1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History, 1) Paperback – September 22, 2015

[ I have edited this review to correct some flaws pointed out in comments. ]The other reviewers have already pointed out the book's many fine points; I agree with them that this is a book well worth reading. I had long thought that the Late Bronze Age Collapse was primarily due to the depredations of the Sea Peoples, and this book scotches that idea. Yes, the Sea Peoples played a part in it, but they may well have been just as much Effect as Cause. That is, their rampage may well have been induced by the same factors that brought down other cities.The real contribution of this book lies in the application of recent archaeological findings to the problem. Over the last few decades archaeologists have built up a steady compilation of data on the cities of the Late Bronze Age, and they have demonstrated that not all those cities were destroyed in wars. Some show evidence of having been wrecked by earthquakes; in others, the destruction is confined to the central palace and government facilities, suggesting that a popular revolt, not a foreign invasion, lay behind the destruction. Other sites, however, do show the kind of general destruction we'd expect from a victorious enemy.Especially important is the evidence they bring to bear showing that some sort of regional climate change was responsible for the at least some part of the collapse. The evidence indicates a cooler, dryer climate which would have been devastating to the cereal crops on which civilizations are dependent. The cooler climate would have led to repeated famines that would have led to revolts, migrations, and wars - all of which appear in the record of this period.However, there are two points on which I disagree with the author. The first is the author's decision not to organize the causal factors into some sort of logical pattern. Instead, he declares that all of the factors (climate change, poor harvests, migration, civil disturbance, and war) converged to create a "perfect storm" that destroyed Late Bronze Age civilization in the Near East. That struck me as overly conservative.My second objection falls on the assumption that a collapse of international trade caused by the piratical depredations of the Sea Peoples added to the collapse. The author several times refers to an 'international system' of trade, likening it to modern globalization. He even goes so far as to suggest that the societies of that time had developed such intricate trade relationships that the disruption of those relationships helped undermine the societies.The problem arises when you think in terms of economic output. In all early societies, agricultural output constituted the vast majority of economic output. Sure, the historical records teem with stories of gems, spices, precious woods, and metals, but they attracted so much attention only because they were so rare. In terms of economic output, grain was far and away the most important component of all ancient societies. Indeed, in 1790, 90% of all laborers in the USA worked on farms. So let's keep our eyes on the ball here: grain.Trade in grain was rare and limited to emergency situations, because the transport systems of the Late Bronze Age were incapable of moving grain in bulk. The ocean-going ships of the day had cargo capacities of a few tens of tons. Grain was carried in heavy ceramic jars; a single ship could carry enough food to provide for at most a hundred people for a year. Land transportation was even worse: the inefficient wagons and poor roads of the day did not permit the carriage of large amounts of grain very far. After a few tens of miles, so much of the grain would have to go to feed the dray animals that there just wouldn't be much left at the destination.Thus, the disruption of trade would have denied rulers their luxuries, but would not have made much of a dent on the economy as a whole.A postscript to this review: the author of the book, Eric Cline, has graciously responded to my criticisms and finally gotten through my thick head a point that, while not mentioned in this review, came up in the exchange of comments. He has taken a lot of his time to straighten me out, and I deeply appreciate his patience with my errors.

Dates as titles. Think the trend started with Charles Mann's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Since every school kid (at least in America) is quite familiar with what the next year represents, Mann did not need to elaborate on the subject matter. It was intuitively understood. Not so "1177 B.C." "The year civilization collapsed" is essential in conveying the book's subject matter. I've read a fair amount of history, but relatively little on the ancient world. Embarrassingly, I only recently got around to reading the The Odyssey. The version of the latter work that I read was a fresh translation by Barry Powell. In his introduction, he described how there was a Greek "dark age" that commenced around the year 1200 BC. Powell's comments seemed to be a perfect introduction to this work, which would tell me more.Eric H. Cline presents a compelling portrait of the Late Bronze Age. Overall, what historians call the Bronze Age covered the two millenniums prior to 1200 B.C. There were a number of civilizations in the area that we still call the Middle East and its environs. Some of the names are readily recognizable by the non-specialist, others are far more obscure; Mycenea (Greece), Hittite (central Turkey), Egyptian, Assyrian, Canaan, Mesopotamia, Ugarit (northern coastal Syria), Crete (Knossis), Cyprus, and Mitanni. They made alliances, fought wars, and traded with each other. Bronze itself, the strongest metal of the period, needed, naturally, for weapons, but also tools, required trade, since it was composed of copper, of which deposits were scattered throughout the area; and tin, which was much harder to find, with the largest supplies in far-off modern day Afghanistan.But how do we know what happened during this period? I was astonished at the number of letters that the author was able to quote from the period... and this is before the invention of what we call the "modern alphabet" with a limited number of characters, which happened around 800 BC. All of the letters were on clay tablets, which had to be fired in order to be preserved. And then there is the information that is deduced from archeological "digs," with the provenance of an object being all important. I found more fascinating the work of George Bass, who basically created the discipline of marine archeology, first used on the wreck at Uluburun, which was 40-50 meters underwater. Painstaking effort to dive, and work at those depths, but it was done.Two of the major events of this era that reverberate today were discussed. There is much evidence related to the Trojan War which Homer depicted in The Iliad (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). On the other hand, at least among secular archeologists, there was virtually no evidence in support of The Exodus (from Egypt).The first half of the book describes the scene before the collapse of these civilizations; the second half addresses the causes. Cline indicates a number of possibilities, yet since any single one has been survived by numerous civilizations, he posits that there could have been the "perfect storm" of all causes acting together. They were an outside invasion of the "Sea People." This is the Egyptian term, but no one seems to know who they were, and to me it was like claiming that it was the work of "aliens" from space, since there was no trace of their own civilization. The other factors were the increasingly familiar "climate change," which caused crop failures, as well as internal rebellions and earthquakes. To Cline's credit, he presents them all, and underscores that no one has developed a truly plausible explanation. He also covers the work of "complexity theory," which could lead to a better explanation, but the author also wryly states that it might just be "pseudo-science."As much as I appreciated the new information, which I assume to be reliable, I did have a number of problems with the work. It is a work written by an academic for a general audience. I recently finished Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain and saw the same problem there. The authors "plug" around 30-40 of their fellow academics in the text itself, as though to improve their reviews (or invitations to speak at the next conference.) The title itself is a bit of a "con," since Cline admits that the civilization did not collapse in one particular year; rather it was an overall collapse that may have spanned 70-100 years. Most surprising to me though, and I shouldn't really blame Kindle, I am reading along, the indicator says that I am 51% finished, and there is the Epilogue! The last HALF of the book is the bibliography, notes, an index and a listing of the main characters of the period. Academic indeed. Overall, 4-stars.