Eric Cline makes a good case that the Bronze Age empires were organized around a “palace economy”, where only certain people (royals & their pals) were even allowed to trade. In some places the sovereign literally owned all the land and people on it.
One can imagine that a series of bad seasons, natural disasters, invasions & other stressors would open a window for revolt.
Yes tin was a factor, yes the “Sea Peoples” were a factor. But you don’t get the wholesale overthrow of so many empires without the common people being at least somewhat welcoming of the invaders (when not happily assisting them!) in throwing off centuries of elite oppression.
My above post was factual/historical so I’m leaving my moral judgements here in a separate post.
I believe the Bronze Age collapse was a good and necessary thing for humanity. It was required to get out of the local stable point that post-Neolithic society had evolved and settled into.
By the 12 century BCE the noble kings that Marduk and Maat would have smiled upon had long been replaced by the same flavor of sociopaths that lurk the halls of our major governments today.
But these Bronze Age despots had a LOCK on the economy that today’s crony capitalists could only dream of. And they had a lock on the culture too, mostly via the state religion.
BUT: years of bad harvests, disasters and bad omens become increasingly hard to explain. Higher taxes and worse service from the state. No protection from invaders.
Do you revolt? Join the invaders?
No living soul, not even your oldest relatives, can remember time before the empire. No one knows what comes next, so you don’t do this high risk thing unless life really sucks. But people did, because life really sucked.
Proposition: The Bronze Age collapse is to be celebrated as a triumph of the people over the most unequal societies that have ever existed.
In the absolute you’re right. In the relative, far from right.
If Mr T could literally order anyone murdered at will with absolute impunity, you might have a case. As of today, he’s having legal difficulties flying people out of the country. A Ramses II does not exist, and thankfully cannot exist, in today’s world.
Just like the Cambrian explosion only happened once, and could only happen once, so did this transition.
It was an awakening of the people that is difficult to imagine today: everything you’ve been told, everything your parents and grandparents have told you, might be flat-out wrong. You’ve never known any other system. You owe your life to the state, so you’re told, to bring glory to the gods. But life sucks a lot lately, and you’re not buying the party line any more. Your neighbors are grumbling too.
It was the first world-scale transition of state order, and it happened because the elites had amassed so much absolute power they’d been corrupted absolutely.
Not even totalitarian dictators of the modern era have had the kind of power these royals had.
There absolutely exist dictators that can kill people at their whims. The CCP comes to mind, so do Iran, North Korea and Hamas, but especially Putin's Russia where even being filthy rich does not protect you from falling out of windows.
And make no mistake, Trump and Erdogan want this power for themselves.
They had laws in the bronze age too. The difference is in what those laws protect.
"protect power" is always in there, but in modern democratic style states there are some extra details that greatly limit the abuse of said power.
Meh. I think you underestimate the psychological difference between Putin level "I can kill you if you step out of line by pushing you out a window" vs ancient king level of "I can kill you at will because I am a god".
Regardless of whether this is true or not you have basically described the UK and how people think about a Russian invasion.
You already have elites siding against their own people and tyrannically collecting taxes and giving it to their Mercenary base.
It isn't hard to imagine a benevolent Sea People offering to free the locals from their despotic elite.
The Bronze Age would not have had the same migration structures obviously but one might imagine it happening locally.
What is funny is that a lot of these explanations of what happened seem to fly in the face of what people find is possible to ascribe to situations now.
> the UK and how people think about a Russian invasion.
That is a very Thought Bubble perspective. It's not a mainstream view of any kind in the UK. The Man on the Clapham Omnibus is not in favour of a Russian invasion, nor is he expecting one. Nor is his mate in the pub.
That's handwaving the mass-suffering caused by systemic collapse. I have a few issues with this. The first one is dialectic, you can't posit that since the following state reached a place you're fine with later on, the process that led to it was necessary. That's thinking backwards. You don't know that it wouldn't have reached a better or equal state without collapse.
The following ones are ethical and philosophical. My own standing is that :
- Individuals can't be treated as fungible or dispensable, even when thinking in macro states. That opens the door for extreme suffering and simplistic thinking.
- On longer scales, stability wins. Collapse should be treated as a hard failure, not a mechanic.
Stability sucks. Instability sucks even more when you are in the middle of it, but it is transient. Stability is forever, until it suddenly isn't.
The impression that I get from this comment is the idea that society and culture moves "forward," whatever that means, and therefore stability is holding back society. Sure, there's short-term pain in collapse, but what rises from the ashes will be better than before.
This is absolutely not the case. It's more than likely that whatever rises out of the *hellscape* of a societal collapse will be worse than what was there before.
The collapse of Rome did not lead to a better Rome. It was hundreds of years of suffering and death. In fact, the stability of Rome is what allowed for it to reach its peak over hundreds of years - something that was undeniably good for its citizens.
As opposed to slow burn suffering caused by living under a poor exploitative system? Say nothing of the opportunity cost...
It's not like bronze age societies had invented peaceful power transitions between fundamentally opposed factions. Whatever state they were stuck in they were there until a regime change, if you're lucky that'll only kill a few people at the top. But most societies aren't that lucky.
>- On longer scales, stability wins. Collapse should be treated as a hard failure, not a mechanic.
Japan was stable for a hell of a long time. Not hard to imagine had they been located somewhere slightly different in the world they'd have wound up slaves to some random European power. Stability works until you get into a local maximum you can't get out of A lot of those local maximums you are not getting out of except over the dead bodies of whoever benefits from them (see also: US civil war), if you're lucky. If you're unlucky you get subjugated by someone else.
cobbzilla · · focus · HN ↗
One can imagine that a series of bad seasons, natural disasters, invasions & other stressors would open a window for revolt.
