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Late Bronze Age Collapse

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Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#261

Post by worldthruword »

brainlessdev wrote: post #172

Although it's not its main topic, I enjoyed Ian Morris' Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future , which goes over this in a way that really fascinated me. The book's ideas seem contested but as a layman it was a great tour of many years of humanity.

Financial Imperialism is the reason why US is rich in terms of resources and because of material richness, lot of raw brainpower is attacted to America. Read the book "Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire" by Michael Hudson.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#262

Post by graemep »

timacles wrote: post #148
The_Blade wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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?

Are you familiar with the term techo-feudalism coined by economist and former minister of finance of Greece Yanis Varoufakis?

The dark ages were fine. Feudalism replaced a violent slavery based empire and evolved towards greater human rights and democracy. We now risk a real step backwards.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#263

Post by wisty »

I saw a slghtly odd youtube video by a small creator who thinks it was at least partly because the gods stopped talking to people.

No, hear me out.

Obviously they weren't real, but the Youtuber said (based on sources) people used to talk to the gods, like you might talk to a cat. And the gods spoke back (and we all know cat owners who insist the cat is replying).

As societies became more sophisticated, this stopped. Around the time of the collapse, rulers complained that the gods were silent. The usual interpretation is that the gods did not help, but what if they literally stopped "hearing" the god's replies?

You couldn't have a conversation with Zeus in the town square anymore without people saying you were nuts, unless you were a ruler. But the sophisticated, skeptical societies also became fractured and disloyal (especially when only their rulers were arguing with Zeus over why the peasants weren't taking them seriously), and social institutions (which were stuck in the past) couldn't keep up.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#264

Post by vintermann »

bazoom42 wrote: post #254
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…

As far as I know we have no Persian sources for the batte of Thermopylæ. Historians also agree that Xerxes couldnt possibly have had a million man strong army. Does this mean the war is entirely fictional? Ancient sources tend to be strongly mythologized, but “entirely fictional” is a very strong claim.

One thing the author mentions in passing is the settlement which is "almost certainly the historical Troy". The "serious" opinion used to be that the city was fictional. The same with Ur. I think the Babylonian captivity used to be considered as fictional too. Of course ancient written sources embellish things, but they don't generally make things up out of whole cloth. Especially not things which are kind of embarrassing (e.g. "we used to be enslaved by those guys over there").

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#265

Post by bazoom42 »

cogman10 wrote: post #100
palmotea wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a lot of claims in the exodus story which would have left behind corroborative histories. There's a lot of distance between having claims in the account not supported by evidence and it being an "entirely fictional account." I wouldn't be surprised if truth is that it has a factual core with significant embellishment, to the point where the boundary is not discernible by history/archeology.

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…

> So what we have is writings written hundreds of years later documenting an event with no earlier writings verifying that documentation.

Unfortunately, this is the case for much of ancient history. Doesn’t mean nothing happend, just that it can be difficult to figure out what is myth and what are actual events.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#266

Post by lou1306 »

wisty wrote: post #263

I saw a slghtly odd youtube video by a small creator who thinks it was at least partly because the gods stopped talking to people. No, hear me out. Obviously they weren't real, but the Youtuber said (based on sources) people used to talk to the gods, like you might talk to a cat. And the gods spoke back (and we all know cat owners who insist the cat is replying). As societies became more sophisticated, this stopped.…

Is this the old "breakdown of the bicameral mind" theory? I don't know. I think that tin trade routes breaking down + rise of iron-wielding civilisations are more plausible.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#267

Post by Amezarak »

cogman10 wrote: post #236
Amezarak wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 after time AND everyone else bought into it - is clearly absurd. It's really not. It's exactly how Romans changed from their Roman worship to christianity. It's how they converted the pagans. It's how Muslims were able to rewrite Christianity into their own religi…

> It's exactly how Romans changed from their Roman worship to christianity.

The conversion of the Romans to Christianity happened because of real events, even if elements of the stories became mythologized. Or are you saying there was never any man named Jesus who was crucified? I guess you may as well argue that - both him and Paul could have been invented.

> It's how Muslims were able to rewrite Christianity into their own religion.

I think Mohammed was almost certain real, although I guess according to your standards of corroborating evidence, maybe he wasn't. The core of his story is not "rewriting Christianity", it's that he claimed to receive direct revelation and he used incorporated what he knew of what he believed to be true history.

> It's how Mormons did the same.

I think Joseph Smith is rather too well attested to claim he did not exist.

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#269

Post by jbotz »

wisty wrote: post #263

I saw a slghtly odd youtube video by a small creator who thinks it was at least partly because the gods stopped talking to people. No, hear me out. Obviously they weren't real, but the Youtuber said (based on sources) people used to talk to the gods, like you might talk to a cat. And the gods spoke back (and we all know cat owners who insist the cat is replying). As societies became more sophisticated, this stopped.…

That's Julian Jaynes' bicameral mind theory[0]. Personally I don't buy it because we haven't seen convincing evidence of it in pre-civilization populations that still existed in isolated places on earth until recently.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality

Re: Late Bronze Age Collapse

#270

Post by Amezarak »

michaelmrose wrote: post #253
Amezarak wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Moses and exodus are completely counterfactual and at once central to Jewish and Christian mythology and identity. Our foundational stories are mostly lies because reality is depressing. Egypt exists even though the Exodus never happened. The mere existence of factual elements doesn't mean a foundational myth is real. Myths are normally interwoven with real elements. Moses is almost entirely distinguished as a person…

> Moses and exodus are completely counterfactual

I don't see anything particularly counterfactual or unlikely about a group of Egyptian or Caananite-descended Egyptians leaving Egypt and returning to Caanaan, where they fused with an existing population. Can you explain this?

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