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The Bronze age collapse is one of my favorite topics in History. And I see a lot of parallels between the centralized palace economies that produced much brittl
by namaria 4y ago
The Bronze age collapse is one of my favorite topics in History. And I see a lot of parallels between the centralized palace economies that produced much brittleness then and the 'everything is controlled by networked digital computers and defined in software' Ruby Goldberg machine of a civilization we have now.
- robinsord 4y ago[dead]
- einpoklum 4y agoIs there a good documentary film or series about this period, which you could recommend?
- dmreedy 4y agoFor a longer-form treatment, Patrick Wyman's podcast, Tides of History, has been going through an extended series about prehistory, including the bronze age collapse. It's a lot, and mostly through a particular thinker's lens, but still worthy I think.
- DubiousPusher 4y agoPatrick Wyman's, Tides of History podcast has done a lot of episodes on this and is a great introduction. Yale's introductory Greek history class with lectures from Donald Kagan is available online and part of it covers the Mycenaean empire and its fall.
- herodoturtle 4y ago> Yale's introductory Greek history class with lectures from Donald Kagan +1 for this. For those that are interested: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL023BCE5134243987 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL023BCE5134243987
- namaria 4y agoI really enjoyed youtube channel History Time's take on identifying the so-called 'sea peoples': "The Sea Peoples & The Late Bronze Age Collapse // Ancient History Documentary (1200-1150 BC)". It gave me a lot of perspective on how much activity was happening all over the Mediterranean and beyond at that time. This and related channels have a lot of long form content on Ancient History, which I really appreciate.
- panzagl 4y agoEric Cline has several talks on youtube. His book '1177 BC The Year Civilization Collapsed' is probably the most popular account of the collapse.
- wahnfrieden 4y agoI recommend reading The Dawn of Everything edit: harari is a hack, you wouldn't have made the comparison had you read the graeber/wengrow
- namaria 4y agoGraeber did a top notch job with Debt: The First 5000 thousand years. But I think Anthropologists taking on big history is a bit of a stretch. Harari's books, for example are very superficial, trying to touch on everything from biology to politics and end up with very little real insight. I never felt Dawn of Everything would be worth the time and money... edit: for the record, answering in edits is weird and I'm against it... authors slinging mud is hardly a case for their own competence, besides recommending a book about the whole of history to someone who wanted documentary recommendations on a very specific topic in History is also a bit of a hack
- einpoklum 4y ago"Harari is a hack etc." - I'm not sure what you're referring to; perhaps you were replying to somebody else?
- wahnfrieden 4y agothe other person replying to me. they equivocated the two authors whereas in reality they couldn't be further opposed.
- namaria 4y agoI think you mean equated
- wahnfrieden 3y agoyes but you understood.
- rabf 4y agohttps://www.youtube.com/@FallofCivilizations https://www.youtube.com/@FallofCivilizations
- jcranmer 4y agoI decided to watch the episode on the Bronze Age Collapse there and... I can't say I enjoy the "Grand Narrative" style of presentation all that much. With regards to that one episode in particular, the final segment on the effects of the H3 eruption of Hekla struggles with the chronology just not working correctly. The presenter gives the eruption a date of around 1100 BC, which seems to already be on the early side of dates (mid-late 1000s BC looks more reasonable), but if you're paying attention to the chronology, it's well after the Sea Peoples start showing up and the Bronze Age Collapse has occurred (~1200-1150BC), so its putative role in inducing the Sea Peoples to start their raiding would require a time machine of some sort.
- namaria 4y agoThe margin of errors when dating events three millennia in the past are quite wide. Besides, the large scale collapse of multiple civilizations can't be lined up in a row of neatly separated events. Why does this particular eruption need to be before the evidence of large scale raiding of sea borne forces?
- ben_bai 4y ago1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed | Eric Cline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LRHJlijVU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LRHJlijVU
- pfdietz 4y agoI don't like his thesis (of "systems collapse"). It seems to be made so complex it can't be falsified.
- namaria 4y agoI don't like historicism. History is not supposed to be generalized, it's quite the opposite. It's about cataloguing and remembering the things we've been through. History is not a science, it's an art form.
- kilroy123 4y agoThis has been on my watch-later list forever. Is it worth finally watching?
- mcv 4y agoCovid saw a lot of supply chain problems, and suddenly shorter, directer, more local supply chains were preferable to highly optimised international ones. If I'm not mistaken, the bronze age collapse also came from collapsing international supply chains, so maybe that's a lesson for us: depend less on stuff produced on the other side of the world, and more on local products. The international stuff is fine for luxuries, but not for essentials. I guess this is why the US and EU are trying to get more tech manufactured locally again, instead of depending on Taiwan that might be invaded by China.
- namaria 4y agoTrade collapse is much more of a symptom then a cause...
- mcv 4y agoIt's part of the causal chain. Whether it's sea peoples, a pandemic, or escalating international tension, if it disrupts trade of essential items, it will disrupt prosperity, the way of life, and a whole host of other things.
- namaria 4y agoSure once you start bleeding you die from blood loss but if you're knifed can you really say you died from anemia?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kbenson 4y agoAnd what if that bleeding is from numerous sources internal and external, from a long succession of rough situations? You might not even die from blood loss, you might just have such anemia that mustering your strength to gather the resources needed to survive becomes harder and harder until you perish from exhaustion and lack of sustenance. I find that often the end of things comes down not just to a single definable cause, but when a few events that might have been weathered successfully in isolation happen in an overlapping manner, and may cause additional problems otherwise.
- mattnewport 4y agoI'm not sure if the Ruby Goldberg pun was deliberate or a happy autocorrect accident but I appreciate it either way!
- eyphka 4y agoThe parallels are definitely there. Two issues happening are imo primary causes, corporate consolidation and the move towards "Demand-driven Supply Chain".