Dear Elders

(all who are elder to 19 year olds)

“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.”

— Mark Twain

The future may rhyme with the past:

1200–300 BCE (900 years, 3150–2250 BA): Late Bronze Age collapse, a broad area wide collapse. Survivors of failed complex societies migrate (some becoming the People of the Sea and Land People) to exploit resources elsewhere which includes other complex societies. During collapse, conflict merely serves to see who inherits the rubble. History does not record the details, but a passage from Herodotus portrays the wandering and migration of Lydians from Anatolia because of famine: ‘In the days of Atys, the [legendary] son of Manes, there was great scarcity through the whole land of Lydia … So the king determined to divide the nation in half … the one to stay, the other to leave the land. … the emigrants should have his son Tyrrhenus for their leader … they went down to Smyrna, and built themselves ships … after sailing past many countries they came to Umbria … and called themselves … Tyrrhenians’. Migrants, aka Land Peoples, increased the human footprint elsewhere leading to collapse and more migrants. The increase in the number of migrants in the 21st century is exponential.

Near East (c. 1200 BC)
Anatolia, Caucasus, Elam, Egypt, Levant, Mesopotamia, Sistan, Canaan

South Asia (c. 1200 BC)
Bronze Age South Asia, Ochre Coloured Pottery, Cemetery H

Europe (c. 600 BC)
Aegean (Cycladic, Minoan, Mycenaean), Caucasus, Catacomb culture, Srubna culture, Beaker culture, Unetice culture, Tumulus culture, Urnfield culture, Hallstatt culture, Apennine culture, Canegrate culture, Golasecca culture, Atlantic Bronze Age, Bronze Age Britain, Nordic Bronze Age

East Asia (c. 300 BC)
Erlitou, Erligang, Gojoseon, Jomon, Majiayao, Mumun, Qijia, Siwa, Wucheng, Xindian, Yueshi

Video mentions the Hekla 3 Icelandic volcano eruption as possible cause, and 1100 BC as a date, which is too late to be a cause. Best guess current date is 1021 BC ±130, but some Egyptologists are certain 1159 BC is the exact date. Embrace ignorance and believe no one. Data says that for centuries steady and reliable rainfall had irrigated vast areas, increasing all human populations… until it didn’t, carrying capacity for humans fell, and the human populations were in overshoot.

Another story is that Dorian pressure on the Mycenaean overcomplex society (one Indo-European conqueror invading another) as environmental productivity ebbed (perhaps beginning within the Dorian region in northern Greece) lead to regional collapses in northern Greece and populations of iron slashing-sword armed migrant refugees (there was a late Bronze Age bronze shortage) who did what they had to do to persist short term. As already stressed neighboring communities were taken, those who couldn’t beat ’em joined ’em to move on to other settlements where some adaptive survivors joined them. Within a century Mycenae had collapsed (followed by Minoans…) and the Sea and Land Peoples spread to seriously threaten even Egypt. Assyrians persisted only by withdrawing away from the Mediterranean region back to their stronghold. The Phoenicians were already a sea people and expanded their empire while avoiding the newcomers who, as a dissipative structure, came to pass away with few remnant populations (e.g. Philistines) forming a non-marauding culture of would-be conquerors.

A 2020 video presentation by Eric Cline, archaeologist, offers a systems view of the Late Bronze Age collapse, i.e. ‘it’s complicated’. Systems collapse of complex interconnected societies has no one cause even if there is one trigger. In hindsight, collapse looks more like a perfect storm of negative feedback loops. This happening may be history’s best preview of what is a happening now.

Note the Late Bronze Age collapse was not over quickly following collapse of Mycenaean overcomplex society (a likely story of the early history of regional collapse). The collapse played out over centuries as it spread. While some of the marauding hordes reformed complex societies as groups of mostly men took over existing viable societies, e.g. mostly male Philistines on the coast of Canaan (per archaeogenetic data from cemeteries) from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, when their polity, after having already been subjugated for centuries by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, was finally destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar II.

The Israelites took a dim view of their would-be exterminators whose God, Beelzebub, was the Lord of the Flies all expansionists worship in various forms (e.g. There Are No Adults in the Room: Boys are us). Philistine Indo-European culture persisted for a time, but such is not evidence it was viable, nor that the cultures of any expansionist form of human is viable (and I’m talking about me, my family, you, and everyone you know unless you happen to know some San nomadic foragers).

When the first global overcomplex society collapses, the initial fall may play out over a relatively brief period of less than a century, but descent, so says history, plays out over centuries, nine in the case of the Late Bronze Age collapse. Globally, it could take longer.

Another event that may rhyme is that of the Indus Valley Civilization that started showing indications of collapse about 1900 BCE (future archaeologists may note 21st century CE as a comparable time) and within 200 years (not 20 or 70 years) most of the cities had been abandoned, but not all, and complex dissolution to regional extinction took another 400 years on the downslope. Could Modern Techno-Industrial overcomplex society follow a similar trajectory (but take longer) having the same outcome? What says history?

3300–1300 BCE (2,000 years, 5250–3250 BA): The Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) was a Bronze Age civilization (mature period 2600–1600 BCE) mainly in northwest South Asia, extending from what today is northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and northwest India. Along with ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia it was one of three early civilizations of the Old World, and of the three the most widespread. It flourished in the basins of the Indus River and along a system of perennial, mostly monsoon-fed, rivers. The late Harappan phase, weakened but with no outside force to conquer it, witnessed large scale de-urbanization, population decrease, abandonment of many established settlements, lack of basic amenities, interpersonal violence and disappearance of the Harappan script (loss of two thousand years of information as what writing survived is unreadable–no literate Harappans survived or left a Rosetta book). Indo-European Aryans moved in the area to become the Brahmans of India.

Per Wikipedia: ‘Around 1900 BCE signs of a gradual decline began to emerge, and by around 1700 BCE most of the cities had been abandoned. Recent examination of human skeletons from the site of Harappa has demonstrated that the end of the Indus civilisation saw an increase in inter-personal violence and in infectious diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis. According to historian Upinder Singh, “the general picture presented by the late Harappan phase is one of a breakdown of urban networks and an expansion of rural ones.”… there was a general decrease of long-distance trade…. Stone sculptures were deliberately vandalised, valuables were sometimes concealed in hoards, suggesting unrest, and the corpses of animals and even humans were left unburied in the streets and in abandoned buildings. During the later half of the 2nd millennium BCE [1500–1300 BCE], most of the post-urban Late Harappan settlements were abandoned altogether. Subsequent material culture was typically characterised by temporary occupation, “the campsites of a population which was nomadic and mainly pastoralist” and which used “crude handmade pottery.”’

The outcome was one of dissolution (regional extinction) of the civilization, so “a breakdown of urban networks and an expansion of rural ones” is not good news, is transitional to total dissolution, so while a remnant MTI population will persist a bit longer in rural areas, the breakdown just takes longer.

We are playing a high stakes endgame and not wanting to play it was likely the consensus narrative in the Indus Valley in 1900 BCE. I have nothing better to do, so a possible pathway to a viable civilization seems worth considering between sips on my latte. On the downslope, no one may have time/ability to consider possibly viable outcomes, such as Jack Alpert has been doing for over 50 years.