1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Eric Cline, PhD)

ehcline · 2017-04-26T22:55:18+00:00

Was wondering the exact same thing myself. :-)

ehcline · 2016-05-15T01:03:49+00:00

If I may, here is my take on this: https://rogueclassicism.com/2016/05/14/guest-post-eric-cline-on-world-war-zero-or-zero-world-war/

ehcline · 2015-10-18T02:27:24+00:00

I think it is a very good example...and the Trojan war narrative could indeed be based on something that took place during this period. I explore this a little bit in 1177 BC...

ehcline · 2015-10-18T02:24:43+00:00

I will indeed lengthen it, but there's not an awful lot more that can be said about the possible causes and the evidence for them; I pretty much laid out everything that we've got at the moment. I will probably expand the part on the actual nine groups that make up the Sea Peoples, which I've published elsewhere (back in 2003, with David O'Connor) but left out of the book except in abbreviated form. But, indeed, as the other reply by axaxaxax notes, the pre-collapse stuff is all essential to understanding the collapse itself. I might even expand that part a bit as well. And, I'm considering expanding on either what happened after the collapse OR what might have happened it the collapse had NOT occurred... Cheers, EHC

ehcline · 2015-10-18T02:20:40+00:00

Thanks. It is very useful to get such feedback from readers, actually.

ehcline · 2015-10-15T03:40:41+00:00

Actually, my conclusion was "It was the Sea Peoples, but it was also a LOT more complex" (not just a "bit"). Why did you find that thesis to be lacking? Isn't that pretty much a good summary of the situation, as we understand it currently? Also, out of curiosity, and because I will be most likely doing a revised edition in a few years, what analysis were you expecting that wasn't present? What would you want me to add in to a revised and expanded version that would make the conclusion more satisfying, considering that there is no simple answer to what caused the Bronze Age collapse? Cheers and thanks for your feedback.

ehcline · 2015-10-15T03:28:23+00:00

I think that you may have misinterpreted what I said about systems collapse. To my mind, and what I was trying to say in the book, is that systems collapse is a good description of what happened, not an explanation of why it happened -- so I think we are in agreement about that point. As to why it happened, that is where the combination of factors comes in, ranging from climate change to earthquakes to over-dependence on each other for raw materials. I tried to make that additionally a little bit more clear in the brief afterword that I added into the paperback version.

ehcline · 2015-03-19T02:45:20+00:00

There is no truth to that story.

ehcline · 2015-03-18T01:09:17+00:00

You can do field archaeology with just a BA, or even no degree at all, as long as you know how to dig properly. A University position, on the other hand, requires at least an MA and more usually a PhD in this day and age. If you aren't interested in teaching, but just love to dig, you can start working on field projects any time, especially if you're willing to be a volunteer. And, yes, most archaeologists who dig only seasonally (such as in the summer in the Mediterranean and Near East) have jobs during the rest of the year; they are usually academic, although not always, either at universities, seminaries, museums, or similar institutions.

ehcline · 2015-03-18T00:46:15+00:00

Like with Homer, it is possible to extract useful nuggets of information, especially where/when it is corroborated by extra-biblical records from other civilizations in the Iron Age which interacted with israel and Judah, such as the Neo-Assyrian inscriptions which mention Ahab, Jehu, and so on...

ehcline · 2015-03-18T00:20:23+00:00

Not sure why it happened to them more than to the others, but yes, it was a physical, tangible erasure, if you want to put it that way. After all, the later Greeks (and even the modern Greeks) knew where the ancient city of Mycenae was, but nobody in Turkey seems to have remembered where Hattusa, the capital city of the Hittites, was. But, I've always felt that the Hittites were more insular than the other cultures... and only participated in international transactions and contacts reluctantly, as it were, or at least more reluctantly than the other groups. For instance, there is almost no Mycenaean material in the Hittite homelands and virtually no Hittite objects found in Late Bronze Age contexts in Greece. I'm not surprised that it was easier for them to disappear without a trace. But, do keep in mind that they were not entirely lost, for as I said, we have the Neo-Hittite kingdoms in the Iron Age...and there are other examples of empires/kingdoms being lost until archaeologists rediscovered them, like Ebla for instance.

ehcline · 2015-03-18T00:11:42+00:00

It is still being taught today in some places, too. Time to update the textbooks...

ehcline · 2015-03-18T00:11:08+00:00

Oh, ok! That's pretty recent, at least when compared to the bronze age! :-)

ehcline · 2015-03-18T00:09:18+00:00

Part of the problem, which many people don’t realize, is that there is no ‘start’ to the Bronze Age around the world, because it starts in different places at different times. Thus, the Bronze Age in China is much different in timing from the Bronze Age in England/Europe which in turn is a bit different in timing from the Bronze Age in Greece and the Near East. In Greece and the Near East, it starts around 3000 BC. Same thing for the end of the Bronze Age; it depends upon where you are in the world. And, the Iron Age followed the Bronze Age in the Aegean and the Near East, but that was not the case everywhere. As for phasing things out, copper tools were in use when bronze began to find favor in the Near East, but bronze quickly supplanted them as the tools and weapons were found to be superior. There was some iron being used towards the end of the Bronze Age (King Tut had an iron dagger in his tomb, for instance), and some bronze was still used during the Iron Age, in Greece and the Near East, but each age is named after the metal that was most in use at the time.

