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I think I am missing something here. Does the book purport to mention every collapse? Why does WWOTF need to mention the Bronze Age Collapse?
Why doesn't WWOTF mention the Bronze Age Collapse?
1 min read · Sep 19, 2022
I think I am missing something here. Does the book purport to mention every collapse? Why does WWOTF need to mention the Bronze Age Collapse?
I don't think he needed an exhaustive review of collapses to make his point. There were other examples he could have used that were also absent, but he only needed a few to illustrate the fact that it's a danger with historical precedents.
First quick note: Spans much of the Mediterranean region is still local.
Second, while I of course wasn't the author, I wouldn't have talked about it much if we were, because we simply don't know enough about it for it to make sense to draw any weight bearing conclusions from the details of the Bronze Age collapse.
One of the major criticisms of Kurzgesagt's video on civ collapse (which is based on WWOTF) is that it didn't mention the Bronze Age Collapse, which was a widespread, monumental civilizational collapse that "regressed scientific and technological development." Reading through chapter 6 of WWOTF ("Collapse") right now, I'm dismayed that it doesn't mention the Bronze Age Collapse either. Although Will writes that "all historical civilisational collapses to date have been local" (p. 157), the Bronze Age Collapse seems like an exception because it spanned much of the Mediterranean region. Is this an oversight on Will's part or was there a reason why he didn't include it in the book (including lack of space)?
I don't know much about this, and I am definitely not a historian, but the Bronze age collapse was absolutely local rather than global, albeit larger in scope than most similar collapses. China's Shang Dynasty seems to have been unaffected, and it's unclear how much it affected Egypt. (And I have no idea why it wasn't mentioned in the book.)