But the violence was probably set in motion by extensive drought and famine reported in tablet letters from the time. There were indeed invasions-they might have been soldiers, or refugees, or civil war, or all three. (8th Year of Ramses III) when Egypt barely defeated a mysterious army of “Sea Peoples.” Who were they? Do they really explain the general collapse, as historians long assumed?Ĭline thinks the failure was systemic, made of a series of cascading calamities in a highly interdependent world. For Cline the defining moment was the battle in 1177 B.C. It was one of history’s most globalized times. The tin required for all that bronze (tin was the equivalent of oil today) came from Afghanistan 1,800 miles to the east. The density of their connection can be learned from trade goods found in shipwrecks, from Egyptian hieroglyphs and wall paintings, and from countless well-preserved clay-tablet letters written between the states. They grew to power over two millennia, but they collapsed simultaneously almost overnight. In those centuries eight advanced societies were densely connected-Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Hittites, Cypriots, Minoans, and Mycenaeans. Archaeologist Cline began by declaring that the time he would most like to be transported to is the Late Bronze Age in the Mediterranean-the five centuries between 17 B.C.
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