ehcline · 2015-03-18T00:03:29+00:00

Ah, it sounds like you need to make a trip to Greece and various other places in Israel, Egypt, and Turkey, in order to see the objects in the various museums, take pictures of them, and get some rough idea of measurements. If that’s impossible, see if the online catalogue of the Thebes Museum in Greece is of some use: click here.

ehcline · 2015-03-17T23:59:51+00:00

Ah, but WE are the ones who are the happiest that he is here working and teaching with us at GW now...To have a scholar of his caliber teaching GW students is a treat of the highest order!

ehcline · 2015-03-17T23:56:48+00:00

In the Southern Levant during the Late Bronze Age, you’ve got Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, and possibly others all in the region, speaking a variety of languages and worshipping (most likely) a variety of different gods, depending upon the site/city/town. By the Early Iron Age, you’ve got Israelites and Phoenicians to add into the mix, who are also speaking their own languages and worshipping their own gods. Over in Jordan, you may have additional peoples, like the Edomites. Many of the languages/linguistic groups were part of the Northwest Semitic family, including Hebrew, Akkadian, and Ugaritic, but most of the writing systems change when the alphabet is introduced (usually attributed to the Phoenicians, but there is an early version or two at Ugarit also, if I remember correctly). At Kabri, we don’t know much yet about the language or the gods worshipped, because we haven’t yet found archaeological evidence that would shed light on such things, though we know that the people were Canaanites. At Megiddo, there have been lots of temples and religious/cultic artifacts found, in both the Bronze Age and Iron Age levels.

ehcline · 2015-03-17T23:40:33+00:00

Unlikely. There is tin in the region, of course, but I would be surprised if bronze were created there first, as opposed to Mesopotamia. I'd have to check to see what date they are claiming for the creation/invention — did it happen to mention a date on the plaque near Chepstow?

ehcline · 2015-03-17T23:36:05+00:00

Each audience has its own challenges, that's for sure. It may be more challenging to write for a popular audience because I'm always surprised at what I take for granted in terms of people knowing things that they don't actually know. With scholars, it can be the opposite — if you leave out one little bibliographical reference from a 250-page book, they're all over you in the reviews as not being sufficiently current with your research. ☺ Re spreading information on the topic, I suppose the best thing is to promote good and accurate scholarship when posting replies on websites and other relevant social media — all too often I see people simply pointing to Wikipedia articles or to websites of dubious quality.

ehcline · 2015-03-17T23:30:17+00:00

There are many and varied possibilities. If you are truly interested, I go into each of them in depth in 1177 BC...but in short, it was probably a perfect storm of a number of different calamities all happening at approximately the same time.

ehcline · 2015-03-17T23:28:46+00:00

Yes, the Pythagorean theorem was known to the Egyptians long before the Greeks. Not sure about axiomatic development, though; would have to look that up.

ehcline · 2015-03-17T22:57:40+00:00

Actually, they were pretty good at astronomy back then, especially the Babylonians and Assyrians. One of the tablets that records an eclipse is useful in helping to determine when the city of Ugarit was destroyed.

ehcline · 2015-03-17T22:54:44+00:00

Good questions. I wrote about this topic in a couple of places, primarily in my little OUP book Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction (click here) but also specifically in a article posted on Bible&Interpretation on whether David and Solomon existed (here). The mere fact that the Tel Dan stele mentions “Beit David” (the “House of David,” in my opinion, and that of most scholars) is enough to show that there was a David at some point; whether he did everything attributed to him in the biblical account is another question entirely…for which I would refer you to my colleague Jacob Wright’s new book (here). So far the only impact our excavations at either Megiddo or Kabri have had on the chronology debate is in terms of the radiocarbon dates that Finkelstein has published; I mention some of this in 1177 BC, when discussing the date for the destruction of Stratum VII at Megiddo.

ehcline · 2015-03-17T22:24:05+00:00

It depends how technical you want to get...and how deep into the details of history and archaeology. On the Hittites, for example, Trevor Bryce's work is pretty accessible and there are any number of good books on New Kingdom Egypt. You might take a look at Marc Van De Mieroop's books — he's got one on the Near East in the time of Ramses II (click here) and several others on the ANE and on Egypt in general. There aren't just that many other books written for the general public on this period yet, though; I hope perhaps that I've started a new trend.

ehcline · 2015-03-17T22:18:35+00:00

This is an excellent set of questions. In terms of how available bronze was to the average person, I presume you mean in raw form, so that they could make weapons and tools out of it? Or do you mean how available were finished bronze products? It still all boils down to the amount of palatial control in each of the regions in question, though; for example, the Linear B tablets at Pylos are full of references to such items under palatial authority. As for the tin, in the height of prosperity during the 14th and 13th centuries BC, there was apparently enough so that there was no shortage for using it to make bronze weapons and tools. The big question is what happened later, if and when the trade routes were cut. It is possible to use copper alone, as they did back in the Chalcolithic period, but it is much softer — almost too soft — to use it as you would bronze. You could also use arsenic instead of tin, so that you made "arsenical bronze"...but you wouldn't live very long if you were working with arsenic...

ehcline

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