1177 BC The Year Civilization Collapsed, Eric H. Cline, c. 2021.

1177 BC The Year Civilization Collapsed, Eric H. Cline, c. 2021. Updated.

Reminder: concurrently -- Assyria

• beginnings in Ashur (near Nineveh) in 2500 BC to its apex in 671 BC when it conquered Egypt
• preceded the very early age of Greece, the geometric age (see below)
• Troy had collapsed about 1200 BC
  

Epilogue / Aftermath

Complementing archaeological evidence, archives at:

• Amarna in Egypt (Akhetaten, late 18th dynasty, capital city during that reign)
  
• from the time of the pharaohs Amenhotep III and Akhenaten in the mid-14th century BC; and,
• Ugarit in north Syria ("recently" discovered):
• during the late 13th and early 12th century; and,
  
• Hattusa in Anatolia: (capital of Hittite Empire, late Bronze Age, relatively close to Ankara)
  
• during the 14th - 12th centuries.

These letters / archives confirm interconnectedness of the region (Aegean - Egypt - Near East).

"The interruption, or even partial dismantling, of those related networks would have had a disastrous effect back then, just as it would on our world today." -- Cline, 2021.

Greek periods:

• geometric: 900 - 700 BC
• archaic: 600 - 480 BC
• classical: 480 - 323 BC
• Hellenistic: 323 - 13 BC

Original Post

The first thing I noted: "BC" and not "BCE." Interesting. 

Lots of place names in the eastern Mediterranean. An important book.

Hatshepsut: p. 24 and following.  Incredibly interesting. Hatshepsut's reign begins about 1500 BC.

April 9, 2025:

From chapter six,"Sea Peoples, Systems Collapse, and Complexity Theory," which I think would have been better simply titled, "Systems Collapse and Complexity Theory," or to bring it up to date, "The Trump Economy, Systems Collapse, and Complexity Theory," LOL.

 

From page 169 of chapter, 

It would not have taken long for the globalized, interconnected world of the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean to grind to a halt, with economies disrupted and cities destroyed [Ukraine, Gaza]. Misery and migrations followed. Undoubtedly many were bewildered by the speed with which this happened, and some surely sought to explain the rapidity of decline by invoking angry gods [Trump, Musk].

At this point, we should recall the definition of collapse provided by Joseph Tainter (1988) which was cited at the beginning of this book: "Collapse is fundamentally a sudden, pronounced loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity." 

However, I have also mentioned "transition" several times in the pages above, because collapse and transition can be two sides of the same coin. This is exactly what occurred at the end of the Late Bronze Age.

"Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it," paraphrased by George Santayana. 

Ordered March 29, 2025: Thutmose III and Hatshepsut, Pharaohs of Egypt: Their Lives and Afterlives; Hardcover – published, February 18, 2025 by Aidan Dodson (Author, Series Editor).