This topic has occupied me for the last couple years. It started with "1177, The Year Civilization Collapsed". I went on to read material from archaeologists reporting in a rather dry way on their findings from the time / region.

Some of the things that blow me away is the sheer scale of the late bronze age: The massive cities, the trade fleets, leaders sending each other gifts, the exchange of skills between regions and the massive trade routes for tin, copper and bronze. It completely destroyed the anglo-centric epochism I was taught in school.

And in a short time it all collapsed. We don't see that level of trade, size of ships, cities of that size, level of diplomacy etc etc for well over 1000 years.

>It completely destroyed the anglo-centric epochism I was taught in school.

Could you elaborate on the worldview you were taught?

Not OP, but it sounds like a criticism of the Stone/Bronze/Iron age distinctions, which are themselves very Anglocentric in origin.

um, no.

There is nothing centered on England about (with open admiration) naming periods (from before the Angles even migrated to Brittania) of histories of other peoples in the Mediterranean region by their sequential metallurgical discoveries.

i'm flabbergasted.

You are so true about anglo-centricism. I dont recall the name, but one indian mathematician travelleled to iraq (during its golden age) where he discussed mathematics with then iraqi scholars and his works are further translated which than reached europeans as arabic numerals.

And to this day the English language calls those numerals the Arabic numerals. How much more acknowledgment could you expect? There's a lot to say about anglo-centrism, this is not part of it.

Though the (misguided)point is that during the "dark ages" things were great elsewhere, calling an Indian invention "Arabic numerals" because that's how they got introduced to Europe is rather Anglo-centric.

That might be, but they did get substantially changed in form in Arab countries, and what we call Arabic numbers is western Arab script.

Arabic numerals spread around 1000 AD, the collapse was 1100 BC. That said, Mesopotamia actually did survive the Bronze Age collapse.

The mentioned book:

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691208015/11...

> In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the “Sea Peoples” invaded Egypt. The pharaoh’s army and navy defeated them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations.

> Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, famine, and the cutting of international trade routes

This emphasizes the need to keep efficient military forces and resilient civil infrastructure even at times when everything is going well and you are as strong as ever.

Something bad may happen without much warning. It actually does, at small scale, as of recently, and shows how poorly the western civilization is prepared.

Interesting. I'm worried that civilization today is one unlucky solar storm away from major disruption and anarchy. Without electricity for an extended period of time, life as we know it would collapse.

One of the important realisations about this topic for me was that humans didn't really evolve a lot during recorded history and a lot of our progress that actually made a difference is based on knowledge and hands-on experience that doesn't get recorded in written form.

Ancient philosophers already had many profound ideas about the world, experts in ancient egypt fixed teeth with tools comparable to those of a today's dentist, engineers had enough experience and insight to build bridges that endured longer than many nations.

It took one ship to block an important canal, one power outage in Texas to take out multiple factories for months, one pandemic(which was not unforeseeable) to completely shift the rules on how many things are done. I don't think it would even take a loss of electricity to see a lot of systems implode. We joked about the toilet paper shortage last year, but it was only funny because it was a relatively unimportant, long-lasting and easy to produce product. It could have been a lot worse.

I think we get to see a much slower one. With each protest, each natural disaster, each fabricated media outrage, each shift from pragmatism to luxury beliefs, each openly corrupt politician getting away with a slap in the wrist, each case of the justice system working to protect criminals at the expensive of victims, each case of institutions practicing racism under the guise of anti-racism, each open manipulation of fiat currency for the purposes of enriching politicians and government, each bill where only 20% of the money goes to the people and the other 80% is pork, each virtue signal at the cost of reality - every one slowly erodes our organizational capacity as a society to react and meet the contractual obligations of governance.

Our unconscious notices, even if our conscious choses to rationalize or woke it away.

The fuse is lit.

Makes me wonder if structuring the school curriculum in a way that'll teach everyone to rebuild the technological civilisation from scratch to a fairly advanced level is a good idea.

I think that would be incredibly difficult, but it would heavily depend on the level of "bootstrapping" we would want to target and the degree of communication and coordination assumed. Modern civilization is a product of increasingly specialized and finely coordinated effort. The system is more powerful, yet more fragile.

Yes, and the scary thing (as the covid handling in a lot of countries proved) most governments are incompetent to deal with such a disaster. The collapse of civilization, especially in the very integrated and inter-dependent world of today is way closer than most people think, and most government prepared. Ironically it’s countries which doesn’t do too well now but are too dependent one other that might survive better to such even. Also it’s not a if but a when.

I got a fascinating perspective on this from the archeological museum in Crete. It proceeded in chronological order, so I was very confused to get to a room of clearly more primitive geometric designs.

It wasn't out of order. Everything clearly collapsed, and their art suddenly got a lot simpler and cruder. I learned a lot from that museum.

"1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed" is an excellent book on the subject, and yes - there are definitely uncanny similarities between the Bronze Age world and the one we live in.

The Fall Of Civilization's Podcast on this subject is also a great introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B965f8AcNbw

(Generally speaking I really recommand this podcast, it has been recommanded on HN before, which is how I first heard of it)

There is also an excellent NPR Throughline episode on this: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/11/955735429/what-happened-after...

Thank you, I'll give a watch/listen now

EDIT: 33min in first episode, I can attest its quite good

Thanks, I’ve already listened to two episodes since I’ve read your comment; it is indeed very good.

That is a great youtube channel there. The fall of the city of Ur was also a good one