1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed | Eric Cline

Long Now Foundation

Consider this, optimists. All the societies in the world can collapse simultaneously. It has happened before.

In the 12th century BCE the great Bronze Age civilizations of the Mediterranean—all of them—suddenly fell apart. Their empires evaporated, their cities emptied out, their technologies disappeared, and famine ruled. Mycenae, Minos, Assyria, Hittites, Canaan, Cyprus—all gone. Even Egypt fell into a steep decline. The Bronze Age was over.

The event should live in history as one of the great cautionary tales, but it hasn’t because its causes were considered a mystery. How can we know what to be cautious of? Eric Cline has taken on on the mystery. An archaeologist-historian at George Washington University, he is the author of “1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed.” The failure, he suggests, was systemic. The highly complex, richly interconnected system of the world tipped all at once into chaos.

“1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed” was given on January 11, 02016 as part of Long Now’s Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world’s leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:

Subscribe to our podcasts: http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast
Explore the full series: http://longnow.org/seminars
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The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our projects include a 10,000 Year Clock, endangered language preservation, thousand year+ data storage, and Long Bets, an arena for accountable predictions.

Biden Pushes $3.5 Trillion Climate Change Solution

VOA News – Sep 14, 2021

Situation described as ‘code red’ in ambitious federal proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

We need IMMEDIATE action to stop extinction crisis, David Attenborough – BBC

BBCSep 23, 2020
Subscribe and 🔔 to OFFICIAL BBC YouTube 👉 https://bit.ly/2IXqEIn Stream original BBC programmes FIRST on BBC iPlayer 👉 https://bbc.in/2J18jYJ

With a million species at risk of extinction, Sir David Attenborough explores how this crisis of biodiversity has consequences for us all, threatening food and water security, undermining our ability to control our climate and even putting us at greater risk of pandemic diseases.

Extinction is now happening up to 100 times faster than the natural evolutionary rate, but the issue is about more than the loss of individual species. Everything in the natural world is connected in networks that support the whole of life on earth, including us, and we are losing many of the benefits that nature provides to us. The loss of insects is threatening the pollination of crops, while the loss of biodiversity in the soil also threatens plants growth. Plants underpin many of the things that we need, and yet one in four is now threatened with extinction.

Last year, a UN report identified the key drivers of biodiversity loss, including overfishing, climate change and pollution. But the single biggest driver of biodiversity loss is the destruction of natural habitats. Seventy-five per cent of Earth’s land surface (where not covered by ice) has been changed by humans, much of it for agriculture, and as consumers we may unwittingly be contributing towards the loss of species through what we buy in the supermarket.

Our destructive relationship with the natural world isn’t just putting the ecosystems that we rely on at risk. Human activities like the trade in animals and the destruction of habitats drive the emergence of diseases. Disease ecologists believe that if we continue on this pathway, this year’s pandemic will not be a one-off event.

Extinction: The Facts | BBC

The Day the Mesozoic Died: The Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs — HHMI BioInteractive Video

biointeractiveAug 26, 2014
Ever wonder why the dinosaurs disappeared? HHMI BioInteractive investigates the cause of the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period—and the clues come from paleontology, chemistry, physics, and biology.

This three-act film tells the story of the extraordinary detective work that solved one of the greatest scientific mysteries of all time. Explore the fossil evidence of these prehistoric animals, and other organisms that went extinct, through this lively educational video.

See more HHMI BioInteractive short films and classroom resources here: http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/ex…

Free teacher resources supporting this short film can be found at http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/da…

Evolution: Extinction (PBS Documentary)

EvolutionStreamOct 3, 2015

CDC director on COVID boosters, global vaccine supply, evolving virus science

PBS NewsHourSep 14, 2021
The Biden administration has said COVID-19 vaccine boosters may be available to eligible groups a week from now. But that timing is uncertain and scientific advisory committees still need to meet in the next several days. Lisa Desjardins spoke with CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky about the status of boosters and the spread of the virus as part of a special forum hosted by Research America.

The Barbary States – The Final Years

Drachinifel

Sep 1, 2021

Today we start to look at the last half-century of the history of the Barbary States and how they eventually became the architects of their own demise. Sources: www.amazon.co.uk/Pirate-Killers-Royal-African-Pirates/dp/1848842406 www.amazon.co.uk/Barbary-Wars-American-Independence-Atlantic-ebook/dp/B000SBTWN2 www.amazon.co.uk/Thomas-Jefferson-Tripoli-Pirates-Forgotten-ebook/dp/B00SI0B5GW

Free naval photos and more – www.drachinifel.co.uk

Introduction to the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection with Curator Melissa Barton

Beinecke Library at Yale– May 28, 2020

Melissa Barton, one of the two curators of the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection of African American Arts and Letters in the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Library, offers an overview of the collection.

Visit the Beinecke Library website (https://beinecke.library.yale.edu) to read more about this collection and to access the digital library with tens of thousands of images of African Americana material that have been digitized. The James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection is one of the premier collections in the world documenting the literary, artistic, cultural, intellectual, and political activities of Black Americans. With more than 13,000 volumes and hundreds of linear feet of manuscript material, not to mention thousands of pieces of sheet music, photographs, ephemera, and sculpture, the James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection is among the Yale Library’s most consulted collections.

See related:

• James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection

W E B Du Bois Collection

Beinecke Library at Yale– Jun 30, 2021

The W. E. B. Du Bois Collection contains Correspondence, Writings, including drafts of Dusk of Dawn, and The World and Africa, and Subject Files. For more information visit https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/col…

David Blight on James Weldon Johnson: Mondays at Beinecke, June 7, 2021

Beinecke Library at Yale– Jun 11, 2021

David W. Blight draws on his research in progress on the life and work of the African-American poet, novelist, songwriter, and diplomat, James Weldon Johnson.

Blight is Sterling Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He previously taught at North Central College in Illinois, at Harvard University, and at Amherst College. In October of 2018, Simon and Schuster published his new biography of Frederick Douglass, entitled, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. The book received the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History, the 2019 Bancroft Prize for History, and the 2019 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, among other awards.

Blight is the author of Frederick Douglass’s Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (1989); Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001), which garnered eight book awards, including the Bancroft Prize, the Merle Curti Award, the Abraham Lincoln Prize and the Frederick Douglass Prize; A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation (2008), which won the Connecticut book award for best book in non-fiction; and American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (2011), which won the Aniston-Wolf Prize in non-fiction for best book on race and racism. He has edited some six books, including editions of Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and My Bondage and My Freedom; W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk; and Robert Penn Warren’s Who Speaks for the Negro.