After 1177 BC The Survival of Civilizations
Eric H Cline
Princeton, £28

IN 1177 BC civilisation as we know it crumbled. In what is known as the Late Bronze Age collapse, the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Cypriots all suffered disaster and lay in ruins. 

Trade stopped, and written records disappear. A series of catastrophes ensued which included the destruction of cities, mass migration and climate change. Ultimately the Minoans and the Hittites vanished. 

Until Eric H Cline’s 2014 book 1177 BC the preponderant theory was that various “Sea Peoples” had invaded from places unknown. Cline argued against this hypothesis and instead proposed multiple interconnected failures, ecological and man-made, that cascaded across the area. Drought was significant, invasion played a role, revolt overthrew many.  

What happens next? Unsurprisingly, After 1177 BC tries to answer that question, examines what happens during social collapse, what might cause it, and what might mitigate against it. 

A collapse of the scale of the Late Bronze Age doesn’t happen all at once for everyone. For sure, a revolt or a conquest can change things overnight, but the changes wrought by changing climate can take hundreds of years. In the archaeological record sometimes there are no records, and great changes are difficult to spot from the remains left over. 

But some people adapt. The Phoenicians (a Greek exonym that referred to the Canaanites) and the Cypriots spotted a gap, the former taking over trade and the latter meeting material needs by diversifying to iron rather than bronze. Egypt, seriously weakened, limped along, sometimes splitting into smaller kingdoms. 

Cline guides us through the limited archaeological and historical record for what actually happened in the years following the collapse. Biblical sources are cross referenced for some of the gaps. Kingdoms fell, others rose, many were weakened. Some of it is difficult to tell, simply because of the fragmentary record. 

However, more interesting for many readers will be Cline’s comparisons with the present world. Like many others looking at the present state of international affairs and their own domestic circumstances, Cline confesses: “It has really felt to me on occasion as if we are on the brink of societal collapse ourselves.” And he suspects that it is coming sooner rather than later. 

As such he examines the adaptive cycle hypothesis which describes a process of societal regeneration which sees new societies born out of the collapse of old. For while the Late Bronze Age collapsed it later led to the Iron Age which thence lead to Archaic and then Classical Greek societies. This evokes Gramsci’s formulations on revolutionary change: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

Equally, what were the factors which saw the complete disappearance of Minoan, Mycenean and Hittite societies? How might the modern world emerge from what appear to be a series of predictable, potentially reversible catastrophes that it seems to be determined to march straight into? 

Cline suggests there are lessons to be learnt from the Late Bronze Age collapse. While there’s little on the key weaknesses of the disappeared societies, the societies which flourished in the wake of the collapse were quick to adapt their political and technical situations. 

The Cypriots moved away from their silted harbours, started working in iron and maintained international trade. The Phoenicians exploited the power vacuum to seize key trade routes, and spread their alphabet across the Mediterreanean. Egypt manages to struggle along as it maintained a key resource: the Nile and the water it brought. 

Cline summarises several key lessons from from the Late Bronze Age collapse. These are: to have multiple contingency plans in place, and redundant systems should your primary ones fail. Be self sufficient, but also to call on friends when needed. Be innovative and adapt and transform rather than simply cope. Prepare for extreme weather conditions: if they come, you’re ready, if they don’t it wont matter. Be sure to have dependable water resources; and finally: keep the working class happy. 

One wonders which of the present nation states are actually covering these bases. Which of our present societies are like the Minoans, ready to disappear, and which, like the Phoenicians, poised to flourish?