Yes tin was a factor, yes the “Sea Peoples” were a factor. But you don’t get the wholesale overthrow of so many empires without the common people being at least somewhat welcoming of the invaders (when not happily assisting them!) in throwing off centuries of elite oppression.
cobbzilla · · focus · HN ↗
I believe the Bronze Age collapse was a good and necessary thing for humanity. It was required to get out of the local stable point that post-Neolithic society had evolved and settled into.
By the 12 century BCE the noble kings that Marduk and Maat would have smiled upon had long been replaced by the same flavor of sociopaths that lurk the halls of our major governments today.
But these Bronze Age despots had a LOCK on the economy that today’s crony capitalists could only dream of. And they had a lock on the culture too, mostly via the state religion.
BUT: years of bad harvests, disasters and bad omens become increasingly hard to explain. Higher taxes and worse service from the state. No protection from invaders.
Do you revolt? Join the invaders?
No living soul, not even your oldest relatives, can remember time before the empire. No one knows what comes next, so you don’t do this high risk thing unless life really sucks. But people did, because life really sucked.
Proposition: The Bronze Age collapse is to be celebrated as a triumph of the people over the most unequal societies that have ever existed.
d0mine · · focus · HN ↗
throwawayk7h · · focus · HN ↗
cobbzilla · · focus · HN ↗
If Mr T could literally order anyone murdered at will with absolute impunity, you might have a case. As of today, he’s having legal difficulties flying people out of the country. A Ramses II does not exist, and thankfully cannot exist, in today’s world.
Just like the Cambrian explosion only happened once, and could only happen once, so did this transition.
It was an awakening of the people that is difficult to imagine today: everything you’ve been told, everything your parents and grandparents have told you, might be flat-out wrong. You’ve never known any other system. You owe your life to the state, so you’re told, to bring glory to the gods. But life sucks a lot lately, and you’re not buying the party line any more. Your neighbors are grumbling too.
It was the first world-scale transition of state order, and it happened because the elites had amassed so much absolute power they’d been corrupted absolutely.
Not even totalitarian dictators of the modern era have had the kind of power these royals had.
mschuster91 · · focus · HN ↗
And make no mistake, Trump and Erdogan want this power for themselves.
otabdeveloper4 · · focus · HN ↗
Even (gasp!) Putler's Russia has laws and police, I've heard.
literalAardvark · · focus · HN ↗
"protect power" is always in there, but in modern democratic style states there are some extra details that greatly limit the abuse of said power.
jychang · · focus · HN ↗
zenithirl · · focus · HN ↗
NamlchakKhandro · · focus · HN ↗
The Architect had to tell Neo, that we'd been through this Seven times already.
Think yourself Neo?
nobodywillobsrv · · focus · HN ↗
You already have elites siding against their own people and tyrannically collecting taxes and giving it to their Mercenary base.
It isn't hard to imagine a benevolent Sea People offering to free the locals from their despotic elite.
The Bronze Age would not have had the same migration structures obviously but one might imagine it happening locally.
What is funny is that a lot of these explanations of what happened seem to fly in the face of what people find is possible to ascribe to situations now.
dcminter · · focus · HN ↗
That is a very Thought Bubble perspective. It's not a mainstream view of any kind in the UK. The Man on the Clapham Omnibus is not in favour of a Russian invasion, nor is he expecting one. Nor is his mate in the pub.
smcg · · focus · HN ↗
pjc50 · · focus · HN ↗
.. what?
(is this some reference to the extremely confusing base incident that may or may not have just been diesel thieves?)
Bayart · · focus · HN ↗
The following ones are ethical and philosophical. My own standing is that :
- Individuals can't be treated as fungible or dispensable, even when thinking in macro states. That opens the door for extreme suffering and simplistic thinking.
- On longer scales, stability wins. Collapse should be treated as a hard failure, not a mechanic.
tliltocatl · · focus · HN ↗
Stability sucks. Instability sucks even more when you are in the middle of it, but it is transient. Stability is forever, until it suddenly isn't.
Shiggy_ · · focus · HN ↗
This is absolutely not the case. It's more than likely that whatever rises out of the *hellscape* of a societal collapse will be worse than what was there before.
The collapse of Rome did not lead to a better Rome. It was hundreds of years of suffering and death. In fact, the stability of Rome is what allowed for it to reach its peak over hundreds of years - something that was undeniably good for its citizens.
cobbzilla · · focus · HN ↗
Rome was unstable far longer than it was stable.
> undeniably good for its citizens.
Maybe for some very small percentage of citizens, especially when citizenship was extended to everyone in the empire.
monknomo · · focus · HN ↗
When you look at data around economics what you find instead is that good times create good times.
you want stability, but not stasis. you hella do not want punctuated equilibriums
AnimalMuppet · · focus · HN ↗
cucumber3732842 · · focus · HN ↗
As opposed to slow burn suffering caused by living under a poor exploitative system? Say nothing of the opportunity cost...
It's not like bronze age societies had invented peaceful power transitions between fundamentally opposed factions. Whatever state they were stuck in they were there until a regime change, if you're lucky that'll only kill a few people at the top. But most societies aren't that lucky.
>- On longer scales, stability wins. Collapse should be treated as a hard failure, not a mechanic.
Japan was stable for a hell of a long time. Not hard to imagine had they been located somewhere slightly different in the world they'd have wound up slaves to some random European power. Stability works until you get into a local maximum you can't get out of A lot of those local maximums you are not getting out of except over the dead bodies of whoever benefits from them (see also: US civil war), if you're lucky. If you're unlucky you get subjugated by someone else.