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Comment by taurath | Hacker News Reader

Is it possible the burst was even larger, perhaps so far as to be a cause precipitating the Bronze Age collapse? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse

Lots of close by civilizations had a rapid decline during the same timeframe.

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If I remember correctly, currently it is thought that the collapse was caused by many negative events happening almost at the same time. One of those are so-called Sea Peoples (seriously [0]). A single impact could explain a collapse of a city or a country, but not the fall of the whole region.

Extra Credits once did a series of videos describing various weak points that could lead to the Late Bronze Age collapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkMP328eU5Q

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples

However, a single impact could well cause a trade, agricultural or refugee crisis, or radically upset the balance of power in the region, which could have then triggered other crises as a domino effect.

It seems the impacts can chuck a lot of dust in the air, changing weather patterns for quite a while.

> Sea Peoples (seriously [0]).

There are worse names. Like the Beaker Folk. A thousand years of presumably history and culture, and you get named after a cup.

Honestly most names are like that. Sea peoples sounds dumb but The Thalassoi or the Marenians sound badass. Conversely Italians are Young Cattle Peoples, the French are Javelin Peoples, and the English are Peoples from Hook Land. There are some exceptions though - the Spanish are Men of the Ultimate West, the Japanese are Rising Sun Peoples, and Israelis are the God Fighters.

The timelines do not match. OP's event took place in 1650BCE, while the Bronze Age collapse was 450 years later, in 1200BCE.

Those dates are separated significantly beyond their margins of error.

I've read that this impact was thought to kick up water vapor from the dead sea and salt the surface of the earth in this area enough that agriculture would be nonviable for hundreds of years in the region. That's enough of an impetus to throw the social order out of whack with a whole sector of the economy eliminated, a pretty important one at that. I wouldn't be surprised if the survivors in this region had to resort to raiding further and further out for resources, eventually being known as these fabled "sea peoples" if their land was barren in this way over these same centuries.

Sorry I must have misread the paper I thought it said 1200BCE! Don’t HN late at night kids

The late Bronze age collapse was around 500 years later.

It's been thought that this impact marred the fertility of the land for the next few centuries in this area. That would certainly be enough to distrupt the social order of a former agrarian regional economy as the survivors increase in population and are forced to raid farther and farther out with each larger generation due to their local land being barren.

Sounds like it may have been a fair bit worse than Tunguska. I don't remember any shocked quartz or diamond like carbon from that one.

I think it's pretty clear now that the collapse was caused by mass migrations, but we don't know the root cause of those migrations. I don't see how a localized event such as this could have caused them.

One theory: a triple-whammy of drought, famine and earthquakes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImnqYT9C0Ws

> Eric Cline, Professor of Classics and Anthropology at George Washington University, discusses the factors that caused the Bronze Age to come to an end.

There is also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRcu-ysocX4 by Eric Cline, an (alternative) accompaniment to his book "1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed".

- I do recommend the book, but for most folks the YouTube lecture is probably enough detail :)

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