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Late Bronze Age Collapse

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Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#141

Post by cogman10 »

zoobaloo wrote: post #131
simiones wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Exodus is an entirely fictional account though, it's not based on any real historical events. Even King David seems to be mostly mythical, though there is some vague evidence of a "House of David" being something some real kings claimed descent from. Edit: I should say "almost entirely fictional". The main scholarly agreement is that it may record some stories of some small numbers (hundreds, at most some thousan…

Respectfully, this is a stronger claim than I think anyone can make. A more reasonable claim would be: "we cannot verify much of what's in Exodus using sources external to the Torah/Pentateuch." It's fair to also say something like "if X happened, it's surprising that we would not see physical evidence of it." If you're interested in the topic of the Old Testament in general, I highly recommend [Ancient Near Eastern…

> Respectfully, this is a stronger claim than I think anyone can make.

The only reason to treat this with kid gloves is because a large portion of the population believes in it.

Nobody has a problem saying that "Romulus and Remus is an entirely fictional account it's not based on any real historical events."

The stronger claim is a valid one to make because the primary source doesn't have any corroboration.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#142

Post by order-matters »

quickthrowman wrote: post #128
tsimionescu wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caturday -> Saturday enjoyed with or similar to a cat LBA -> probably supposed to be LBAC, Late Bronze Age collapse Civ -> Civilization, a series of historically inspired strategy games, where you play as the historical leader of a civilization through the ages of human development Hatshepsut -> an Egyptian Pharaoh who is one of the leaders you can play as in Civ VII Deity -> the name of the highest difficulty level…

“Caturday hepped up on goofballs [after dental work] -> I was high on opiates on Saturday Caturday -> Saturday Hepped -> Novel synonym for “high” likely influenced by the jazz slang word ‘hep’ which means ‘hip’ or ‘cool’ Goofballs -> 5/500 hydrocodone/APAP, aka Vicodin. The gold standard tooth pain prescription drug, an opioid. In this context.

hepped could also just be "hopped" as in "hopped up on X" which is a relatively common phrase for being on some drugs or medication, but using kawaii speak which often softens vowel sounds, turning the open "ah" sound of the 'o' in hopped into a pronunciation of 'eh'. They couldve taken it further and said "hipped up" for no change in meaning. this may not have all been consciously decided, as many chronically online social circles use forms of this speech routinely and linguistics is a funny thing like that where the brain can adopt and make up things to fit it. May also be more of a 'fedora' speech pattern that younger online generation uses ironically in a nerdy voice (general ex. "m'lady"), hence the addition of trivial details like the version number and having early access to a new build of the game

always hard to tell exactly whats influencing the speech of the chronically online folk, but the mention of discord and well everything else about the post seem to strongly indicate it. all this to say, i doubt they were looking to be understood as much as they were just talking to talk and sending some in-group signaling

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#143

Post by BigTTYGothGF »

simiones wrote: post #63
ReptileMan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iliad is fictional yet Troy existed. The biblical flood was mythical yet couple of thousand years ago black sea connected to the Mediterranean and probably was not entirely unpeaceful. I have absolutely backed by nothing theory that ancient Armenians and Jews are the same people that got separated. For some tribe living on the shores of east black sea - a myth about massive flood and some saving boat that stopped on…

Yes, Troy existed - we know that because we found it. If we found evidence of a mass migration of slaves from Egypt to Canaan, we'd also know that certain aspects of the Exodus narrative are true - but no such evidence has ever been found. The biblical flood has been connected to various possible historical floods, but any such connection is highly speculative and tenuous, because the details simply can't match the o…

> Yes, Troy existed - we know that because we found it.

We knew Troy existed long before that because it remained as a city at least into the 3rd century CE. We just didn't know which ruins it was.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#144

Post by pfdietz »

Pay08 wrote: post #115
logicchains wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We also know that the monotheistic/henotheistic religion described in the Exodus narrative was not the religion practiced by the people of Canaan, nor of the early kingdoms of Israel and Judah, which worshiped several other gods in addition to Yahweh (there are temples and inscriptions attesting to worship of Asherah, El, and even Baal in addition to Yahweh, at least). The Exodus narrative explicitly describes the e…

FYI, "Baal" is a much later invention. In ancient Hebrew, the word "Ba'al" means lord/master/husband and is often used as a honorific.

