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> early Greeks, and especially the Mycenaeans (c. 1750–1050 BCE), are associated with major advances in technology (including writing) I’ve been doing a bit of
by noncoml 17d ago
> early Greeks, and especially the Mycenaeans (c. 1750–1050 BCE), are associated with major advances in technology (including writing)
I’ve been doing a bit of reading on the Bronze Age Collapse recently. It was such an apocalyptic event that Greeks forgot how to write and read.
Before the collapse, Greeks were using Linear A and Linear B. It took them a few hundred years after the Bronze Age Collapse to learn how to write again, this time borrowing the Phoenician alphabet.
Imagine what an event would look like today that would take us back 200-400 years technologically.
- atmosx 17d ago[dead]
- deleted 17d ago[deleted]
- dr_dshiv 17d agoHow long ago before the Myceneneans does there remain a coherent concept of Greek-ness? “Solon, oh Solon!” — are Greeks truly ancient or relative newcomers in a seafaring land?
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- klrefg 17d ago> would look like today that would take us back 200-400 years technologically. If those technologies were concentrated amongst the elite and only a handful of palace scribes could write most people would have no or little contact with writing. Same with most people living outside of the palaces (overwhelming majority) and who had no access to the amenities. It’s hard to say what happened but these collapses sometimes have paradoxical outcomes e.g. we have evidence that the quality of life and health improved for Western Europeans at least in some places after the Roman Empire collapsed (less population pressure, no crippling taxes etc.)
- samus 17d ago> It’s hard to say what happened but these collapses sometimes have paradoxical outcomes e.g. we have evidence that the quality of life and health improved for Western Europeans at least in some places after the Roman Empire collapsed (less population pressure, no crippling taxes etc.) The collapse of the Western Roman Empire was not an instantaneous collapse of civilization altogether, just of Rome's control over the empire being snuffed out for good. Already long before the final collapse the people in charge (which were not necessarily the Emperor) had only very tenuous control over large parts of the empire. Full civilizational breakdown happened in a few places only, like Britain or southern Germany. Italy was widely depopulated because of the various wars between the Goths and the Eastern Roman Empire trying to recover the western half.