The study of the LBAC is compelling these days because of the similarities to our present day situation. Other commenters have noted the the possibility of AI driven collapse, but another possibility is our dependence on oil.

Bronze is the combination copper+tin. Copper is common in earths composition, but tin is much more scarce. The scarcity of tin necessitated the expansive trade networks to acquire the resource. To my way of thinking this correlates to our dependency on oil which while not exactly scarce, is not evenly distributed across the world. Our global supply chain for oil is fragile in the same way that the supply chain for tin was to the bronze age empires.

As for the article: I found the authors use of dating systems inconsistent and confusing. Some references are listed with the BC/AD nomenclature while others omit it entirely leaving the reader confused as which era he is referring to. Also, the use of the BC/AD has been supplanted by the use of the BCE/CE nomenclature in scientific references for 20+ years. This could simply be due to the fact that the author is a historian, but one would think a PhD would know better. All of this made me wonder if perhaps the author relies too heavily on AI.

• upfrog

  today at 5:39 PM

  The author has been an established blogger since well before the modern AI boom. It is of course not impossible that their writing technique has changed, and they now use AI heavily, but preferring BC/AD over the alternative/not always clarifying which strikes me as incredibly weak evidence.

Seems to be a popular topic.

Historian Eric H. Cline has multiple books citing this time period, specifically 1117 BCE as the inflection point for the bronze age "collapse", defined by a deterioration of international shipping routes that weakened the nation-states of the era. I've learned about it recently because YouTube began recommending videos about it.

For example: https://youtu.be/choxcHXhZhE?is=t5lDwQQpqPsE2k5M

One historical event that Cline focuses on is a severe centuries-long drought. It's something the ACOUP article seems to omit. Cline does not focus as much on destruction of bronze-age sites although there is one port city in particular which is linked to the international trade of the time. Exactly who destroyed it appears to be a mystery but it could be linked to the migration theory that ACOUP dismisses. The migration may have actually come as a result of the previously mentioned drought.

• The_Blade

  today at 3:10 PM

  Eric Cline is great - when i had a tooth removed in a somewhat nasty procedure i spent a Caturday hepped up on goofballs watching his videos on LBA while playing Hatshepsut on Diety in Civ VII 1.4 (i got to play test 1.3.2 via Firaxis via discord, ooh la la i call a car hole a garage)

  in my personal "immersive learning" period starting 2021, i discovered acoup.blog when Old World came out and extended into reading while playing Civ VI and CK III. it actually started the February before COVID, playing Plague while watching Contagion and reading whatever peer-reviewed shit i could find. total Chris Crawford with a brain-eating amoeba action

  EDIT: in the blind i'm guessing the port city of which you speak is Ugarit, which i had never heard of. IIRC everything was weakened by drought and famine, and Ugarit's armies were pulled over to the Hittites who abandoned Ugarit to The Sea Peoples. and the Sea Peoples always came off like a "cosmological constant" fudge factor where constant advances in shipwreck archaeology should provide more clarity in its merry time

  history is dope. it never repeats itself but it always rhymes :)

  • nchmy

    today at 3:54 PM

    its been a while since ive read a comment somewhere that I am so completely bewildered by. I understand about half the words, and none of the references, that you wrote.

    Hope your teeth are doing better now!

    • tsimionescu

      today at 5:05 PM

      Caturday -> Saturday enjoyed with or similar to a cat

      LBA -> probably supposed to be LBAC, Late Bronze Age collapse

      Civ -> Civilization, a series of historically inspired strategy games, where you play as the historical leader of a civilization through the ages of human development

      Hatshepsut -> an Egyptian Pharaoh who is one of the leaders you can play as in Civ VII

      Deity -> the name of the highest difficulty level in Civ VII

      Firaxis -> the company that develops the Civilization series

      Discord -> a chat app/service often used in gaming communities

      ooh la la i call a car hole a garage -> a reference to a joke in The Simpsons, where a character complains someone else thinks they're fancy because they use the word "garage", and when challenged on an alternative, he calls it "car hole"

      Old World -> a game similar to the Civilization series

      CK III -> Crusader Kings III, another game similar to Civilization

      Plague -> probably Plague Inc, a game where you play as a pathogen trying to infect and kill the entirety of humanity

      Contagion -> a movie about the start of a pandemic

      Rest of the references I can't help with. Also no idea why they would mention the playtest of Civ VII version 1.3.2.

      • mrDmrTmrJ

        today at 5:46 PM

        I think the funniest part is the username. The_Blade, which I can only assume is a reference to this:

        https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/5cll43/while_you_wer...

      • quickthrowman

        today at 5:16 PM

        “Caturday hepped up on goofballs [after dental work] -> I was high on opiates on Saturday

        Caturday -> Saturday

        Hepped -> Novel synonym for “high” likely influenced by the jazz slang word ‘hep’ which means ‘hip’ or ‘cool’

        Goofballs -> 5/500 hydrocodone/APAP, aka Vicodin. The gold standard tooth pain prescription drug, an opioid. In this context.

    • simtel20

      today at 4:15 PM

      Do you find yourself more lost in the history parts or the gaming parts?

