenaean I think, but each new epoch of course has more values and longer life expectancy to squander by bad decisions, corruption or simply bad luck.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Heheheheheh. When you have more to lose, you have by definition more to spare. Fortify against the future by building in place. Accumulate more knowledge, more resources, more information, more material and there will be more left behind after a collapse instead of resetting to zero. I say zero because according to that video, they even lost written language?! Wow.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
If I remember the lectures correctly, and I'm not sure I do, the state-of-the-art theory at that time was that it was not just one thing i.e. the Sea People, but the combination of few factors.
Granted, that was more than two decades ago and I haven't really keep my archaeology up to date. So it could be things have changed since then.
Great post BTW
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Archaeology is learning a lot from historic climate data, and the lecture by Eric Cline above sees the sea people mainly as a symptom and not the reason for the collapse. Cline has a whole armageddon of factors that he think worked together. Earthquake, drought etc.
One of the details that modern scholars seem to have a consensus about is that the sea-people depicted on the temple in Medinet Habu is migrates rather than raiders as they in the pictures has their whole family with them. As far as I remember it is mentioned in both links.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Please let me let you in on the Bronze Age collapse and mysteries I thought your post was going to be about... the comic book world. See now most see the "Golden Age" of comics as being from 40's to mid 50's, and "Silver Age" picks up and goes to right at like 1970, now this is where things get tricky... the comic book "Bronze Age" which depending on who you are talking to ends in a different place and I read so many ways people clearly define it ending at one year over another. Some say it is from the "collapse" of the Comics Code Authority in 1985, the world may never know.
Some Phill work really gives me those indie / alt comix feel from that Bronze Age, I legit thought this post was going to be about comic books lol.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Haha, yes that will be the next post. It is true that the moral panic collapse is almost as important as the Bronze Age... the old one that is. I am very inspired by old US comics that is for sure :)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
That was a great Mitchell and Webb skit. Reminds me of how natural artists speak of digital artists. No matter what era you lived in, technology is going to change the way you do something important at some point.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
So when you say the Wacom doesn't need paper... my question is... doesn't it?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
🤣🤣🤣
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
The post was really interesting, but the bit that took my attention was your health, actually.
Are you ok, man?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I was very ill this summer and I still have problems sometimes. Nothing fatal, but sometimes my head gets under the water... (which is a very bad translation of a Danish way of saying it... but you guess you can get the picture)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yeah, I do.
Take care of yourself, man, would ya? Health before anything else, except love and wild, epic sex.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Haha, that is heavy wisdom!
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Mitchell and Webb are great. I used to listen to them on the radio before they got the TV show. I also listen to In Our Time quite often, but not that one. Looks like I have some catching up to do
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
If you have time for the long lectures it is very interesting, but Mitchell and Webb is absolutely the next best thing :)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Did not watch the vids yet, but the whole thing sounds very interesting. That photo though... it is the Lion Gate, the entrance to the Mycenae citadel in Peloponnese, Greece; an ancient megalithic site build c.1300 BC. Is it referenced in the videos?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yes, the Mycenaean civilisation was one of the cultures that collapsed. The Eric Cline lecture is the best for a fast overview of the knowledge we have of the period and the theories and hypothesis that surrounds it.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
This post is knowledge
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
beautiful post.i am enjoying it if I don't know much about bronze age
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thank you. The means to know more is in the post.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
I don't know much about bronze age but...
:-)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Hopefully you know a little more now.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Thanks to you, i do :-)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
:)
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Yeah, I do. Take care of yourself, man .and good video hear
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit