Eric Cline – The Collapse of Cities and Civilizations at the End of the Late Bronze Age

YaleUniversity
Published on Dec 5, 2016

For more than three hundred years during the Late Bronze Age, from about 1500 BC until just after 1200 BC, the Mediterranean region played host to a complex international world in which Egyptians, Mycenaeans, Minoans, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Cypriots, Trojans, and Canaanites all interacted. They created a cosmopolitan world-system, with flourishing cities such as Mycenae, Hazor, Troy, Ugarit, Hattusa, Babylon, and Thebes, such as has only rarely been seen before the current day. It may have been this very internationalism that contributed to the apocalyptic disaster that ended the Bronze Age. When the end came just after 1200 BC, as it did after centuries of cultural and technological evolution, the civilized and international world of the Mediterranean regions came to a dramatic halt in a vast area stretching from Greece and Italy in the west to Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia in the east. Cities and towns, large empires and small kingdoms, that had taken centuries to evolve, all collapsed rapidly. With their end came the world’s first recorded Dark Ages.

It was not until centuries later that a new cultural renaissance emerged in Greece and the other affected areas, setting the stage for the evolution of Western society as we know it today. Dr. Eric H. Cline is Professor of Classics and Anthropology, former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and current Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington University, in Washington DC. A Fulbright scholar, National Geographic Explorer, and NEH Public Scholar, Dr. Cline holds degrees in Classical Archaeology, Near Eastern Archaeology, and Ancient History, from Dartmouth, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania. An active field archaeologist who is the former co-director at Megiddo (biblical Armageddon) and the current co-director at Tel Kabri, he has more than 30 seasons of excavation and survey experience in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, and the United States.

Dr. Cline has written (authored, co-authored, or edited) a total of sixteen books, which have been published by prestigious presses including Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge, Michigan, and National Geographic. He is a three-time winner of the Biblical Archaeology Society’s “Best Popular Book on Archaeology” award (2001, 2009, and 2011). He also received the 2014 “Best Popular Book” award from the American Schools of Oriental Research for his book 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, which is an international best-seller and was also considered for a 2015 Pulitzer Prize. In addition, he has also authored or co-authored nearly 100 academic articles, which have been published in peer-reviewed journals, festschriften, and conference volumes. At GW, Dr. Cline has won both the Trachtenberg Prize for Teaching Excellence and the Trachtenberg Prize for Faculty Scholarship, the two highest honors at the University; he is the first faculty member to have won both awards. He has also won the Archaeological Institute of America’s “Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching” Award and been nominated three times for the CASE US Professor of the Year. He has also appeared in more than twenty television programs and documentaries, ranging from ABC (including Nightline and Good Morning America) to the BBC and the National Geographic, History, and Discovery Channels. For more information, please visit: http://pier.macmillan.yale.edu/summer…

Why the West Rules–for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future: Ian Morris

Sometime around 1750, English entrepreneurs unleashed the astounding energies of steam and coal, and the world was forever changed. The emergence of factories, railroads, and gunboats propelled the West’s rise to power in the nineteenth century, and the development of computers and nuclear weapons in the twentieth century secured its global supremacy. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, many worry that the emerging economic power of China and India spells the end of the West as a superpower. In order to understand this possibility, we need to look back in time. Why has the West dominated the globe for the past two hundred years, and will its power last?

Describing the patterns of human history, the archaeologist and historian Ian Morris offers surprising new answers to both questions. It is not, he reveals, differences of race or culture, or even the strivings of great individuals, that explain Western dominance. It is the effects of geography on the everyday efforts of ordinary people as they deal with crises of resources, disease, migration, and climate. As geography and human ingenuity continue to interact, the world will change in astonishing ways, transforming Western rule in the process.

Deeply researched and brilliantly argued, Why the West Rules―for Now spans fifty thousand years of history and offers fresh insights on nearly every page. The book brings together the latest findings across disciplines―from ancient history to neuroscience―not only to explain why the West came to rule the world but also to predict what the future will bring in the next hundred years.

See:

• Ian Morris | Why the West Rules — For Now

Ian Morris | Why the West Rules — For Now

Oriental Institute
Published on Oct 15, 2013

Ian Morris, Professor of History at Stanford University, lecture Why the West Rules — For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future at the Oriental Institute on October 2.

For “geographic” explanation of the dominance of the “West” see particularly:

Is Dr. Morris correct about the primacy of “geography?”

