Sublime

evidence of early “internationalism”

the question of why a stable international system suddenly collapsed after flourishing for centuries.

“all civilizations eventually experience violent restructuring of material and ideological realities such as destruction or re-creation.”

I wanted to write about what collapsed as well as how and why it collapsed, because to me the Late Bronze Age is the most fascinating period in the history of the world.

Although I am primarily interested in examining the possible causes of the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations in this area, I also raise the question of what it was that the world lost at this pivotal moment, when the empires and kingdoms of the second millennium BC came crashing down. I am also interested in the extent to which civilization

In writing about the situation at the end of the Late Bronze Age in his book Scales of Fate, Monroe describes the interactions of the various powers in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean as an “inter-societal network,” which agrees with the picture presented here. He points out, as I have, that this period is “exceptional in the treaties, laws, d

“The destruction layer contains remains of conflicts (bronze arrowheads scattered around the town, fallen walls, burnt houses), ash from the conflagration of houses, and chronologically well-constrained ceramic assemblages fragmented by the collapse of the town.”

a megadrought that impacted much of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean beginning ca. 1200 BC and lasting between 150 and 300 years.

Thus, in the Late Bronze Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, we have individual sociopolitical systems, the various civilizations, that were growing more complex and thus apparently more liable to collapse. At the same time, we have complex systems, the trading networks, that were both interdependent and complicated in their relationships, and th