Baal was an Ugaritic god. Ugarit is one of the cities that was famously destroyed in the LBAC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugarit

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#145

Post by 131012 »

upfrog wrote: post #135
marking-time wrote: post #134

The study of the LBAC is compelling these days because of the similarities to our present day situation. Other commenters have noted the the possibility of AI driven collapse, but another possibility is our dependence on oil. Bronze is the combination copper+tin. Copper is common in earths composition, but tin is much more scarce. The scarcity of tin necessitated the expansive trade networks to acquire the resource.…

The author has been an established blogger since well before the modern AI boom. It is of course not impossible that their writing technique has changed, and they now use AI heavily, but preferring BC/AD over the alternative/not always clarifying which strikes me as incredibly weak evidence.

Typos are frequent (including in this blog post), and have been for a while. Bret is not an AI bot.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#146

Post by coffeecat »

krapp wrote: post #52
BurningFrog wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying we have no evidence that Exodus happened, or that we have real evidence that it did NOT happen?

We know the Exodus didn't happen because the supernatural elements described cannot have happened, and there is no evidence of any such mass migration in the archeological record, nor any non-Biblical references to such an event taking place. It may be the case that the Exodus tale is a recontexualization of various historical memories of nomadic resettlement combined with political narrative, but the actual story as…

> We know the Exodus didn't happen because the supernatural elements described cannot have happened, ...

Of course the supernatural events could have happened! Unless you're certain that:

- matter exists (i.e., physicalism or dualism is the correct metaphysical worldview)

- the universe is strictly a physics simulation

- there's no God who's capable of fiddling with human affairs (or interested in doing so)

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#147

Post by lazyasciiart »

pfdietz wrote: post #137
throwaway27448 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What isn't the result of politics? This is a bad explanation—how is there so little will to act in rational self interest?

Everyone, or at least almost everyone, acts according to personal interests. There's a whole branch of political science, Public Choice Theory, that deals with this. Where did you get this idea that altruism was common? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

How did you get the idea they think anyone is being altruistic? Usually the complaint that people won’t vote in rational self interest is suggesting that people are voting based on irrational evaluations of their self interest: for the benefit of their unlikely future selves.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#148

Post by timacles »

The_Blade wrote: post #48
Amorymeltzer wrote: post #26

Patrick Wyman—of the Tides of History podcast—just put out a new book, Lost Worlds , which is worth a read if this is your bag. The basic premise is that the way ancient history is typically taught, "that we moved linearly from foraging to farming, and then from country farmers to city-dwelling, tax-paying subjects of kings and emperors," is essentially wrong. He goes on: >All of those developments occurred in an ord…

> "Oh yeah here's a 1,500 year-old city, but it was 7,000 years ago and then disappeared so you've never heard of it." pull it in a bit and you have Ugarit :) i am convinced if / when AI leads to the collapse of civilization it will be akin to the Late Bronze Age collapse; i.e., not with a bang but a whimper. it was a very delicate economic ecosystem complete with circular dealing; but 3500 years ago people were figh…

I think the same, we are headed for the tech version of the Dark Ages, all with feudalism. The corporations will be the feudal lords, because they have more capital than most of the countries in the world.

I'm just wondering how will conflict and fighting for resources play out during this time. Will the corporations simply hire military groups with their infinite money?

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#149

Post by marking-time »

upfrog wrote: post #135
marking-time wrote: post #134

The study of the LBAC is compelling these days because of the similarities to our present day situation. Other commenters have noted the the possibility of AI driven collapse, but another possibility is our dependence on oil. Bronze is the combination copper+tin. Copper is common in earths composition, but tin is much more scarce. The scarcity of tin necessitated the expansive trade networks to acquire the resource.…

The author has been an established blogger since well before the modern AI boom. It is of course not impossible that their writing technique has changed, and they now use AI heavily, but preferring BC/AD over the alternative/not always clarifying which strikes me as incredibly weak evidence.

The lack of consistency in the usage is also telling. Also, perhaps the author simply a christian apologist. I am an archaeologist with 10+ years of experience, so now you know my bias.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#150

Post by marking-time »

131012 wrote: post #145
upfrog wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author has been an established blogger since well before the modern AI boom. It is of course not impossible that their writing technique has changed, and they now use AI heavily, but preferring BC/AD over the alternative/not always clarifying which strikes me as incredibly weak evidence.

Typos are frequent (including in this blog post), and have been for a while. Bret is not an AI bot.

A PhD that did not use a spell checker? How would you describe that?
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