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One More Time?
Some interesting similarities between the collapse of bronze-age civilization and our present situation
Approximately around 1170 BCE, all the major well-developed bronze-age societies of the eastern Mediterranean collapsed within a single lifetime. Millions of people, spread across tens of thousands of square kilometers, who had been trading extensively with each other and fashioning a wide range of technological marvels, went from civilization to ruin in less than seventy years.
This happened because, as one author could have put it, a series of unfortunate events happened to coincide and collectively drained the capacity of those bronze-age societies to meet the challenges imposed on them.
The first unfortunate event was a drought that lasted well over two centuries, becoming increasingly severe as the decades went by. Cities were abandoned as harvests failed year after year; starvation haunted the lands. From Greece to Syria, climate change gradually undermined economies and turned what had been plenty into scarcity. The great innovations of the early bronze age that had led to dramatically increased farm output could not withstand the lack of rain that persisted decade after decade. As agricultural output fell, it became increasingly difficult to afford the supplies of copper and tin that were…
