19 May 2024
After 1177 B.C.
The Survival of Civilizations
Eric H. Cline
Princeton Univ. 2024. 314pp. 15 illustrations, 8 tables, 6 maps; Notes (keyed to text, 35pp); References 15pp); “Dramatis Personae” (5pp); Index[Click on images for sharper view]
Although this is clearly an academic book about the period at the end of the Bronze Age, it is enlivened with wit (such as wry references to modern song titles) and offers excellent illustrations and archaeological site photos. Considering that the text itself is really less than 200 pages out of 314, nevertheless, I found myself skimming over long sections detailing the various Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean civilizations. One significant problem is that, despite having at least 3 books about the year 1177, he never sits down and says what happened that year. We do learn that it wasn’t necessarily a sudden “collapse” — yet why name the whole book after one year…other than for cleverness or shock value?
He does cite the probable factors in the “collapse” (of this as with other periods): climate change, drought, famine, earthquakes, invaders, disease. “None of them would have been sufficiently cataclysmic on its own to bring down even one of the Bronze Age civilizations…However, the flourishing cultures were simply not able to survive the onslaught of so many different stressors all at the same time.” (xxi) The book takes us up to the resurgence of Greece, marked by the first Olympic games in 776 BCE. Still it would have been nice to delve into at least some details—which presumably he does in his other 1177 books. In general, the period is “the story of failure, resilience and transformation in an age of chaos. Those who failed to adjust disappeared from the world stage while others transformed themselves” [from the book jacket].
Interestingly, a “dark period” can also be taken to mean a time when we don’t have written (or chiseled) records.
- The “G8” of the period from 15th to 12th centuries: Mycenaeans, Minoans, Hittites, Cypriots, Canaanites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians (xxi)
- Cline starts out by debunking the concept of a “Dorian invasion” which scholars began questioning as long ago as 1966–a “scholarly mirage” (pp1-4)
- Calling the period of 1177 BCE the “Dark Ages” is a misnomer that he takes pains to dismiss. As with other scholars, he prefers the neutral term “Iron Age.” This also goes for the so-called “Dark Ages” after the Fall of Rome, which scholars now refer to as “Late Antiquity” or, even better, “Early Middle Ages” (198).
- Characteristics of a “collapse”: lack of written records and simplification of society. Actually, the concept of a “dark age” does fit eras which did not pass down records but are often mistakenly taken to imply total collapse (195).
- The period of “reorganization” during the period includes a remarkable number of “firsts” under development including “mass literacy,” the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet, the invention of coinage, the creation of Greek city states and the use of iron tools and weapons (198)
Nitpicks
- Although scholars (even religiosos) now universally use the abbreviation BCE and CE, Cline uses “BC” throughout. Not clear if he’s making a subtle point about the terminology or somehow trying to maintain consistency with his 13 other cited works.
- A real oddity. Cline cites scholars on nearly every page, quite properly giving their academic or field of expertise, but in numerous instances insists on using genial honorifics like “the revered,” “celebrated,” “well-known,” “respected,” “renowned,” even “colorful” and is careful to put “professor emeritus” whenever that applies. I counted, casually, 10 of these honorifics just skimming along but there were probably 10 more instances. Maybe he’s giving props to personal acquaintances.
- I was hoping to see if there was some mention of the fall/decline of Nazareth, as detailed in Salm’s Myth of Nazareth (qv in my Theo biblio), in which Salm asserts that Nazareth had actually been uninhabited from around 700 BCE until 50 or 70 CE, long before the time of Jesus but this book understandably does not cover that.