Book Reviews: Books about civilizational collapse

1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

by Eric H. Cline
reviewed by T. Nelson

In 1177 B.C., the thriving Bronze Age civilization that extended from Greece to Egypt suddenly collapsed, destroying a sophisticated system of international trade and ending the glory of Egypt's New Kingdom. Entire cultures, along with all their achievements, were lost forever and civilization there regressed into a dark age that lasted hundreds of years.

Many of the names and events from that period are still familiar to us: Akhenaten, Nefertiti, the Exodus of the Jews, and the Caananites, Hittites, Mycenaeans, Assyrians, and Mittanni, for example. Others are less so, like the Battle of Qadesh of 1274 B.C. between the Egyptians under Ramses (Ramesses) II and the Hittites of Anatolia. It was a time of thriving trade, international treaties, and occasional conflict as powerful civilizations competed for survival. The stakes were high, and miscalculation could lead to disaster.

But those great civilizations did collapse, some disappearing completely, and dozens of cities were destroyed, starting with Ugarit in Syria in 1190 B.C., followed by many others including Iolkos and Mycenae in Greece, Knossos in Crete, Troy and Hattusa (the Hittite capital) in Anatolia, and Megiddo and Ashkelon in the Levant. The tipping point was a colossal battle between Pharaoh Ramses III in Egypt and the enigmatic Sea People in 1177 B.C, the year Eric Cline marks as the definitive end of the Late Bronze Age.

Until recently this devastation was blamed entirely on the Sea People, a group of seafarers of Philistine or Aegean origin. But later archaeologists blamed earthquakes, climate change (formerly known as “drought”), or even, believe it or not, “capitalism.” Cline has no answer, other than to say it could have been a systems collapse. He invokes complexity theory, but this too is an unsatisfying explanation. Nevertheless Cline takes a scientific approach throughout the book, carefully weighing the archaeological evidence; his writing is engaging and the story is fascinating.

Despite its antiquity, understanding why the Bronze Age ended so suddenly and violently is of immense importance because of the possibility it could happen again. Some people today seem strangely sanguine about the prospect, comparing it, as Cline does, to a forest fire that clears away the old for the new. But those who were there, watching their culture turn to ash and their relatives exterminated, would not have seen it that way. Neither will we.

nov 30 2014

The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation

by Victor Davis Hanson
Basic Books, 2024, 344 pages
reviewed by T. Nelson

In this one, historian Victor Davis Hanson selects four city-states that were destroyed by military invasion: Thebes (335 BC), Carthage (149–146 BC), Constantinople (1453), and the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán (1521). These cities were the last remaining centers of great or once-great civilizations. They all firmly believed they were invulnerable. They all were attacked by forces from more aggressive, expanding civilizations. And in each case, after the city was demolished and the inhabitants massacred, their civilization disappeared.

We might quibble about Hanson's selection: why these four and not the hundreds of other lost and destroyed civilizations? What about the Western Xia, a culturally advanced civilization in present-day Mongolia which believed itself invulnerable to Genghis Khan's barbarians? They were arrogant, so the barbarians murdered every man, woman, and child and erased their language and civilization. Or for that matter, what about ancient Rome, the Celts, Rapa Iti, or the Mayan or Khmer civilizations?

One reason may be that the conquerers of Hanson's four city-states left good records of what happened and why. And they had other things in common. As a rule, he says, they all sought help from others, who refused to send assistance for fear of being attacked or out of hatred or jealousy. They also falsely believed themselves invulnerable, as they had been in the past. And they all suffered from cultural and economic decline, pandemics, and religious fantasizing. But mostly they were just in somebody else's way.

In the last chapter Hanson tells us why he thinks the conquerers destroyed them instead of just taking over. The main reason, he says, is that “the zeal necessary to resist overwhelming odds eventually ensures a level of counter-violence that seals the fate of the defeated.” The message he wants to convey is that our own civilization is not indestructible. We need to recognize that it can happen here.

Is this really true? Are civilizations spanning an entire continent really comparable to civilizations that consist of a walled city surrounded by a few bits of farmland? Doesn't the biggest threat to a civilization always come from within? Doesn't the existence of new high-precision weapons that can surgically eradicate a country's government mean genocide is obsolete? Hanson shows us how despite our fantasy about civilization having “progressed,” the killers' justifications are eerily similar to what we hear today. Our cities might no longer have walls, but human nature has not changed a bit.

may 31, 2024