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Sometime around the year 1100 BC, right at the end of the Bronze Age, a wave of destruction washed over the Eastern Mediterranean. It wiped whole civilizations off the map, and left only ash and ruin in its wake.

This catastrophe, known as “the Late Bronze Age Collapse”, has become one of the enduring puzzles of archaeology. I want to explore how so many societies could collapse all at once, and seemingly without warning, as well as examine the lessons it might teach us in our increasingly globalised and interconnected world.

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Credits:

Voice Actors:

Shem Jacobs
Jacob Rollinson
Jake BarrettMills
Bryan Tshiobi
Helena Bacon

Music by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source: incompetech.com/music/royaltyfre…isrc=USUAN1100209
Artist: incompetech.com/

Title theme: Home At Last by John Bartmann. https://johnbartmann.com/

Sources:

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Breated, James Henry. Ancient Records of Egypt: The twentieth to the twentysixth dynasties. United States, University of Illinois Press, 2001.

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Warriors of Anatolia: A Concise History of the Hittites. United Kingdom, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.

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Medinet Habu inscription of Ramesses III's 8th year (1178 B.C.E.), lines 1617, trans. by John A. Wilson in Pritchard, J.B. (ed.) Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testament, 3rd edition, Princeton 1969

Megadrought and Collapse: From Early Agriculture to Angkor. United States, Oxford University Press, 2017.

Nougayrol, Jean; Laroche, Emmanuel; Virolleaud, Charles (1968). Ugaritica. V: nouveaux textes accadiens, hourrites et ugaritiques des archives et bibliothèques privées d'Ugarit. Stony Brook University.

Pritchard, James B., editor. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament with Supplement. Princeton University Press, 1978. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt19wccw4. Accessed 10 July 2023.

Tainter, Joseph. The Collapse of Complex Societies. United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Wyatt, Nick. Religious texts from Ugarit. United Kingdom, Bloomsbury Academic, 2002.Yon, Marguerite. The City of Ugarit at Tell Ras Shamra. United States, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.

Yon, Marguerite. The City of Ugarit at Tell Ras Shamra. United States, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.

Yurco, Frank J. (1999). ‘End of the Late Bronze Age and Other Crisis Periods: A Volcanic Cause’. In Teeter, Emily; Larson John (eds.). Gold of Praise: Studies on Ancient Egypt in Honor of Edward F. Wente. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilisation. Vol. 58. Chicago, IL: Oriental Institute of the Univ. of Chicago. pp. 456–458.