Sad but true - another example of the lessons we can learn from history... I remember a really interesting remark when we did the "end of the world" event with Christopher Star - he said it's often the people up in the mountains who know how to live with little that survive...
"Do you think we will progress to a new age of enlightenment, or will our challenges overcome us and force us to rebuild society in a world of lost knowledge?"
I hope for the age of enlightenment. Logically, that can only be found by choosing the path leading towards wisdom, what I call praxis of philosophy- not found in books. The pesimetic in me says, the world will always go through cycles of destruction, so preparation for anything is healthy as long as fear doesn't take over.
It is as though we have to tolerate 'them', be patient, understand. They too will recover from ignorance. While waiting and patience is the first ploy, active revolution always kicks change into gear. Most of us are at the first stage, the second is looming, my dear fellows, looming I say.
When I was an undergraduate (in the 1960's yes the last century) then called the Calamities of 1200 BCE, was a hot topic, investigated over and over during my long pursuit of higher degrees, and yet so many yeas later it seems that academic are still undecided. That lack of certainty leaves those who follow us have an opportunity to solve the mystery.
Does our future hold a series of natural disasters, it seems so with the current weather patterns. We will survive and then thrive? I end with a quote by the actor Jeff Bridges in "Starman" a film where an alien ship crashes and the pilot, whose species has visited earth many times, tells an earthling what he thinks of humans "Shall I tell you what I find beautiful about you? ...You are at your very best when things are worst.” So let's hope it is true
It interesting to imagine who will be more resilient in such circumstances... We discussed this a lot in the "End of the World" Event we did last year... and the truly anti-fragile are often those who are already surviving in extreme. We regularly go up to Salta where the indigenous people still live in earthen hunts and survive on who knows what (its a mountainous desert). They will certainly make it through - whereas the vast majority of us city-dwellers would struggle even with the basics.
I do not believe our society is still capable of enlightenment. People have become so self centered and governments subdue any thoughts of a benefit for humanity. I do believe in lost knowledge though. I also find solace in knowing that my savior has already completed the work for me.
IF there was some super-duper volcanic eruptions situation that would show everywhere as a distinct worldwide layer that the scientists would have noticed, but there's no report of that, merely specific volcanos that did damage to particular places like the Pompeii situation. More likely to be a temperature glitch that made life deteriorate or droughts so the water situation became dire. Of course if food got scarce they likely would have been fighting to the death to try to take whatever they could from other humans.
Eric H. Cline's book "1177 B.C." about the Late Bronze Age collapse is presenting the topic in a very readable way, and up-to-date to contemporary research. Yes, research is still going on, many questions are not settled. You are allowed to speculate on your own, what could have happened, and to follow further publications on the subject: Maybe your speculation was right?
The Sea Peoples came from "islands", as it says. Well, this can mean a lot, but it is was it is. And their attack concerned the whole of the ancient world, and only Egypt could stop them. Sounds a lot like Plato's Atlantis. Therefore, several scholars have proposed the Sea Peoples to be the historical background behind Plato's story. The first to propose it was Wilhelm von Christ in 1886.
Until recently when politics took over it was well understood that the climate during the Holocene has been a series of descending plateaus of warm periods starting with the “Holocene optimum”, optimum meaning good and also much warmer than today, and the end of each warm period coincided with a period of intense upheaval, the Minoan, the Roman, the medieval, all followed by cooler periods defined by famine, strife, collapse, peaking with the recent Little Ice Age, the coldest trough of the Holocene, marked by plague, famine, depopulation that then fed exploration, colonization.
All the history I read on these collapses made no sense to me until its overlain with the best reconstructions of the temperatures over the Holocene.
The end of the Roman warm period again had famine, plague that weakened the Roman’s and Persians and allowed Muhammad’s Arabs and Islam to come up the middle and knock them both off.
Cold is a bugger, I’m hoping for warmer and if we really are helping that, so much the better.
As the daughter of a geologist (who originally was an astronomer) and a micro-biologist, I think we humans really struggle to comprehend scales and timelines that are much, much larger (or smaller) than ourselves. "Man is the measure" - and as such we can't seem to measure well beyond ourselves.
Sabine and Thorsen would suggest that the end of the City States and rise of the floating and lost ‘universal citizen’ of Macedonian and Roman Empires was the greatest disaster
With the rise of Hellenistic Period and Roman Empire and end of city states there was a continuity of knowledge and culture. Whereas the Bronze Age was followed by a Dark Age.