    • The_Blade

      today at 4:03 PM

      my mother is a fish

• cs702

  today at 3:01 PM

  The OP talks about the drought extensively. Quoting:

  > there is quite a lot of compelling evidence that period of LBAC [late bronze age collapse], especially the 1190s, was unusually dry in the Eastern Mediterranean, which would have caused reduced agricultural output (crop failures). Interestingly, this would be most immediately impactful in areas engaged primarily in rainfall agriculture (Greece, Anatolia, the Levant) and less impactful in areas engaged more in irrigation agriculture (Egypt, Mesopotamia).³ And, oh look, the areas where LBAC was more severe are in the rainfall zone and the areas where it was less severe are in the irrigation zone.

  • pfdietz

    today at 3:17 PM

    One possibility I've wondered about is the emergence of a new crop pathogen. This might be addressed by looking at DNA of modern crop pathogens, and possibly looking if there was a change in the crops being grown before/after the LBAC.

• Brendinooo

  today at 1:54 PM

  It injects some really interesting color into the Tanakh/Old Testament - I'm not sure anyone has definitively lined up the Bronze Age Collapse with Biblical events, but it sure seems to have happened somewhere between the Exodus and King David.

  One can easily see the events leading to the Exodus being enabled by (or causing, depending on who you ask!) the weakening of Egypt, and the period in Joshua and Judges describes a power vacuum: no centralized king over the area, lots of back-and-forth struggles for control; as the Philistines, sometimes referred to by historians as an actual group of the Sea Peoples, often impose their will with instruments of iron.

  • jerf

    today at 3:07 PM

    You'd probably find https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy2Ic_j0SnA interesting.

    For the rest of HN, while that video is from someone who takes the Bible seriously, you can also view it as an interesting examination of the historical time period, even if with a particular lens and slant. Who doesn't have a particular lens and slant anyhow?

  • simiones

    today at 2:06 PM

    The Exodus is an entirely fictional account though, it's not based on any real historical events. Even King David seems to be mostly mythical, though there is some vague evidence of a "House of David" being something some real kings claimed descent from.

    Edit: I should say "almost entirely fictional". The main scholarly agreement is that it may record some stories of some small numbers (hundreds, at most some thousands - nowhere near the 600k in the Bible) real semitic slaves' escape from Egypt and migration to the area of Canaan, mixing with the local Canaanite population that were the precursors of the Jewish populations of later Israel and Judah.

    • pfdietz

      today at 5:56 PM

      I'll add that it would make a lot of sense for these kinds of stories to be fictional, because they come through a religious infrastructure whose legitimacy is boosted by the stories. They are just the kind of propaganda one would create to cement a power structure.

    • Brendinooo

      today at 2:34 PM

      I tried to word my original comment in a way that allows a broad range of opinions to make a narrow point; I don't think anything you've said here refutes anything I said. I'm not really here to kick off a serious apologetics fight, though if you want me to engage on your thoughts I could.

      (And of the things I mentioned, the Exodus is less likely to line up with the Bronze Age Collapse's chronology anyways. But personally, I think the book of Judges very much feels set in the kind of post-apocalyptic world that the Collapse would have created.)

      • simiones

        today at 4:30 PM

        You wrote:

        > One can easily see the events leading to the Exodus being enabled by (or causing, depending on who you ask!) the weakening of Egypt

        I think that if I'm right that the events of Exodus simply never happened that would quite thoroughly refute any possible link to the historical bronze age collapse. It would be like saying that the events of the Epic of Gilgamesh being enabled by the weakening of Egypt.

        I didn't mention it, but the events in the Book of Joshua are also very much non-historical - there are no signs whatsoever of a conquest of parts of Canaan by any other group at a time that would be consistent with the Biblical narrative. The historical, linguistic, and archaeological evidence is most consistent with the ancient Israelites simply being a specific group of Canaanites that established a kingdom in the area in which they had lived for millennia.

        > But personally, I think the book of Judges very much feels set in the kind of post-apocalyptic world that the Collapse would have created.

        The Book of Judges is also regarded as mostly non-historical by modern day scholars.

    • zoobaloo

      today at 5:30 PM

      Respectfully, this is a stronger claim than I think anyone can make.

      A more reasonable claim would be: "we cannot verify much of what's in Exodus using sources external to the Torah/Pentateuch." It's fair to also say something like "if X happened, it's surprising that we would not see physical evidence of it."

      If you're interested in the topic of the Old Testament in general, I highly recommend [Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament](https://bakerpublishinggroup.com/products/9781540960214_anci...).

      It starts with a survey of the academic field, an overview of relevant primary documents from surrounding cultures, and in-depth discussions of historical records and archaeological finds. There's meta-discussion about the role of comparative literature that I also found useful. I benefited from the author's perspective that there's a lot to learn from the Old Testament regardless of whether or not existing physical evidence satisfies our personal standard for determining whether something happened verbatim.

      I like that it does so in a way that does not try to push an agenda. I interpret the author as trying to provide an entrypoint for anyone interested in the related academic fields, regardless of their background.

      I've recommended the book to both religious and non-religious friends who enjoyed it. Take this recommendation as one made in good faith, and an opportunity to look at something from a new perspective. You're free to disregard it as you see fit.

    • bazoom42

      today at 2:32 PM

      We dont know that.

      • cogman10

        today at 3:34 PM

        We actually do.

