Alex Levine’s Reviews > 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed > Status Update

“Perhaps the most important conclusion to be drawn of the [post-Bronze Age collapse] dark age is that it was nothing of the sort…this period emerges rather as the catalyst of a new age.”

“In an interconnected system, such as was present at the end of the late Bronze Age, the failure of one part can lead to failures in another part in what is known as a domino effect.” Also important point on “multiplier effects”: perhaps famine alone would t lead to the abandonment of a settlement, but made worse by earthquakes destroying the city’s structures. War alone not enough, but add drought…

12th century as a period of radical decentralization (political and economic), characterized not merely by the wide scale destruction of long-established polities across the Near East - by a combination of internal, external, and environmental factors - but also generating new, merchant-driven, local economic linkages replacing the collapse of the (remarkably well-networked, “globalized”) “palatial economy”.

Neat point about the “strategic importance” of tin in the Bronze Age Near East (akin to crude oil), and the devastating impact of the severing of trade/commodity routes, so that even if a polity was not attacked by the Sea Peoples, their movement into the Eastern Mediterranean between 1207 and 1177 was nevertheless remarkably destabilizing, because it shattered long-standing economies.

In other words, we are looking once again at a globalized culture reflecting a multitude of influences at the end of the Bronze Age, just before the collapse.”

Styled ivory found at Megiddo from the late-1200s/early-1100s BCE combining Mycenaean, Canaanite, and Egyptian designs/culture exhibit a “truly globalized style” (International Style) and are “hybrid objects unique to and typifying this cosmopolitan age.”