Figure 1.--This is the final painting about the development and collapse of civilization (the course of Empire) by Bruitish-Amerrican painter Thomas Cole, painted in the 1830s. It was not specifically about the late-Bronze Age Collapase, but captures the idea.

History is not a steady process leading to progress and advance. After centuries of cultural and technological achievement and progress, the Bronze Age culture of the eastern Mediterranean suddenly collapsed. The Bronze Age Collapse is a modern-day term referring to the decline and fall of major Mediterranean civilizations (13th-12th centuries BC). And historians are unable to fully account for this catastrophe. The marauding Sea People, a poorly understood people who might be likened to the medieval Vikings are commonly blamed for the collapse. But almost certainly more is involved. Modem historians point to a nexus of events, speculating that a range of events with both human and natural causes, droughts, famines, earthquakes, floods, rebellions, storms, volcanoes, and other events leading to a generalized systems collapse. Over the entire eastern Mediterranean from Italy east to Mesopotamia and south to the the Levant and Egypt, the civilized and cosmopolitan system that had developed came to a dramatic and shocking halt. The Old Assyrian Empire was the first to fall, before the real decline to the west began began (2025 BC - 1378 BC), The Hatti established themselves in Anatolia (c. 2700-2400 BC) and built their great city of Hattusa (c. 2500 BC). The Hittite Empire (1400-1200 BC) flourished. The Kingdom of Mittani stretched from northern Iraq west toward Anatolia. The Cypriot culture developed on Cyprus, The Phoenician city of Ugarit in the Levant, among others, prospered, and the Mycenaean Civilization of Greece (c. 1600 - c. 1100 BC) was at its peak. The Minoans on Crete collapsed (3000-1200 BC). The Canaanites in the Levant collapsed. This was about the time that Hebrew people entered the historical record. The Egyptian Middle Kingdom did not collapse, but was sorely tested. And because it survived, mist of what we know about the Sea People comes from Egypt. Both expansive empires and small kingdoms centuries in the making suddenly disappeared. This was the world's first recorded Dark Age. It would set the stage for the first Renaissance which occurred in Greece. It is where history itself was born with the writings of Herodotus. It was also the site of the birth of Western Civilization and the very idea of freedom.

Created: 8:31 PM 9/25/2022
Last updated: 8:31 PM 9/25/2022