        There's a lot of claims in the exodus story which would have left behind corroborative histories. For example, the death of a large amount of the population along with the pharaohs son. The destruction of pharaoh's army. Records of ancient hebrew slaves.

        Ancient Egyptians left behind a pretty large amount of history and documentation. They were also surrounded by other civilizations that also left a decent bit of documentation.

        • Brendinooo

          today at 3:49 PM

          >The destruction of pharaoh's army

          Given what we know about how the Egyptians recorded history, we would definitely not expect to find them writing about stuff that would have embarrassed them.

          >Records of ancient hebrew slaves

          Look up Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446 - it shows that Egypt held slaves with Semitic names in roughly the correct time period.

          >They were also surrounded by other civilizations that also left a decent bit of documentation

          Israel being one of them!

          • cogman10

            today at 4:14 PM

            > Given what we know about how the Egyptians recorded history, we would definitely not expect to find them writing about stuff that would have embarrassed them.

            That's exactly the sort of stuff they wrote about all the time. We know about the various wars and political conflicts throughout the second intermediate period precisely because that's what the Egyptians liked documenting.

            And, in particular, during the supposed time of the exodus the Egyptian kingdom was fairly divided. Even if one kingdom was too proud to write about a defeat, the others would be sure to document it.

            > Look up Papyrus Brooklyn 35.1446 - it shows that Egypt held slaves with Semitic names in roughly the correct time period.

            Read up about the Canaanites. They were on the uprise during this period and they are also believed to be the actual origin of the Hebrews.

            > Israel being one of them!

            No even according to the bible. Israel didn't exist before the exodus. Definitely not for decades and even centuries afterwards. The oldest records of the exodus are nowhere near the event. The closest record we have is around 900BCE.

        • palmotea

          today at 3:42 PM

          > There's a lot of claims in the exodus story which would have left behind corroborative histories.

          There's a lot of distance between having claims in the account not supported by evidence and it being an "entirely fictional account."

          I wouldn't be surprised if truth is that it has a factual core with significant embellishment, to the point where the boundary is not discernible by history/archeology.

          • cogman10

            today at 4:21 PM

            People wandering in the desert for 40 years, or even 1 year, leave traces. Especially when it's thousands of people (at a minimum).

            The Hebrew language came long after the exodus. We have no earlier records of it that aren't written in Hebrew.

            So what we have is writings written hundreds of years later documenting an event with no earlier writings verifying that documentation.

            It's possible that a small group of slaves escaped egypt and that was the actual origin of the exodus story which just kept growing and growing with retellings.

            • xenadu02

              today at 5:32 PM

              I liken it to the story of Noah. Whether that was the mediterranean re-joining the Atlantic and thus oral re-tellings from a much much earlier event or merely a localized flood you can certainly imagine someone preparing for a flood and surviving localized or wide-spread destruction. But two of every animal? That's not a stable genetic population. Hell there are 40,000 or more species of spiders! There is simply no possibility that you could even fit enough animals on a boat of any kind to make that story work. If it did happen the immediate result would be complete genetic collapse and extinction. The idea is abject nonsense but the core story probably happened.

              It is easy to imagine a large group of slaves escaping or being freed from Egypt. Maybe they or their ancestors were war captives. But wandering the desert for 40 years? Yeah right. Even if you want to grant miracles the idea that all of Egypt would even know about such events at that time is bananas. Information didn't travel that fast. Probably one group of people in one city. And the antagonist could easily have been a local lord. Over time it became the Pharaoh and the 18 months of wandering turned into 40 years. Only then it was written down.

    • dylan604

      today at 3:41 PM

      Doesn't the English monarchy claim lineage back to David?

      • simiones

        today at 3:57 PM

        No, they don't. But they do claim lineage to Alfred the Great, whose lineage is traced by legendary sources to Woden/Odin, and from there to Noah and Adam. In some versions, Beowulf is also part of that lineage.

        • dylan604

          today at 5:17 PM

          Okay, so maybe the family doesn't but others do. There's the Davidic throne concept people believe that does claim that lineage exists. These are usually religious types though.

    • ReptileMan

      today at 3:04 PM

      Iliad is fictional yet Troy existed. The biblical flood was mythical yet couple of thousand years ago black sea connected to the Mediterranean and probably was not entirely unpeaceful.

      I have absolutely backed by nothing theory that ancient Armenians and Jews are the same people that got separated. For some tribe living on the shores of east black sea - a myth about massive flood and some saving boat that stopped on Ararat is easy to see how it could be created.

      Of course it takes incredible levels of incompetence to be lost in sinay for 40 years. But apply exponential reduction for each generation of oral account and you may get to something resembling truth.

      • simiones

        today at 3:28 PM

        Yes, Troy existed - we know that because we found it. If we found evidence of a mass migration of slaves from Egypt to Canaan, we'd also know that certain aspects of the Exodus narrative are true - but no such evidence has ever been found.

        The biblical flood has been connected to various possible historical floods, but any such connection is highly speculative and tenuous, because the details simply can't match the original claims.

