Book
Review - 1177 B.C. The Year Civilization
Collapsed
By Eric H.
Cline
For the
civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean, the late bronze age was a period of
great prosperity. The Egyptians, the Minoans, the Hittites, the Babylonians and
many other kingdoms flourished during this time. Their economies were based on
extensive trade networks with their neighbors as well as far off lands, and
they erected splendid palaces from which they governed their burgeoning realms.
Conflicts flared up from time to time, but disputes could often be solved with
diplomacy, and many diplomatic treaties of a sort that we would recognize today
were signed during this time. By learning how to forge bronze, a new and
miraculous super alloy, they could field standing armies equipped with powerful
weapons as well as tools for construction and agriculture. Yet, for all their
sophistication and splendor, these civilizations all went extinct, or were at
least greatly reduced in stature, following tumultuous events that took place
around the year 1177 B.C. Eric Cline, professor of classics and anthropology at
George Washington University, draws on his deep knowledge of the era, as well
as recent archeological evidence, in an attempt to sift through the ashes and
explain what lay behind this calamity.
The
dominant regional power during this time was Egypt, which during the 16th
to 11th centuries B.C. enjoyed great wealth and power. It was they
who most forcefully battled the sea peoples, a marauding and migrating group of
individuals of unknown origin who swept through the eastern Mediterranean
during this time. Historically they have been blamed for toppling the late
Bronze Age civilizations, but according to Mr. Cline the blame cannot be placed
squarely on their shoulders. It might even be the case that they simply moved
into abandoned settlements after the original inhabitants were ravaged by some
other, untold, calamity. What we know, or at least what we know with reasonable
certainty, is that the sea peoples invaded Egypt in 1178 B.C., and that Pharaoh
Rameses III led his armies to defeat the invaders in a brutal and hard-fought
campaign. Egypt began a period of decline during Rameses’s reign, his martial
successes notwithstanding. Technological sophistication and the bountiful harvests
provided by the annual inundations of the river Nile could not stave off the
deleterious effects of a collapsing trade network and mounting unrest in the
region. One other potential victim of the sea peoples was the ancient city of
Troy, made famous by Homer’s magnum opus, The Iliad.
In trying
to explain what lay behind the collapse of 1177 B.C., Mr. Cline turns to the
concept of complexity theory, which in essence means that an outcome can
brought about by a combination of many different factors. Just like our modern
stock market is affected by many events of seemingly trifle significance, so
the interconnected civilizations of the late Bronze Age were all, to some
extent, dependent upon each other. There is evidence showing that armed
conflict, famine, uprisings, climate change and earthquakes happened in or
around this region during this time. It is possible that a combination of these
factors could have brought about enough turmoil and instability to cause the
late Bronze Age civilizations to collapse. After all, a civilization could
probably recover from the odd earthquake or band of marauders, but if enough of
these adverse events happen in close succession to one another, the impact of
each individual event increases in severity. This could quite possibly spark an
existential crisis from which there is no coming back. No definitive answer is
provided, and to be fair to Mr. Cline it is quite impossible to give one, but
complexity theory gives a very plausible explanation for how this collapse of
civilizations might have come to pass.
When
reading 1177, one cannot help but
wonder how stable our twenty-first century society really is. Just like the
civilizations of the late Bronze Age we are part of an interconnected global
system of commerce and diplomacy. We may not be dependent on foreign shipments
of copper and tin to make bronze, but we certainly rely on oil and natural gas
to keep our economies going. When it comes to potential harbingers of collapse
such as war, famine, climate change and rebellion, we sure seem to tick a lot
of those boxes as well. If it’s any consolation to worried readers, the great
systemic collapse of the late Bronze Age wasn’t entirely bad news. Like a
forest fire clearing away dead trees to make way for new growth, the fall of
the late Bronze Age civilizations paved the way for the subsequent Greek and
Roman empires to flourish. Scant consolation perhaps, but it’s all I can offer.
As the late
Gore Vidal once remarked, a novelist may assign a motive to the actions of
historical characters, where a historian may not. Mr. Cline is a most dutiful
historian in this regard, offering several plausible explanations for what
brought about the collapse of the late Bronze Age Civilizations. The target
segment of 1177 seems to primarily be
those who are historians or archeologists, or the layman with a keen interest
in the time period. Sometimes I wish that he would focus on the grander
narrative instead of going on a lengthy explanation of a comb found in soil
sample 7A next to a middle eastern dirt road, but a sweeping narrative is
naturally the domain of historical fiction and not a respectable professor of
classics and anthropology. Considering the limited archeological evidence on
offer, it is impressive that he is able to tell such a dramatic story of
conflict and international intrigue, the occasional mentioning of soil samples
and sub-stratas notwithstanding. All in all, I enjoyed reading 1177 B.C due to the fascinating glimpses
it offered into a bygone age and the educated speculation as to how such a
calamity could have come to pass.
