Summary
This book looks into what is known as the Bronze Age collapse. There was an interim between the Bronze and Iron ages where highly connected systems of trade and communication went dark. Cline tries to investigate various theories as to why this happened. Long story short, it was a lot of things. There was a mega drought, or more likely two mega droughts which together spanned 150 years. This was no doubt part of the reason why certain tribes had to migrate escalating tensions. There is some evidence of earthquake storms happening around the same time, which are caused by two tectonic plates who won’t stop dancing. There were signs of internal rebellion, no doubt exacerbated by the famine. All single things that on their own could be survived, combined into a perfect storm causing a complete collapse of the interconnected Mediterranean world. The date picked to represent the culmination of this collapse is 1177, but this is just a neat handle, much like the term Bronze Age. The actual collapse probably took over 50 years.
Thoughts
I was brought here by a Hardcore History episode, Dan Carlin talked about the Bronze Age collapse and the mysteries surrounding it. For a long time, people blamed the collapse on the invasion of “the sea peoples”. That sounded really fun, so I looked for a book about it, and came across this one. Ironically Cline unintentionally takes Carlin to task for spreading a story that has since been proven wrong. There was a clay tablet discovered in a kiln from an archeological dig with the following message:
My father, the enemy ships are already here, they have set fire to my towns and have done very great damage in the country. My father, did you not know that all my troops were stationed in the Hittite country, and that all my ships are still stationed in Lycia and have not yet returned? So that the country is abandoned to itself … Consider this my father, there are seven enemy ships that have come and done very great damage. Now if there are more enemy ships let me know about them so that I can decide what to do" [or “know the worst]
This message was written by the ruler of Ugarit (a city on the Mediterranean coast of Syria) to the King of Alashiya. The theory was that perhaps this message was found in the kiln because the city was sacked before the message could be sent. This makes for a great story, but recent evidence seems to cast doubts on this story, making for a softcore history moment. This book has some fairly interesting stories and investigations in it similar to the above, but overall, not a page turner. I think for a non-specialist, it is probably a waste of time. If the Bronze Age collapse interests you, it would probably be faster to read an article that has summarized the best guesses in 15 minutes vs wading into the minutia and weighing each of the hypothesis against each other. This book did make me want to learn more about the old-world kingdoms, so mission accomplished on that front! In the introduction and epilogue Cline says that there are lessons we can learn, as there are many similarities between our globalized network and that of the late Bronze Age. He points out things like COVID as potential events that could have precipitated a collapse and that we would do well to learn as much from these old catastrophes as possible. He ends on a somewhat optimistic note where he says it might be possible, but I (and probably he) was not convinced. Time will tell, but for all our sakes, let’s hope the next collapse isn’t scheduled anytime soon.