        Similarly, some kernel of the Exodus narrative is quite possibly related to real migration events that actually happened, though they would necessarily be much smaller in scope. They also couldn't be the sole origin of the Ancient Israelites, as there is overwhelming evidence that they are simply a subset of the native people of Canaan, which had continuously inhabited that region for a very long time. We also know that the monotheistic/henotheistic religion described in the Exodus narrative was not the religion practiced by the people of Canaan, nor of the early kingdoms of Israel and Judah, which worshiped several other gods in addition to Yahweh (there are temples and inscriptions attesting to worship of Asherah, El, and even Baal in addition to Yahweh, at least).

        • logicchains

          today at 3:51 PM

          >We also know that the monotheistic/henotheistic religion described in the Exodus narrative was not the religion practiced by the people of Canaan, nor of the early kingdoms of Israel and Judah, which worshiped several other gods in addition to Yahweh (there are temples and inscriptions attesting to worship of Asherah, El, and even Baal in addition to Yahweh, at least).

          The Exodus narrative explicitly describes the early Israelites flocking to worship idols like that.

          • simiones

            today at 4:03 PM

            It describes it as a sectary offshoot relatively quickly corrected - while the historical evidence suggests that it was part of the main religion of these people for a long time. Note also that, while Baal became an adversary of Yahweh and/or a false god in later narratives, Asherah and El were ultimately identified with Yahweh - to the point that mentions of El in the Bible became identified as referring to the same being as Yahweh.

            • Brendinooo

              today at 4:10 PM

              > archaeologist, taking off his glasses: well actually the physical evidence suggests the ancient Israelites worshiped multiple deities

              > Jeremiah, weeping and sighing: yes I know

              (That's a tweet that pops up from time to time when exchanges like this happen.)

              > the historical evidence suggests that it was part of the main religion of these people for a long time

              I mean...yes, this is thoroughly documented throughout all of Judges/Kings/Chronicles/etc. Elijah is the one who stands against 450 prophets of Baal, and when he feels totally alone later on, God tells him that 7,000 haven't bent the knee - big enough to be reassuring, but certainly not a huge percentage of the northern kingdom's population.

              • simiones

                today at 4:20 PM

                Elijah (who, unlike Moses, is probably a real historical figure) lived long after the events depicted in Exodus. And Exodus ends with the all of the Israelites faithfully following Yahweh's commandments, after narrowly avoiding death for their worship of the golden bull idol. The book of Kings presents a time long after that, when the people of the now divided Israel have lost their way and started worshiping Baal - as opposed to their ancestors who only worshiped Yahweh.

          • today at 4:00 PM

          • Pay08

            today at 4:52 PM

            FYI, "Baal" is a much later invention. In ancient Hebrew, the word "Ba'al" means lord/master/husband and is often used as a honorific.

        • bjourne

          today at 4:16 PM

          Noah's Ark may well be derived from the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In both stories the God(s) assert that the flood is a one-time event and promise to never repeat it. Many of the stories are probably amalgamations of different myths and legends of the near east.

        • Ar-Curunir

          today at 3:54 PM

          Just wanted to say, this (and your other comments) are really helpful. Bring science to a religious discussion establishes a baseline, especially in an area where the more religious commenters bring up absolutely nonsense theories.

          • simiones

            today at 4:10 PM

            Thanks! I found it quite interesting the first time I read about the current scholarly consensus around this, as I had before only ever heard of the mainstream religious (Christian, in my case) view of these events. Even after becoming an atheist, I had for a long time assumed that, while of course the parting of the Red Sea and similar miraculous events were not historical, the overall narrative was, and that Moses had existed and been some kind of spiritual leader, similar to the historical Jesus.

            I think it's quite extraordinary how little the scholarly and historical consensus on these narratives has penetrated mainstream culture, even among a secular audience, so I like to bring it up whenever it is mentioned.

      • pantalaimon

        today at 3:30 PM

        > The biblical flood was mythical yet couple of thousand years ago black sea connected to the Mediterranean and probably was not entirely unpeaceful.

        I thought that was a story from when the Sumerians were driven up to Mesopotamia as the water level in the Persian Gulf rose when the glaciers of the last ice age melted.

      • dylan604

        today at 3:43 PM

        > The biblical flood was mythical yet couple of thousand years ago

        Pretty much every ancient religion/group has a "biblical" flood story. Even those from different continents. Haven't you seen Ancient Aliens?

        • ivell

          today at 4:26 PM

          It could be just that almost all ancient civilizations were near water bodies that could flood. Any big flood would seem apocalyptic for the population size of the time.

          • dylan604

            today at 4:55 PM

            The how/why of the flood is irrelevant. The fact that they all have them makes it not special/unique in the way that religion makes it out to be.

      • codesnik

        today at 4:07 PM

        even if black sea deluge happened sufficiently rapidly, you're several thousands years off. Current theories date it to about 8 thousand years ago.

      • today at 3:38 PM

    • BurningFrog

      today at 2:55 PM

      Are you saying we have no evidence that Exodus happened, or that we have real evidence that it did NOT happen?

      • simiones

        today at 3:19 PM

        If there had been a massive migration of hundreds of thousands of people, and even more so hundreds of thousands of slaves, from late bronze age Egypt (a powerful, old, highly literate kingdom), we would expect to find significant evidence of this (inscriptions, local stories, migration sites, etc). The absence of any such evidence, while not conclusive proof of course, constitutes evidence against this event happening.

