When civilization collapsed, 33 centuries ago
Can civilization collapse? Nothing is impossible. And, if it were to happen, it would not be the first time. Normally, when people talk about these things, they think of the fall of the Roman Empire and the dark times that afflicted much of the Mediterranean and Europe for at least two centuries. But there is a better example: the rapid and brutal destruction of the great cultures at the end of the Bronze Age.
The American professor Eric H. Cline is one of the world's most prestigious specialists in ancient history and archaeology. A little over a decade ago, he published a book that has already almost become a classic: 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Even he, a cautious academic, admits more than one coincidence between that era and the present one.
About 3,300 years ago, the empires and kingdoms of the Eastern Mediterranean and what we now call the Near East enjoyed a prosperity never seen before. The Egyptians, the Hittites, the Kassite-Babylonians, the Mitannians, the Assyrians, and the Minoans had established a dense network of diplomatic and commercial contacts among themselves. The region's economy, the most advanced on the planet, was global and interdependent.
Archaeological excavations show that everywhere there were products from everywhere. The archives found in Ugarit, near the current Syrian city of Latakia, contain numerous clay tablets written in Akkadian, Hittite, Egyptian, Hurrian, and Ugaritic. Among them are diplomatic letters sent from court to court, commercial documents (Ugarit was a port of great importance), legal texts, and property records.
We are talking about the Bronze Age (from 3300 to 1200 B.C., approximately), which makes evident the importance of this alloy, essential for manufacturing weapons and tools. Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin. And tin, towards the end of this era, came mainly from mines in what is now Afghanistan. According to Professor Carol Bell, tin had a strategic importance similar to that of oil for us, so it was vital to guarantee its transport from the mines to the industrial centers of the region.
What happened to cause that complex system to collapse during the 12th century B.C.? Professor Cline speaks of a conjunction of elements.
To begin with, the “sea peoples” burst onto the scene, whose origin remains a mystery. The sea peoples waged war against Egypt and the Levantine empires, as testified by stelae and hieroglyphs, but they were also likely composed of successive waves of poor and peaceful refugees coming, it seems, from mainland Greece and Anatolia.
The sea peoples hindered trade, both maritime and terrestrial. Their enigmatic appearance was perhaps related to severe droughts (the climate became more arid from around 3800 BC onwards) and earthquakes in the Levant. Massive migratory movements and the progressive scarcity of food may have triggered political crises and rebellions, although this factor is not entirely proven.
Tin, moreover, stopped reaching the industry. The transition from bronze to iron was not because the latter was better at that time: archaeological remains indicate that during the first centuries after the great crisis, a brittle, low-carbon iron was used. Simply put, it became very difficult and expensive to alloy bronze.
With these factors, in isolation, it is not enough to explain such a rapid collapse. Cline suggests a plausible explanation: the empires and kingdoms maintained such interconnection that the problem of one area immediately spread to the others, which multiplied its effects. In a complex system like that, any crisis could destabilize the whole.
The consequences of the collapse were extremely serious. In Greek civilizations, the use of writing and the concept of supreme and unified government were lost. In the Levant, cuneiform writing, used for various languages, disappeared. The end of international trade and the absence of diplomatic treaties led to widespread impoverishment and a proliferation of military skirmishes. The great empires (except for the Egyptian one) gave way to city-states. “It was necessary to start almost from scratch,” says Cline.
And it started anew. Three or four centuries later, the Odyssey was being recited and biblical texts were beginning to be written.
(As a curiosity, it should be noted that in China, the other center of civilization on the planet, the end of the Bronze Age was also traumatic: the Shang dynasty was replaced by the Zhou dynasty and the warlords, and Confucianism and Taoism appeared.)
Like that of 33 centuries ago, our civilization is absolutely dependent on certain strategic products and international trade. Like then, the climate creates problems. Like then, there are massive migrations. Like then, politics is in crisis. You can add, if you wish, the possible risks of artificial intelligence. Nothing, we said, is impossible.