What about a “biological/ecological” explanation?  What about the global impact of the history of disease?

New Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact Paper – reviewed in detail! UnchartedX Podcast #2

UnchartedX
Published on Mar 28, 2019

I review the recently released peer-reviewed scientific paper that investigates the Younger Dryas cosmic impact effect in South America.
This is UnchartedX Podcast #2 – set to imagery and video here on youtube, or you can find the mp3 on my website.

*please note that I had to alter some of the music in the video after the fact. I had thought that the intro/exit song was CC by, I was mistaken. Apologies for the abrupt audio transitions, but I didn’t want the claim to affect the video, as the music is purely background, I don’t think it has anything to do with the content of the video itself.

Link to paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4159…
My marked up copy of the paper is here: http://www.unchartedx.com/2019/03/28/…

Full transcript is also available on my website.

Ian Hodder: “Origins of Settled Life; Göbekli and Çatalhöyük” | Talks at Google

Talks at Google

Published on May 6, 2015

The ritual origins of settled life in the Middle East: Göbekli and Çatalhöyük.

Recent archaeological discoveries have upturned our theories about the origins of agriculture and the dawn of settled life. While climate change and economic adaptation have long been seen as prime causes, recent work at Göbekli and Çatalhöyük in Turkey has shown that social gatherings at ritual centers played a key role. The remarkable finds at Göbekli include 6 meter stone monoliths carved with images of animals and birds and forming ritual enclosures. Recent research at Çatalhöyük shows a fully fledged town in which wild bulls, leopards and the severed heads of ancestors were important social foci.

Ian Hodder was trained at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London and at Cambridge University where he obtained his PhD in 1975. After a brief period teaching at Leeds, he returned to Cambridge where he taught until 1999. During that time he became Professor of Archaeology and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. In 1999 he moved to teach at Stanford University as Dunlevie Family Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Director of the Stanford Archaeology Center. His main large-scale excavation projects have been at Haddenham in the east of England and at Çatalhöyük in Turkey where he has worked since 1993. He has been awarded the Oscar Montelius medal by the Swedish Society of Antiquaries, the Huxley Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute, has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and has Honorary Doctorates from Bristol and Leiden Universities. His main books include Spatial analysis in archaeology (1976 CUP), Symbols in action (1982 CUP), Reading the past (1986 CUP), The domestication of Europe (1990 Blackwell), The archaeological process (1999 Blackwell), The leopard’s tale: revealing the mysteries of Çatalhöyük (2006 Thames and Hudson), Entangled. An archaeology of the relationships between humans and things (2012 Wiley Blackwell).

This Authors at Google talk was hosted by Boris Debic.

1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Eric Cline, PhD)

NCASVideo
Published on Oct 11, 2016

From about 1500 BC to 1200 BC, the Mediterranean region played host to a complex cosmopolitan and globalized world-system. It may have been this very internationalism that contributed to the apocalyptic disaster that ended the Bronze Age. When the end came, the civilized and international world of the Mediterranean regions came to a dramatic halt in a vast area stretching from Greece and Italy in the west to Egypt, Canaan, and Mesopotamia in the east. Large empires and small kingdoms collapsed rapidly. With their end came the world’s first recorded Dark Ages. It was not until centuries later that a new cultural renaissance emerged in Greece and the other affected areas, setting the stage for the evolution of Western society as we know it today. Professor Eric H. Cline of The George Washington University will explore why the Bronze Age came to an end and whether the collapse of those ancient civilizations might hold some warnings for our current society.

Considered for a Pulitzer Prize for his recent book 1177 BC, Dr. Eric H. Cline is Professor of Classics and Anthropology and the current Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington University. He is a National Geographic Explorer, a Fulbright scholar, an NEH Public Scholar, and an award-winning teacher and author. He has degrees in archaeology and ancient history from Dartmouth, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania; in May 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctoral degree (honoris causa) from Muhlenberg College. Dr. Cline is an active field archaeologist with 30 seasons of excavation and survey experience.

The views expressed in this video are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Capital Area Skeptics.

The Rise of Big Meat: Corporate Crimes and Campaigns to Stop Them

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Published on Jan 31, 2018

The second in our webinar series examining the Rise of Big Meat, this webinar focuses on how interventions at various levels expose corporate crimes and push for social justice. Moderator Josh Wise is joined by James Ritchie of IUF, Alexandre Galimberti from Oxfam America and Sandra Dusch from Supply Cha!nge.

Food-matters,