        We also know for example that the types of beliefs detailed in Exodus, especially the idea that the Israelites worshiped Yahweh alone as the only God, are not historical. Belief and worship of other gods were common in both the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah long after the supposed time that the Exodus happened - in particular El (who was later associated with Yahweh) and Asherah (who was sometimes seen as the wife of Yahweh). So at least this aspect of the Exodus narrative is directly contradicted by archaeological evidence.

        This is similar to the reason we believe the stories in Genesis are not historical, e.g. the flood, - if they had been historical, we expect that they would have left behind certain marks; those marks haven't been found, so we have a reason to believe that they didn't happen.

        • palmotea

          today at 3:52 PM

          > We also know for example that the types of beliefs detailed in Exodus, especially the idea that the Israelites worshiped Yahweh alone as the only God, are not historical. Belief and worship of other gods were common in both the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah long after the supposed time that the Exodus happened

          I'm not sure what the point you're trying to make is. IIRC, that stuff is in the actual Bible. Like, a significant chunk of the Old Testament is about "Israelites [not] worship[ing] Yahweh alone as the only God."

          • simiones

            today at 4:06 PM

            This was not idolatry, as depicted in Exodus - this was full blown state religion, held in the same esteem as Yahweh, and co-existing with worship of him. So much so that El later became identified with Yahweh, and now most people reading the Bible (including Jewish people, Christians, and Muslims) believe El is just another one of Yahweh's names, or maybe the name of one of his angels.

        • BurningFrog

          today at 5:31 PM

          Flood legends are very common among ancient Eurasian cultures.

          As the last Ice Age melted away (20k–8k years ago), there were very likely several major floods in the region.

        • logicchains

          today at 3:52 PM

          >We also know for example that the types of beliefs detailed in Exodus, especially the idea that the Israelites worshiped Yahweh alone as the only God, are not historical. Belief and worship of other gods were common in both the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah long after the supposed time that the Exodus happened - in particular El (who was later associated with Yahweh) and Asherah (who was sometimes seen as the wife of Yahweh). So at least this aspect of the Exodus narrative is directly contradicted by archaeological evidence.

          I feel like you haven't read Exodus because it describes in detail the early Israelites' predilection for idolatry.

          • jcranmer

            today at 4:13 PM

            The book of Joshua details the supposed conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, which archaeological evidence rather disfavors--there's no discontinuous horizon in cultural adaptation between the supposed Philistines and the Hebrews following Jewish dietary laws, for example, and the settlement sites just are not inhabited during the time period that they were supposedly conquested.

          • amanaplanacanal

            today at 5:10 PM

            Calling it idolatry is ahistorical though. Worshipping yhwh alone came much later.

      • krapp

        today at 3:06 PM

        We know the Exodus didn't happen because the supernatural elements described cannot have happened, and there is no evidence of any such mass migration in the archeological record, nor any non-Biblical references to such an event taking place.

        It may be the case that the Exodus tale is a recontexualization of various historical memories of nomadic resettlement combined with political narrative, but the actual story as described in the actual Bible didn't happen.

  • detourdog

    today at 3:53 PM

    I heard that the story of the Exodus and Moses was to unite the northern and southern kingdoms of Judea behind a single figure.

  • cratermoon

    today at 5:29 PM

    It's worth noting that historically, Israel and Judah are iron age settlements. This makes references to the authors of the tanakh "bronze age sheepherders" wildly inaccurate at best and mostly offensively reductionist.

• darkfloo

  today at 1:06 PM

  Shameless plug for my favourite YouTuber of all time https://youtu.be/aq4G-7v-_xI?si=GviYcvEtOAJ1mln7

  • CountHackulus

    today at 3:24 PM

    Historia Civilis somehow distills subjects down to squares in a great way. Entertaining and informative. Fantastic channel.

  • moffkalast

    today at 4:06 PM

    The man who singlehandedly got me to think about Rome on a weekly basis.

• pfdietz

  today at 1:13 PM

  The drought explanation seems particularly plausible for the Hittites, IMO. They had grain storage, but ~3 years of drought would exhaust that. So if the climate becomes just a bit drier the chance of such a three year run increases enough to likely crash their society.

  Today we have a huge buffer from the large use of grain to feed animals. In a crisis it could be diverted as human food, with some effort. Large geographic range from global shipping also smooths out blips. Still, a Toba-like eruption would be bad news.

  • stymaar

    today at 1:46 PM

    > Today we have a huge buffer from the large use of grain to feed animals.

    This, plus the gigantic amount of agricultural land being used for biofuel production (almost as much as cattle food).

    • bryanlarsen

      today at 2:04 PM

      The standard counter-argument is that the corn grown for animal feed and for ethanol production is not suited for human consumption.

      But that's only partially true. We wouldn't eat it directly -- it could still be turned into masa or sugar or some other processed food and then eaten.

      • reactordev

        today at 2:20 PM

        The corn grown that’s not for human consumption is only because it’s earmarked for feed or biofuels. Corn is corn. Where I live, 1 in 4 fields is “for human consumption”

        • Retric

          today at 2:51 PM

          Filed corn is harvested at a different time resulting in a dryer product.

          But yes if people get hungry enough, field corn easily qualifies as actual food.