Putting aside what we may never know, we may be more susceptible to such an outcome than the ancients were. Some of the threats are obvious. Climate change in the next century could make large areas of the planet uninhabitable; Africa and South American too hot, the British Isles and Europe too cold. Added to that is our reliance upon satellites which could be disabled by a strong enough solar flare hitting the earth at the right angle or by the Kessler effect: the destruction of satellites in a war between minor nations which leads to a further catastrophic cascade of destruction of other satellites.
Nuclear war could happen sooner than later. A super bug like the one described in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake maybe maybe the most likely cause of all.
Thankfully we will all be able to take Space X to our new underground condos on Mars!
It's very humbling to think how many weak points there are in our society and how quickly we can 'go back'. I always think about that with regards to meteors... An important reminder to enjoy our lives in the here and now.
There was once a day here in Argentina when there was no electricity or signal for like 6 hours - it was an eye opener! I spoke about it with Niall Ferguson: https://youtu.be/V61ySWy4qmw?si=d06VznV1pioSIhBd
Good luck with that (condo on Mars). I have strong doubts that Earth in general, as well as SpaceX in particular, is ready for that. The technology for surviving on another planet, much less flourishing) is nowhere near ready.
So very interesting and relevant to our current times: disparity of classes causing social unrest, climate change, migration of peoples, etc.
Sad but true - another example of the lessons we can learn from history... I remember a really interesting remark when we did the "end of the world" event with Christopher Star - he said it's often the people up in the mountains who know how to live with little that survive...
Grinder
Civilization, redefined
by successive eras
of human striving,
grinds mostly to dust
the remnants of thoughtful
aspiration as well as foolish desire.
Her ghost infects her immunity.
Yet, from the grinder of materialism
comes a residue.
It carries forth the atoms of the ages
floating on the winds of the “music of the spheres.”
She forgets or denies or builds anew.
Seeds scattered,
perhaps genetically modified,
sprout to give rise to things other
than what went before.
Neither hide nor hair nor
dismantled stone explain the
reformed foundations.
Hieroglyphs and stone tablets,
shards of pottery,
bronze and iron and steel artifacts,
false gods, false hopes, algorithmic swords
outlast their original reason.
Imagination eclipses understanding. rKf 18 October 2024
"Do you think we will progress to a new age of enlightenment, or will our challenges overcome us and force us to rebuild society in a world of lost knowledge?"
I hope for the age of enlightenment. Logically, that can only be found by choosing the path leading towards wisdom, what I call praxis of philosophy- not found in books. The pesimetic in me says, the world will always go through cycles of destruction, so preparation for anything is healthy as long as fear doesn't take over.
It is as though we have to tolerate 'them', be patient, understand. They too will recover from ignorance. While waiting and patience is the first ploy, active revolution always kicks change into gear. Most of us are at the first stage, the second is looming, my dear fellows, looming I say.
When I was an undergraduate (in the 1960's yes the last century) then called the Calamities of 1200 BCE, was a hot topic, investigated over and over during my long pursuit of higher degrees, and yet so many yeas later it seems that academic are still undecided. That lack of certainty leaves those who follow us have an opportunity to solve the mystery.
Does our future hold a series of natural disasters, it seems so with the current weather patterns. We will survive and then thrive? I end with a quote by the actor Jeff Bridges in "Starman" a film where an alien ship crashes and the pilot, whose species has visited earth many times, tells an earthling what he thinks of humans "Shall I tell you what I find beautiful about you? ...You are at your very best when things are worst.” So let's hope it is true
It interesting to imagine who will be more resilient in such circumstances... We discussed this a lot in the "End of the World" Event we did last year... and the truly anti-fragile are often those who are already surviving in extreme. We regularly go up to Salta where the indigenous people still live in earthen hunts and survive on who knows what (its a mountainous desert). They will certainly make it through - whereas the vast majority of us city-dwellers would struggle even with the basics.
I have to agree with you that city dwellers are not ready for true challenges. I'm often a bit to sappy in my optimism.
I do not believe our society is still capable of enlightenment. People have become so self centered and governments subdue any thoughts of a benefit for humanity. I do believe in lost knowledge though. I also find solace in knowing that my savior has already completed the work for me.
There have been renewals in the past - So I try to remain optimistic...
IF there was some super-duper volcanic eruptions situation that would show everywhere as a distinct worldwide layer that the scientists would have noticed, but there's no report of that, merely specific volcanos that did damage to particular places like the Pompeii situation. More likely to be a temperature glitch that made life deteriorate or droughts so the water situation became dire. Of course if food got scarce they likely would have been fighting to the death to try to take whatever they could from other humans.
