1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed
Esteemed American professor provides fascinating video presentation about why the Bronze Age came to an end and whether the collapse of those ancient civilizations might hold some warnings for our current society.
From about 1500 BC to 1200 BC, the Mediterranean region played host to a complex cosmopolitan and globalized world-system.
It may have been this very internationalism that contributed to the apocalyptic disaster that ended the Bronze Age.
When the end came, the civilized and international world of the Mediterranean regions came to a dramatic halt in a vast area stretching from Greece and Italy in the west to Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia in the east.
Large empires and small kingdoms collapsed rapidly. With their end came the world’s first recorded Dark Ages. It was not until centuries later that a new cultural renaissance emerged in Greece and the other affected areas, setting the stage for the evolution of Western society as we know it today.
Professor Eric H. Cline of The George Washington University will explore why the Bronze Age came to an end and whether the collapse of those ancient civilizations might hold some warnings for our current society.
Considered for a Pulitzer Prize for his recent book 1177 BC, Dr. Eric H. Cline is Professor of Classics and Anthropology and the current Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington University.
He is a National Geographic Explorer, a Fulbright scholar, an NEH Public Scholar, and an award-winning teacher and author. He has degrees in archaeology and ancient history from Dartmouth, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania; in May 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctoral degree (honoris causa) from Muhlenberg College.
Dr. Cline is an active field archaeologist with 30 seasons of excavation and survey experience.
The video presentation is available to watch on Youtube.
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jerry krause
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Hi Eric,
It really bothers me to read an article in which the author refers to himself as a third person. I only noticed this when I came to paste the following comment which I had composed with Word.
“1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed is a nonfiction ancient history book written by Eric H. Cline and published in 2014 by Princeton University Press.” (Wikipedia)
“The book focuses on his hypothesis for the Late Bronze Age collapse of civilization, a transition period that affected the Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, Cypriots, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Assyrians and Babylonians; varied heterogeneous cultures populating eight powerful and flourishing states intermingling via trade, commerce, exchange and “cultural piggybacking”, despite “all the difficulties of travel and time”.” (Wikipedia)
I consider hypothesis to always be less than absolute truth. Hence, some portion of hypothesis must always be considered to be fiction.
What has been observed, at Stonehenge and other places on (in?) the British Isles and the Shetland Islands, and the Scandinavian lands to the northeast, whose existence cannot be doubted and it does qualify as nonfiction. The existence of 56 prehistoric holes which had been dug in the ‘solid’ chalk at the location of Stonehenge cannot be doubted (questioned). That these 56 holes were regularly spaced, with fairly good precision, nearly 16.5 feet apart in a circle cannot be doubted. When and why these holes were dug can be doubted (questioned). But it cannot be doubted that ”in this new paper ((https://principia-scientific.com/new-data-reveals-ingenuity-that-built-stonehenge/)), archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson and his colleagues” have ignored what another archaeologist, R. J. C. Atkinson (Stonehenge) had written about Stonehenge in 1956. And there are writings about Stonehenge by other authors whose writings archaeologist Mike Parker seems to ignore as he writes his fiction which some might claim to be nonfiction.
I cannot fault him for ignoring (https://principia-scientific.com/ancestors-tracing-history-scientific-method/) which information I had reviewed, along with some other unquestionable facts which might (fiction) explain the why of the 56 holes and their possible use, and which John O’ had posted on August 6, 2016. I cannot fault Pearson because it seems that very few consider what is posted at PSI to actually qualify as SCIENCE and of course, it difficult to discovered by using Google to do a literature search.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Eric H. Cline
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Hi Jerry — Just fyi, I did not post this. As far I can tell, whoever posted this cut and pasted the text from the description that accompanies the YouTube Video of one of my lectures (which was also not posted by me, for what it is worth), and the “written by Eric Cline, PhD” at the beginning of the post refers to my book, not this posting. I do not usually refer to myself in the third person. 🙂 Cheers, EHC
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John O'Sullivan
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Eric, Thanks for the clarification. Have amended the post accordingly.
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