          • reactordev

            today at 3:16 PM

            There are 4 types of corn. Dimple/dent corn, pop corn, sweet corn, and flint corn. Each variety can be eaten. Prepared differently of course as they have different starches and flavors but the vast majority of corn fields in the United States grow dent corn for feed and biofuels.

        • inigyou

          today at 2:31 PM

          Aren't there different varieties of corn?

          • reactordev

            today at 2:32 PM

            Yes, and they are all edible. But not all are palatable.

      • brazzy

        today at 3:59 PM

        Yeah, we're pretty good at making pretty damn anything "fit for human consumption", including quite a few things that are outright poisonous if consumed unprocessed.

        • stymaar

          today at 4:16 PM

          Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization

          (Corn doesn't need special processing to be edible, but it does need special processing if you want to avoid dying from nutritional deficiency when having a corn-based diet).

    • throwaway27448

      today at 2:51 PM

      Who ever thought the idea of biofuel was a good one? Is it just as much a blatant jobs program as it seems?

      • pfdietz

        today at 3:14 PM

        It's the result of politics, and that's not always pretty.

        • throwaway27448

          today at 5:11 PM

          What isn't the result of politics? This is a bad explanation—how is there so little will to act in rational self interest?

          • pfdietz

            today at 5:44 PM

            Everyone acts according to personal interests. There's a whole branch of political science, Public Choice Theory, that deals with this. Where did you get this idea that altruism was common?

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

      • stymaar

        today at 4:18 PM

        > is it just as much a blatant jobs program as it seems?

        It's not a “job program” per se (these crops require basically no human work to do nowadays) but it's indeed a subvention program for farmers (and more importantly, land owners).

      • mrguyorama

        today at 3:26 PM

        While Bush Jr was definitely doing it to give yet another handout to corn growers, it solved a real problem.

        After we phased out TetraEthyl Lead from gas, we still needed an octane booster, because for gas to be cheap, it uses low octane components. So we used something called MTBE. The problem is that your average corner gas store has terrible infrastructure, and their gas tank leaks a lot. MTBE kept getting into water sources and hurting people.

        Ethanol is a good octane booster, and it doesn't poison anyone or the environment. It also slightly reduced dependence on foreign oil at a time when that was still an issue.

        So it's wasteful, not at all "Green", and inefficient, but do we have a replacement octane booster that wont poison people?

        It's not at all a jobs program. Corn growing is extremely mechanized. It's done entirely by megacorp megafarms. They are very wealthy companies owned by very wealthy people who continue to vote for republicans exclusively for lower taxes on wealthy people. They don't do it for better policy, as Trump alone has cost that industry over $30 billion in lost sales during his two terms, from poorly run trade wars.

        • akiselev

          today at 3:54 PM

          > So it's wasteful, not at all "Green", and inefficient, but do we have a replacement octane booster that wont poison people?

          I'm not sure it's all that wasteful. The waste product from biofuel production is distillers grains [1] which are just fed back to animals afterward for the protein, fiber, and fat content.

          [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains

          • stymaar

            today at 4:20 PM

            It's wasteful in the sense that we are exploiting lots of land for the limited value it brings.

            • akiselev

              today at 4:55 PM

              The vast majority is grown on marginal land, just above pasture. They can't grow better crops without massive works of engineering and tons more fertilizer and energy use. The alternative is to just use slightly less of that land, because the animals are going to have to replace that feed from somewhere. Distillers grains are valuable because the fat and protein are used for finishing cattle for human consumption in feedlots so the sugars are either going to the cows or the biofuels.

              The "limited value" isn't so limited when we're talking about an additive to gasoline. The first thing we tried polluted the entire world with a background level of lead!

              • throwaway27448

                today at 5:12 PM

                Of course, it also destroys the topsoil without careful management

  • idiotsecant

    today at 1:25 PM

    It's unlikely that rich countries would experience famine as severely as poor ones and consequently they would probably still demand meat. Grain that could feed people would still feed livestock.

    • bryanlarsen

      today at 1:39 PM

      A draw down of animal stocks increases meat supply in the short term. As grain gets more expensive, farmers sell animals for meat rather than keeping them to reproduce.

      • stymaar

        today at 1:50 PM

        But “As grain gets more expensive” middle eastern countries (that rely almost entirely on import for their grain source) would start facing grain shortage (due to balance of payment issues) or at least severe deprivation of the poorer part of their population.

        The Tunisian, Egyptian, Syrian and Libyan revolutions didn't occur at the same moment out of coincidence…

• bloak

  today at 4:23 PM

  I'm being pedantic here, of course, but "nation-states" is perhaps not the right expression to use for that era. Nation states are primarily a thing of the nineteenth century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state). The article seems to talk about "imperial states" and "palace states", and I'm not sure I've ever seen the expression "palace state" before.

• DicIfTEx

  today at 1:11 PM

  The fantastic Fall of Civilizations podcast also had an episode about it: https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/01/21/episode-2-...

  • pixl97

    today at 1:11 PM

    Ha, beat me too it. FoC is a great channel.

  • antondd

    today at 4:07 PM

    Here is a youtube video he did on it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B965f8AcNbw

    The whole channel is top quality if you want to ruminate on other civilisations that came and went.

