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Late Bronze Age Collapse

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Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#151

Post by mr_toad »

order-matters wrote: post #142
quickthrowman wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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…

> hepped could also just be "hopped" as in "hopped up on X"

Another Simpsons reference.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#152

Post by whall6 »

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.…

I'm very curious what part of the article you're drawing on to suggest that their reliance on copper and tin was the cause of the collapse. The article that I read seemed to suggest it was climate related.

I have no idea where you're from, but oil is not what it once was, especially in the United States. In fact, we have a very recent case study substantiating this claim: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait sees 20% of the entire world's supply transit through when under normal conditions. Yet after being completely closed (then slightly reopened, and now almost completely closed again), the world is functioning relatively normally and is much less impacted than it would have likely been even 20 years ago.

My conclusion from the article is entirely different: collapse doesn't necessarily occur all at once. And given that, maybe to someone living through this collapse, they wouldn't have even recognized it.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#153

Post by palmotea »

simiones wrote: post #85
palmotea wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We also know for example that the types of beliefs detailed in Exodus, especially the idea that the Israelites worshiped Yahweh alone as the only God, are not historical. Belief and worship of other gods were common in both the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah long after the supposed time that the Exodus happened I'm not sure what the point you're trying to make is. IIRC, that stuff is in the actual Bible. Like…

This was not idolatry, as depicted in Exodus - this was full blown state religion, held in the same esteem as Yahweh, and co-existing with worship of him. So much so that El later became identified with Yahweh, and now most people reading the Bible (including Jewish people, Christians, and Muslims) believe El is just another one of Yahweh's names, or maybe the name of one of his angels.

> this was full blown state religion, held in the same esteem as Yahweh, and co-existing with worship of him.

IIRC, I'm pretty sure there's also a lot about that in the Bible too (e.g Israelites worshiping other gods like Baal, people up to and including kings).

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#154

Post by ButlerianJihad »

simiones wrote: post #105
Brendinooo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to word my original comment in a way that allows a broad range of opinions to make a narrow point; I don't think anything you've said here refutes anything I said. I'm not really here to kick off a serious apologetics fight, though if you want me to engage on your thoughts I could. (And of the things I mentioned, the Exodus is less likely to line up with the Bronze Age Collapse's chronology anyways. But perso…

You wrote: > One can easily see the events leading to the Exodus being enabled by (or causing, depending on who you ask!) the weakening of Egypt I think that if I'm right that the events of Exodus simply never happened that would quite thoroughly refute any possible link to the historical bronze age collapse. It would be like saying that the events of the Epic of Gilgamesh being enabled by the weakening of Egypt. I d…

I personally think that the conquest of Jericho depicts, allegorically, a conquest of the Moon itself. That there is more than one OT story that describes journeys to outer space (the highest heavens, of course). That the Promised Land really was an unfathomable location in outer space that was only reached by the most faithful and holiest of warriors.

But I like to start with Jericho because there's a lot of evidence that the actual city-state of Jericho was dedicated to a Moon god, and the Moon god was worshipped there. But if you think about how Jericho and its conquest is described...

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#155

Post by mrguyorama »

akiselev wrote: post #120
stymaar wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wasteful in the sense that we are exploiting lots of land for the limited value it brings.

The vast majority is grown on marginal land, just above pasture. They can't grow better crops without massive works of engineering and tons more fertilizer and energy use. The alternative is to just use slightly less of that land, because the animals are going to have to replace that feed from somewhere. Distillers grains are valuable because the fat and protein are used for finishing cattle for human consumption in…

Actually, the first thing we tried generally WAS ethanol. The company that made TEL discarded it as a fuel additive because they couldn't patent and control it.

We poisoned the world with lead because it was more profitable for a single company.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#156

Post by pfdietz »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #147
pfdietz wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Public choice theory explains why irrational collective results obtain from individual rational behavior. To get rational collective results requires that people act altruistically, favoring the collective over themselves.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#157

Post by Amezarak »

cogman10 wrote: post #141
zoobaloo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Denying the possible, even likely, historicity of Romulus and Remus is silly, yes.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#158

Post by ButlerianJihad »

usumgallu wrote: post #27

I am mobile and not at my main system with my HN login, so I made this temp, but I think I cracked the primary cause and have been slowly working on a paper to submit to the journals... I was doing geological research trying to show how crustal displacement theory is incorrect, and stumbled upon a paper that elucidated the insight: There was a localized weakening of the geomagnetic field in the Levant and in the Med…

Robert J. Sawyer wrote a series of sf books called The Neanderthal Parallax which proposes that human sentience (and Neanderthal sentience) originated, and ended, with changes in the Earth's magnetic field. It explored some very interesting social and anthropological ideas.

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

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#159

Post by marssaxman »

tsimionescu wrote: post #124
nchmy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its been a while since ive read a comment somewhere that I am so completely bewildered by. I understand about half the words, and none of the references, that you wrote. Hope your teeth are doing better now!

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 -> Saturday enjoyed with or similar to a cat

There's a well-known underground nightclub in Seattle which has a monthly event called "Caturday" - I had no idea there was another meaning for the portmanteau! Makes sense, though.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#160

Post by 0xffff2 »

marking-time wrote: post #150
131012 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would describe it as entirely normal. My experience working in a research organization where the majority of my colleagues hold Phds is that education level has a strong inverse correlation with ability/willingness to care about such mundane chores as spelling, grammar and arithmetic.
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