It's interesting to compare a more modern example of volcanic disruption - the Year without Summer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer) - which was the largest since the winter of 536 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536) - but I know volcanic activity was much much higher in the past than it is now.
For volcanoes, "now" is "in the last 100,000 years"
Yes! Very true... It does exist on a completely different timeline.
Really enjoyed the piece. Well written and thought provoking.
Eric H. Cline's book "1177 B.C." about the Late Bronze Age collapse is presenting the topic in a very readable way, and up-to-date to contemporary research. Yes, research is still going on, many questions are not settled. You are allowed to speculate on your own, what could have happened, and to follow further publications on the subject: Maybe your speculation was right?
Did you enjoy our podcast with Professor Cline? https://classicalwisdom.substack.com/p/after-1177-bc
Will have a look, thank you :-)
They were all in Atlantis, most likely.
The Sea Peoples came from "islands", as it says. Well, this can mean a lot, but it is was it is. And their attack concerned the whole of the ancient world, and only Egypt could stop them. Sounds a lot like Plato's Atlantis. Therefore, several scholars have proposed the Sea Peoples to be the historical background behind Plato's story. The first to propose it was Wilhelm von Christ in 1886.
One theory was that the collapse of Thera tsunamied the region, but that doesn't ’t seem likely.
Well, it actually did affect the region with tsunamis, but it did not effect a collapse, except in Thera itself, of course.
It was climate change and like all such disasters it was a climate cooling not warming that was likely proximate cause.
Warm is always better
It's true - deaths from the cold outweigh greatly deaths from heat. One only has to think of the 'snow angels' in Russia...
Until recently when politics took over it was well understood that the climate during the Holocene has been a series of descending plateaus of warm periods starting with the “Holocene optimum”, optimum meaning good and also much warmer than today, and the end of each warm period coincided with a period of intense upheaval, the Minoan, the Roman, the medieval, all followed by cooler periods defined by famine, strife, collapse, peaking with the recent Little Ice Age, the coldest trough of the Holocene, marked by plague, famine, depopulation that then fed exploration, colonization.
All the history I read on these collapses made no sense to me until its overlain with the best reconstructions of the temperatures over the Holocene.
The end of the Roman warm period again had famine, plague that weakened the Roman’s and Persians and allowed Muhammad’s Arabs and Islam to come up the middle and knock them both off.
Cold is a bugger, I’m hoping for warmer and if we really are helping that, so much the better.
As the daughter of a geologist (who originally was an astronomer) and a micro-biologist, I think we humans really struggle to comprehend scales and timelines that are much, much larger (or smaller) than ourselves. "Man is the measure" - and as such we can't seem to measure well beyond ourselves.
Sabine and Thorsen would suggest that the end of the City States and rise of the floating and lost ‘universal citizen’ of Macedonian and Roman Empires was the greatest disaster
With the rise of Hellenistic Period and Roman Empire and end of city states there was a continuity of knowledge and culture. Whereas the Bronze Age was followed by a Dark Age.
Putting aside what we may never know, we may be more susceptible to such an outcome than the ancients were. Some of the threats are obvious. Climate change in the next century could make large areas of the planet uninhabitable; Africa and South American too hot, the British Isles and Europe too cold. Added to that is our reliance upon satellites which could be disabled by a strong enough solar flare hitting the earth at the right angle or by the Kessler effect: the destruction of satellites in a war between minor nations which leads to a further catastrophic cascade of destruction of other satellites.
Nuclear war could happen sooner than later. A super bug like the one described in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake maybe maybe the most likely cause of all.
Thankfully we will all be able to take Space X to our new underground condos on Mars!
It's very humbling to think how many weak points there are in our society and how quickly we can 'go back'. I always think about that with regards to meteors... An important reminder to enjoy our lives in the here and now.
The pinch point is the electrical grid, it is EVERYTHING, nothing you see around you functions without it, and we are purposely weakening it.
That is where you need to focus.
There is nothing comparable to losing the grid here on the North American prairies in winter, except maybe an asteroid hit
There was once a day here in Argentina when there was no electricity or signal for like 6 hours - it was an eye opener! I spoke about it with Niall Ferguson: https://youtu.be/V61ySWy4qmw?si=d06VznV1pioSIhBd
Good luck with that (condo on Mars). I have strong doubts that Earth in general, as well as SpaceX in particular, is ready for that. The technology for surviving on another planet, much less flourishing) is nowhere near ready.
It was a nice story telling article loved the language used
What about the volcanic eruption of Santorini.. in the Mediterranean.. it blew a massive hole in the island & caused a huge tsunami…