history

The first thing that struck me about The Foundations of Western Civilization was how abnormally fast it moved before it got to Greek history. The biggest Bronze Age civilizations got a lecture, and in five lectures or so we were in Greece and things slowed down. For Egypt in particular, it felt like they summed up the entirety of Egyptian history with a sentence or two each about the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom, then talked a little about Egyptian life and were done. ...

1177 BC is far less a final verdict than I would’ve preferred. Apparently, historians have discussed the Bronze Age collapse for at least 100 years, but this book mostly calls into question the traditional simple ideas and makes a case for a combination of earthquakes, revolts, and, to a much lesser extent than originally thought, the sea people invading, plus maybe some type of disruption of the trade networks, which again could be caused by the sea people or other unknown maritime raiders. ...