After 1177 B.C.
The Survival of Civilizations
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- €27.99
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- €27.99
Publisher Description
In this gripping sequel to his bestselling 1177 B.C., Eric Cline tells the story of what happened after the Bronze Age collapsed—why some civilizations endured, why some gave way to new ones, and why some disappeared forever
“A landmark book: lucid, deep, and insightful. . . . You cannot understand human civilization and self-organization without studying what happened on, before, and after 1177 B.C.”—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, bestselling author of The Black Swan
At the end of the acclaimed history 1177 B.C., many of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean lay in ruins, undone by invasion, revolt, natural disasters, famine, and the demise of international trade. An interconnected world that had boasted major empires and societies, relative peace, robust commerce, and monumental architecture was lost and the so-called First Dark Age had begun. Now, in After 1177 B.C., Eric Cline tells the compelling story of what happened next, over four centuries, across the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean world. It is a story of resilience, transformation, and success, as well as failures, in an age of chaos and reconfiguration.
After 1177 B.C. tells how the collapse of powerful Late Bronze Age civilizations created new circumstances to which people and societies had to adapt. Those that failed to adjust disappeared from the world stage, while others transformed themselves, resulting in a new world order that included Phoenicians, Philistines, Israelites, Neo-Hittites, Neo-Assyrians, and Neo-Babylonians. Taking the story up to the resurgence of Greece marked by the first Olympic Games in 776 B.C., the book also describes how world-changing innovations such as the use of iron and the alphabet emerged amid the chaos.
Filled with lessons for today's world about why some societies survive massive shocks while others do not, After 1177 B.C. reveals why this period, far from being the First Dark Age, was a new age with new inventions and new opportunities.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Cline follows up 1177 B.C., his bestselling study of the end of the Bronze Age, with a sweeping account of what came next. Picking up immediately after a "megadrought" resulted in broken trade networks, mass migrations, and political crises that caused the collapse of the ancient Mediterranean's interconnected civilization, Cline moves on to recount how various remnants adapted. In Egypt, the reduction of the Nile's flow due to drought caused economic slowdown and ultimately a loss of military might, leading to an era of coups and intrigues. Meanwhile, Greece underwent the collapse of the palace system that epitomized Homeric society; Cline notes that its demise "may have actually freed" regular people "from a tremendous burden." The Assyrians and Babylonians proved more resilient; hit by "drought, famine, and plague," they repeatedly bounced back. But it's the innovative Phoenicians, Cline suggests, who really flourished in a freer, less hierarchical world order. Arising on the Levantine coast in a post-Hittite power vacuum, the Phoenicians were a collection of allied city-states who launched themselves west, establishing trading colonies across the Mediterranean. They brought with them a standardized alphabet (the ancestor of nearly all alphabetic scripts used today) and a game-changing metallurgic invention from Cyprus, iron. Cline distills an immense amount of material into a highly readable narrative that in its conclusion draws startling parallels with contemporary climate change. It's a dizzying feat of scholarship.