• icegreentea2

  today at 1:21 PM

  I don't think Bret (the author of ACOUP) omits drought - he leads his section on plausible theories with "period of drying and consistent crop failures". While Bret dismisses the out to in migration/invasion theory, he does support the idea of intra-region migration/warfare (perhaps induced by drought/crop failures).

• the-smug-one

  today at 1:30 PM

  Eric Cline has an interview on "Tides of History" podcast.

  • flir

    today at 2:59 PM

    I'm really annoyed that Patrick gave up on that. I mean, I know he's been doing it a decade, and I can't chain him to a desk, and I'm being entitled, but...

    • the-smug-one

      today at 4:55 PM

      It was cancelled by Amazon when they purchased Wondery, IIUC. He's got "Past Lives" podcast now!

• ape4

  today at 1:51 PM

  I think it's a popular topic because so many people are wondering when our civilization will fall.

• forlorn_mammoth

  today at 1:54 PM

  > deterioration of international shipping routes

  like a closing of a certain straight that was essential for a large percentage of a necessary resource?

  • RetroTechie

    today at 4:49 PM

    Probably more in general, as in: fighting between states disrupts trade between them.

    Enough of that & hardly any inter-state trading is left.

Patrick Wyman—of the Tides of History podcast—just put out a new book, Lost Worlds, which is worth a read if this is your bag. The basic premise is that the way ancient history is typically taught, "that we moved linearly from foraging to farming, and then from country farmers to city-dwelling, tax-paying subjects of kings and emperors," is essentially wrong. He goes on:

>All of those developments occurred in an orderly sequence: First farming and village life arrived; then surpluses born of human achievement that created social inequality; then hierarchies with priests and chieftains at the top; then massive monuments, cities, states, and writing to keep track of it all. Geographically, the old story of those developments centered on the Fertile Crescent of western Asia, and to a lesser extent the Nile Valley of Egypt....

>That story is wrong in some respects and incomplete in far more.

It's a constant rise and fall, with innovations and cities/civilizations that both did and didn't succeed often equally valid and appropriate paths to take. Sounds kind of bog-standard, I guess, but it's rife with examples of "Oh yeah here's a 1,500 year-old city, but it was 7,000 years ago and then disappeared so you've never heard of it."

• pocksuppet

  today at 5:58 PM

  It's important that we learn about this so we don't repeat it. Sadly, we are repeating it. Perhaps it's impossible to prevent the cycle because it can only be prevented by those who benefit from it.

• satvikpendem

  today at 3:40 PM

  I'm reading Proto which is about the Proto-Indo-European language family and it discusses exactly this, where the hunter gatherer nomads of PIE moved from the Caucuses to more farming oriented areas like plains they settled down and also interbred with the local farmers. But, when droughts happened and food got more scarce from farming, many of the farmers in turn became nomads again. The DNA shows this change apparently.

  • Amorymeltzer

    today at 4:36 PM

    Excellent! That's been on my TBR list for a while. There's a bit about PIE in Lost Worlds, mostly as supporting evidence for movements and connections between ancient (pardon the pun) lost worlds.

• The_Blade

  today at 2:58 PM

  > "Oh yeah here's a 1,500 year-old city, but it was 7,000 years ago and then disappeared so you've never heard of it."

  pull it in a bit and you have Ugarit :)

  i am convinced if / when AI leads to the collapse of civilization it will be akin to the Late Bronze Age collapse; i.e., not with a bang but a whimper. it was a very delicate economic ecosystem complete with circular dealing; but 3500 years ago people were fighting over Cypriot copper and today we're doing the same only in Lobito (along with Cobalt and Lanthanides) in praise of the almighty god Compute

  just to flog the analogy like a Mycenean slave, Compute runs out (with a humorous sidebar where someone tries to put a modern equivalent of arsenic into the chips to perpetuate the self-dealing; hilarity ensues). society collapses (but Musk makes it because like Egypt he has all the gold) and like the Iron Age a Quantum Age comes along out of desperation and the will to survive after yet another Dark Age. if we're lucky.

  i'll see myself out

Given the era, it seems likely that the collapse was the work of multiple angry gods. The author doesn't cover this possibility.

• lokar

  today at 2:52 PM

  The closest to that would be the ideas in “ the origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind”

• panzagl

  today at 4:22 PM

  Given my extensive study of civilization, the collapse was caused by Gandhi launching nukes.

• mr_toad

  today at 2:30 PM

  The people of that era would have thought so. The Iliad and the Odyssey (if they have any basis in reality) might be examples of that period seen through a lens of mythology.

  • bazoom42

    today at 2:37 PM

    How so? Are the Greek the sea people then?

    • tetromino_

      today at 4:47 PM

      > Are the Greek the sea people then?

      Very possibly a subset of the Sea Peoples were Greek. Egyptians reported the "Ekwesh" (which might be the Egyptian word for Achaeans) and the "Denyen" (which might be the Egyptian word for Danaans) among the Sea Peoples.

    • mr_toad

      today at 2:45 PM

      Myths don’t have natural or human causes. Instead you have wars caused by divine rivalry (e.g. the Judgement of Paris).

      Maybe Troy was actually destroyed by the Sea Peoples, but that probably wouldn’t make as much at the box office.

• Perz1val

  today at 4:06 PM

  And angry gods stopped rain

• fuzzfactor

  today at 2:34 PM

  People have always downplayed the number of things their gods can get angry about, while it often escalates beyond sustainability.

