A (Very) Short History of the Collapse of Civilizations, and Why It Matters | Hacker News Reader

A (Very) Short History of the Collapse of Civilizations, and Why It Matters

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46 pointsmooreds12 comments

The author of this blog article is not an historian, and neither am I. But many of his assertions are false, and this whole article looks like vain chattering to me.

> the collapse of Mesopotamia more than four millennia ago, due to drought and agricultural failures

Mesopotamia collapsed? That's totally wrong. The author confused the Akkadian empire, founded by Sargon, with the civilisation of Mesopotamia. The short-lived empire ended circa 4000 BP, but the local cities continued to thrive for centuries, with the same language, the same culture... the same civilisation. And the "drought and agricultural failures" causing the collapse of the empire is a very controversial theory, since it may have happened after the end of the empire.

> a collapse like that of the Roman empire

Most modern historians deny that the Roman empire suffered a brutal "collapse". There was a transformation (a decline?) of the central Roman State for centuries, but in many places there was no collapse, no sudden change, but a form of continuity.

> Many conquered nations were plausibly ready to collapse

Once more, the author seems to mix up many concepts: the State, the nation, the civilisation. A conquered nation does not automatically collapse, nor does its "civilisation" end. Even the Romans used to joke about this, saying their troops conquered Greece, but Greece conquered the Roman's minds. Greek was spoken from Rome to modern Afghanistan long after Athens had lost its power and independence. And when Babylon fell to Cyrus, which "nation" did "collapse"? The Persian rulers even restored the temple of Marduk, the local main divinity.

Thanks for trying to provide feedback, but I think all you're doing is harping on non-universal definitions and noting debated historical points, most of which I'm familiar with but didn't think were worth extended discussion in this brief post, not substantively disagreeing. If that's not the case, maybe you can expand on why these lead you to disagree with the overall points made?

If it doesn't matter to the overall point whether various historical claims are true or false, then why include them? All it does is make the piece feel amateurish and contribute to a common problem of taking historical research flippantly and ignoring the community of experts.

It certainly matters that Mesopotamian agriculture had a collapse in ca. 2,200 BCE, but it doesn't matter whether you point out that it was the Akkadian empire founded by Sargon which collapsed, as the OP wanted to correct me about, or that, in fact, the agricultural collapse wasn't specific to the Akkadian empire, and affected areas outside of Mesopotamia. Similarly, it matters that the Roman empire fell, whether it was a gradual collapse or a sudden one - a point which the short post didn't discuss, despite the OP's complaint about inaccuracy.

And claiming that I was "ignoring the community of experts" is making unwarranted assumptions. I spent time getting feedback on the early draft of the paper which this was taken from from several people who do academic research on ancient cultures and collapse, and got minor notes about some of the points raised, as well as many more. But given the topic of the post, I didn't think that anyone needed a digression about the fascinating debate I took notes about regarding the timing of the collapse of the Akkadian empire compared to data about the broader climatic collapse from cores GeoB 5836-2 and M5-422, and other data from Buca della Renella and Soreq Cave in Israel.

If neither of you are historians then why is your opinion more credible than his?

In any case, the evidence supports his view much better than yours. While climate change is not the only factor in the collapse of the many civilizations of the region (Southwest Asia), it is one of the main factors. The region (which includes Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent) having been experiencing a warming climate and many instances of droughts. By the 1200BCE, it was in what historians now called the Dark age of Mesopotamia, leading the weakening and ultimately downfall of the Sumerians (even earlier), Egypt, Mycenaean Greece, the Hittite empire. What was once known as the Fertile Crescent is now mostly a dry and barren region.

Are you honestly asserting that a warming climate was the cause of the Bronze Age collapse without addressing 1177 BC and the migration of the Sea Peoples at all while insinuating that Egypt collapsed (it did not -- it went through hard times, but came through, and its the closest thing to a contemporary historical record we have)?

The sudden influx of nations on the march threw a spanner in a complex network of trade and intermarriage for regional stability. We have *zero* real idea why the Sumerian civilization was supplanted, or even where it originated from for that matter. Was it a language isolate because semitic groups became demographically dominant through natural causes? Were the Sumerians transplants from somewhere else? Did the Akkadians, Assyrians, and Neo-Assyrians rigorously stamp out ethnic groups? Zero idea.

It doesn't bode well for your position that you appear to be ill-informed also, and that you're asserting that a blip (because agriculture had no problems coming back to Mesopotamia after we have a reliable historical record again) in the climate also caused every other civilization in the Levant to collapse rather than 'we have a fragmentary historical record of the death throes of those civilizations against unknown invaders who pushed out (in the Levant) from a geographical position which happened to also serve as the transit corridor for trade, diplomatic communication, etc?", along with evidence for civil unrest, natural disasters, and a large number of factors which are merely contributory factors to a complex situation.

Honestly, please go read 1177 BC.

Yeah, the Roman Empire collapsed in the West for all practical purposes.

The best evidence to me is things like femur length decreases (and therefore inferred height reductions) of adult skeletons). There is a host of corroborating evidence from settlement sizes and shapes (defensive boundaries) as well.

If your civilization can't supply enough nourishment for the majority of its people (or even for its soldiers), it's collapsed.

Bret Devereaux has just done a series on this.[1]

1. https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-f...

> Most modern historians deny that the Roman empire suffered a brutal "collapse".

Who is claiming this?

(2020) and it seems better to link to the academic paper instead of the blog blurb.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00163...

Thanks for linking, and it's definitely a more polished version of what I was thinking - but after I discussed it with various researchers, as I noted in the post, the forum post is mostly material removed from the paper as interesting but primarily a side point.

There's a need to operationalize things like collapse, to quantify it and model it.

Otherwise it's too murky and subjective. Sometimes governments collapse with little consequences for everyday life, and other times government structures stay in place through upheaval.

Agreed - but it's a larger project than this post. That said, I'd be very interested in people building models of this that are operationalizable and falsifiable! If anyone is interested, they should be in touch.

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