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God I love what-ifs. My favorite is What if the Bronze Age Collapse [0] never happened? Quick recap: due to some crazy things (the enigmatic 'Sea Peoples', mayb

by Balgair 10y ago

God I love what-ifs. My favorite is What if the Bronze Age Collapse [0] never happened? Quick recap: due to some crazy things (the enigmatic 'Sea Peoples', maybe famine), all Mediterranean civs died in a 40 year timespan (best guess) back in 1200 BC. Like, this is just when we have civilizations in more than just Eqypt and Sumer, and blammo, ancient sea barbarians just wreck face in 1 lifetime. The Greek Dark Ages follow this up, as expected, and you just have all these terrible things happen to the people alive then in the area. Like, Rome and the rest of Egypt come out of what is left of these peoples after this event. Its like taking the Cambrian Explosion and then snuffing it out. Humans had finally figured out this city thing, we have palaces and kings and priests and the barest merchant class, and then whammo, sea peoples come and mess it all up. We have this Cambrian proliferation of cultures and we start having wars and stuff and its all fun happy evolution times. Yay! Art n stuff! Yay history! Yay literacy! And then a flippin meteor that is sea peoples comes in and kills all the dinosaurs (wow, I am straining metaphors here). Anyways, if the Collapse had not happened, things would be just radically different in terms of culture and human history. And the best thing is that no-one really knows this happened, it was so long ago. Like, we had this whole history and civilization thing just starting out, it's silenced before it really starts, and then we all go 'meh' and try it again. We live in at least civ2.0, if not even later. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse

yesbabyyes 10y ago
"Civilization is always older than we think, and under whatever sod we tread are the bones of men and women who also worked and loved, wrote songs and made beautiful things, but whose names and very being have been lost in the careless flow of time." -- Will Durant, The Story of Civilization
dcsommer 10y ago
I'm watching a great presentation on the topic of the Bronze Age Collapse right now, in fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyry8mgXiTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyry8mgXiTk
m_mueller 10y ago
For one, I think our writing system would likely be more similar to Korean and Japanese syllable systems. Linear A and B, the Bronze age greek versions of that, died in that collapse. The greek dark ages apparently deserve their name much more than the medieval ones - AFAIK Greece lost literacy for around 400 years after that event!
- getoj 10y ago
  >I think our writing system would likely be more similar to Korean and Japanese syllable systems. I don't think there's any reason to suppose that. Syllabaries like Japan's lend themselves to a certain kind of language, specifically one with a bunch of open syllables and simple onsets. Linear B seems to have been a pretty poor system for writing Greek, with lot's of vague approximations (e.g. 'pe-ma' for the word sperma), so unless the Greek of Linear B had less complex onsets and codas than the Ancient Greek we know, I don't imagine it would have stuck around in that form much longer anyway. Incidentally Korean hangul is organized into syllable blocks in imitation of Chinese characters but is alphabetic in every other sense, which is actually good evidence for how writing will be changed or reinvented to fit the spoken language.
  - m_mueller 10y ago
    It could be a chicken-and-egg problem though, no? Do we know how Linear A / B were pronounced? I'd be surprised at that actually. I always thought that much of the Japanese pronunciation is an effect of Hiragana, not the cause of it.
nicky0 10y ago
Sea peoples?
- flukus 10y ago
  A place holder for people raiding from across the sea, we don't know much about them. Even they're existence is debatable.
saiya-jin 10y ago
as the wiki article linked suggests, there are numerous possible reasons, including eruption of Hekla in Iceland and subsequent mini ice age -> famine -> wars for scarce resources. Or many other possible reasons, all just educated guesses at best
laingc 10y ago
Would I be correct in assuming that you're taking inspiration and direction from Dan Carlin's Hardcore History here? For those who don't know, Dan does a fantastic history podcast [0], and a pet fascination of his is exploring these what-if scenarios. The podcast comes with my highest recommendation. [0] http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/ http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/

by Balgair 10y ago

yesbabyyes 10y ago

"Civilization is always older than we think, and under whatever sod we tread are the bones of men and women who also worked and loved, wrote songs and made beautiful things, but whose names and very being have been lost in the careless flow of time." -- Will Durant, The Story of Civilization

dcsommer 10y ago

I'm watching a great presentation on the topic of the Bronze Age Collapse right now, in fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyry8mgXiTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyry8mgXiTk

m_mueller 10y ago

For one, I think our writing system would likely be more similar to Korean and Japanese syllable systems. Linear A and B, the Bronze age greek versions of that, died in that collapse. The greek dark ages apparently deserve their name much more than the medieval ones - AFAIK Greece lost literacy for around 400 years after that event!

getoj 10y ago
>I think our writing system would likely be more similar to Korean and Japanese syllable systems. I don't think there's any reason to suppose that. Syllabaries like Japan's lend themselves to a certain kind of language, specifically one with a bunch of open syllables and simple onsets. Linear B seems to have been a pretty poor system for writing Greek, with lot's of vague approximations (e.g. 'pe-ma' for the word sperma), so unless the Greek of Linear B had less complex onsets and codas than the Ancient Greek we know, I don't imagine it would have stuck around in that form much longer anyway. Incidentally Korean hangul is organized into syllable blocks in imitation of Chinese characters but is alphabetic in every other sense, which is actually good evidence for how writing will be changed or reinvented to fit the spoken language.
- m_mueller 10y ago
  It could be a chicken-and-egg problem though, no? Do we know how Linear A / B were pronounced? I'd be surprised at that actually. I always thought that much of the Japanese pronunciation is an effect of Hiragana, not the cause of it.

nicky0 10y ago

Sea peoples?

flukus 10y ago
A place holder for people raiding from across the sea, we don't know much about them. Even they're existence is debatable.

saiya-jin 10y ago

as the wiki article linked suggests, there are numerous possible reasons, including eruption of Hekla in Iceland and subsequent mini ice age -> famine -> wars for scarce resources. Or many other possible reasons, all just educated guesses at best

laingc 10y ago

Would I be correct in assuming that you're taking inspiration and direction from Dan Carlin's Hardcore History here? For those who don't know, Dan does a fantastic history podcast [0], and a pet fascination of his is exploring these what-if scenarios. The podcast comes with my highest recommendation. [0] http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/ http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/