  >Late Bronze Age Collapse

  It was a little late but it had to happen sooner or later.

  For those in power there may not be many other opportunities to set the standard for archaic leadership, so better get it while they can.

  As we have seen :\

My pet hypothesis is : That trade networks, in times of collapse- become sort of superspreader networks of downfall. Think about that city state who runs out of food by the sea! It still has all the trading vessels- whats more logic then to go - and take over somebody elses city and ships! Piracy of the damned! Stealing the food from the starving, just to give there families one more day! Following the coast- until you run out of city- and the civilization is gone!It should also not affect the country interior cities - who then would murder the upstart pirates who took over the old capital near the sea..

• mohamedkoubaa

  today at 4:57 PM

  The Ottoman embargo of Western Europe leading to the collapse of the Aztecs supports your hypothesis. The other sea people.

• vitally3643

  today at 4:46 PM

  That's just the Sea Peoples hypothesis

  • cineticdaffodil

    today at 5:44 PM

    We should sea other people?

Have to mention this talk by Jonathan Blow, which maps the LBAC onto software development:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko

The Bronze Age was the third best age.

• inigyou

  today at 2:33 PM

  The Iron Age can be researched at your Town Center, but the Post-Iron Age isn't a real age, it's just an extra setting on the map settings menu that starts you in the Iron Age with everything already researched.

  • onion2k

    today at 3:20 PM

    It was a Gold, Silver, Bronze joke. :(

    • marking-time

      today at 4:56 PM

      I got it. It is a good one :)

    • today at 4:00 PM

• dn3500

  today at 1:49 PM

  After the one where humans first harnessed water power, the Dam Age, and when we started wearing clothes, the Garb Age.

  • D-Coder

    today at 4:37 PM

    And carrying stuff, the Lug Age.

    • marking-time

      today at 4:57 PM

      As well as dating in the Old Age.

I am mobile and not at my main system with my HN login, so I made this temp, but I think I cracked the primary cause and have been slowly working on a paper to submit to the journals...

I was doing geological research trying to show how crustal displacement theory is incorrect, and stumbled upon a paper that elucidated the insight:

There was a localized weakening of the geomagnetic field in the Levant and in the Med (3 actual areas) starting at roughly 1200 and ongoing until about 600! Im pretty sure Im the first person to posit this theory, but the more I steelman against it the more I think I'm onto something, and the implications are huge... because it has more to do with other subjects such as the evolution of religion in the region too. My theories on that are harder to prove but will be the follow up paper, at first Im just trying to focus on the geological proof.

Essentially a localized reduction in geomagnetic shielding allowing increased cosmic ray flux and solar radiation caused destruction, migration, religious interpretations of what was being seen in the sky, and all the war and tumolt that would come along with those...

• marking-time

  today at 4:54 PM

  >There was a localized weakening of the geomagnetic field > geological proof

  This is an interesting theory. My question is: What methods are you using to test the change in magnetic fields? Put another way, what is your middle range theory from an archaeological perspective? How are you dating your samples? etc.

• esikich

  today at 4:51 PM

  Mhmm. Take your meds.

Our favorite pedant should have a new post up today, I think he posts in the afternoon though. At least, checking in the morning and saying “ah, dang, the acoup post hasn’t come out yet, maybe I’ll reread an old one…” is a Friday morning ritual for me.

Beware the Sea Peoples

• forinti

  today at 1:32 PM

  There's a Portuguese saying "há mouro na costa" which is literally "there are moor at the coast" and means that there is something fishy going on.

  • Al-Khwarizmi

    today at 3:27 PM

    Curious, in Spanish we have the same saying, but always in the negative version ("no hay moros en la costa") which is something you say when you're doing something secret and there is no one around who could see, hear or cause trouble.

    • pbhjpbhj

      today at 4:26 PM

      In the UK we say 'the coast is clear' when telling someone that 'there is no-one around to see any misdeeds you're about to do'. Nothing about Moors, nor even Spaniards!

  • hackyhacky

    today at 1:38 PM

    The Moors existed about 1900 years after the Sea People of the Bronze Age.

    • nkrisc

      today at 1:49 PM

      I don’t think they’re implying the moors are responsible for the Bronze Age collapse, merely drawing parallels.

• evanjrowley

  today at 1:19 PM

  In an alternate timeline, The Sea Peoples are Romans sailing to England, the Anglo-Saxons, the Normans. Things became fuzzy when the English themselves became other civilization's Sea Peoples.

  • appreciatorBus

    today at 1:35 PM

    I would wager that almost every civilization has been some other civilization’s sea people at some point in it’s history.

    • mr_toad

      today at 2:37 PM

      If invaders appear out of ‘nowhere’, it’s usually by boat or on horseback.

    • stymaar

      today at 1:52 PM

      Well, at least not civilizations where dreams dry up.

• rawgabbit

  today at 4:35 PM

  I wish the author would go into detail about the sea peoples. From what I read, one theory is that they were subject allies of the Hittites; once the Hittites collapsed they went in search of better farmland with their entire families.

  • ch4s3

    today at 4:54 PM

    The actual historical evidence is super thin outside of a stele in Egypt.

[dead]