Late Bronze Age Collapse

Post by stymaar » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 6:33 AM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #210

stymaar wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you mean by engineered? In a pasture for instance, grass can grow because the plant incorporate enough organic matter in the soil to be consumed by microorganisms that will in return fixate the nitrogen from the air into nitrates that can be consumed by the plant. Then you have some equilibrium-ish (it depends on the seasons and the precipitation so it's not an actual equilibrium) amount of nitrogen and org…

I think at that point the phrase "engineered soil" loses all utility. We've been engineering soil with domesticated herd animals since prehistory, bringing fertilizer from pasture to arable land at the very least. If we look further at the most recent archaeological research on cultivation, there's growing evidence that soil engineering is how societies move from cultivation-assisted hunter gatherers to fully sedenta…

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 7:10 AM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #235

cogman10 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also conveniently explains why there is an ancient temple under the Forum with an empty sarcophagus dated to the 500s BC that appears to be dedicated to Romulus. Bad article. Here's a better one [1]. What the archeologists found was a shrine to a "holy king". Because of it's location and time, the title of "Romulus" was given to it by the modern archeologists. > So who was the first king of Rome? Who knows. That…

There’s no evidence it was done “all the time”; the most logical explanation is that all these figures were based on real people, even if their exploits and histories were exaggerated and mythologized over time, just as we see with figures like George Washington. The idea that some random historian or politician simply convinced everyone his fiction story was true and central to their identity - and it worked time af…

Post by UltraSane » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 7:24 AM UTC

The_Blade wrote: post #54

evanjrowley wrote: post #2

Seems to be a popular topic. Historian Eric H. Cline has multiple books citing this time period, specifically 1117 BCE as the inflection point for the bronze age "collapse", defined by a deterioration of international shipping routes that weakened the nation-states of the era. I've learned about it recently because YouTube began recommending videos about it. For example: https://youtu.be/choxcHXhZhE?is=t5lDwQQpqPsE2k…

Eric Cline is great - when i had a tooth removed in a somewhat nasty procedure i spent a Caturday hepped up on goofballs watching his videos on LBA while playing Hatshepsut on Diety in Civ VII 1.4 (i got to play test 1.3.2 via Firaxis via discord, ooh la la i call a car hole a garage) in my personal "immersive learning" period starting 2021, i discovered acoup.blog when Old World came out and extended into reading wh…

Post by bazoom42 » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 7:50 AM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #65

bazoom42 wrote: post #36

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We dont know that.

We actually do. There's a lot of claims in the exodus story which would have left behind corroborative histories. For example, the death of a large amount of the population along with the pharaohs son. The destruction of pharaoh's army. Records of ancient hebrew slaves. Ancient Egyptians left behind a pretty large amount of history and documentation. They were also surrounded by other civilizations that also left a d…

Post by Shitty-kitty » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 8:34 AM UTC

xenadu02 wrote: post #133

cogman10 wrote: post #100

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People wandering in the desert for 40 years, or even 1 year, leave traces. Especially when it's thousands of people (at a minimum). The Hebrew language came long after the exodus. We have no earlier records of it that aren't written in Hebrew. So what we have is writings written hundreds of years later documenting an event with no earlier writings verifying that documentation. It's possible that a small group of slav…

I liken it to the story of Noah. Whether that was the mediterranean re-joining the Atlantic and thus oral re-tellings from a much much earlier event or merely a localized flood you can certainly imagine someone preparing for a flood and surviving localized or wide-spread destruction. But two of every animal? That's not a stable genetic population. Hell there are 40,000 or more species of spiders! There is simply no p…