A Closer Look at the Fall of Bronze Age Civilization<br />The Long Now Foundation - SFJAZZ Center<br />Consider this, optimists. All the societies in the world can collapse simultaneously. It has happened before.<br /><br />In the 12th century BCE the great Bronze Age civilizations of the Mediterranean-all of them-suddenly fell apart. Their empires evaporated, their cities emptied out, their technologies disappeared, and famine ruled. Mycenae, Minos, Assyria, Hittites, Canaan, Cyprus-all gone. Even Egypt fell into a steep decline. The Bronze Age was over.<br /><br />The event should live in history as one of the great cautionary tales, but it hasn't because its causes were considered a mystery. How can we know what to be cautious of? Eric Cline has taken on on the mystery. An archaeologist-historian at George Washington University, he is the author of 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. The failure, he suggests, was systemic. The highly complex, richly interconnected system of the world tipped all at once into chaos.
