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1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed: Revised and Updated (Turning Points in Ancient History Book 1) Kindle Edition
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A bold reassessment of what caused the Late Bronze Age collapse
In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh's army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C., which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. But the Sea Peoples alone could not have caused such widespread breakdown. How did it happen?
In this major new account of the causes of this "First Dark Ages," Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes. Bringing to life the vibrant multicultural world of these great civilizations, he draws a sweeping panorama of the empires and globalized peoples of the Late Bronze Age and shows that it was their very interdependence that hastened their dramatic collapse and ushered in a dark age that lasted centuries.
A compelling combination of narrative and the latest scholarship, 1177 B.C. sheds new light on the complex ties that gave rise to, and ultimately destroyed, the flourishing civilizations of the Late Bronze Age—and that set the stage for the emergence of classical Greece.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPrinceton University Press
- Publication dateFebruary 2, 2021
- File size13594 KB
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From the Publisher
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Cline is clearly in command of the textual record and his reading of it is the book's real strength."---A. Bernard Knapp, History Today
"Cline admirably acknowledges areas of existing scholarly controversy, while understandably emphasizing the consensus view in order to maintain the flow of his narrative. . . . He has a firm command of the textual, archaeological, and environmental evidence, and brings together a wealth of recent scholarship in an accessible form, a treatment which has been sorely lacking for this pivotal period. . . . [A] fine book."---Erin Warford, European Legacy
"Fascinating. . . . [A]voids the tedium of so many academic writers."---Bruce Beresford, filmmaker
"Cline's work reveals eerie parallels between the geopolitics of the first years of 12th century B.C. and today's 21st century. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed is history, but reads like a good mystery novel. Cline draws readers into his tale, revealing surprises throughout. It is all the more fascinating for being true, and for its relevance to today's world."---Mark Lardas, Daily News
"The most analytically satisfying, accessible, and of course up-to-date treatment of one of the great enigmas of the ancient world."---Christoph Bachhuber, Historian
"There are few published titles which focus on the tumultuous events that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean at approximately 1200 BCE. . . . Cline's 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed stands out among the rest as one of the best and most thoroughly researched. . . . This book is presented as a mystery novel. . . . One thing is for certain, once started, you will not want to put it down." ― Ancient Origins
"A wonderful example of scholarship written for the non-expert. Cline clearly pulls together the engaging story of the interactions among the major empires of the Late Bronze Age and puts forth a reasonable theory explaining why they seem to have evaporated as quickly as moisture on a hot afternoon."---Fred Reiss, San Diego Jewish World
"1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed is a thoughtful analysis of one of the great mysteries of human history. . . . Highly recommended."---James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review
"A detailed but accessible synthesis. . . . [O]ffers students and the interested lay antiquarian a sense of the rich picture that is emerging from debates among the ruins."---Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed
"A gripping mystery story with clues to follow and evidence to analyze."---SG, Ancient Egypt Magazine
"This collapse has been a popular subject for scholars, not least our author, for a very long time. Here he usefully assembles the evidence and deduces that it was the very complexity of powers, their interrelationships through trade or war, that brought about the collapse, and he is probably right."---John Boardman, Common Knowledge
"Extremely valuable for scholars, yet . . . easily understandable by general readers."---Richard A. Gabriel, Military History Quarterly
"[T]his work masterfully incorporates the present state of research into a welcome reevaluation of a period less known to the general public, the crisis of Late Bronze Age civilization. . . . [E}ven more brilliant is the spin on the similarities between the predicament of this area three millennia ago and now."---Barbara Cifola, American Historical Review
"Remarkably prescient. . . . [A] convincing case for the relevance of ancient history to the modern world." ― Canadian Journal of History
"1177 BC still offers the best treatment of the subject that is currently available. If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend that you do."---Josho Brouwers, Ancient World Magazine
"The memorable thing about Cline's book is the strangely recognizable picture he paints of this very faraway time. . . . It was as globalized and cosmopolitan a time as any on record, albeit within a much smaller cosmos. The degree of interpenetration and of cultural sharing is astonishing."---Adam Gopnik, New Yorker
"I don't know when I've appreciated a book as much as 1177 B.C. If you enjoy learning, you will enjoy this book! Highly recommended."---Thomas A. Timmes, UNRV History
"The 12th century BCE is one of the watershed eras of world history. Empires and kingdoms that had dominated late Bronze Age western Asia and the eastern Mediterranean collapsed." ― Choice
"Essential."---Thomas F. Bertonneau, Brussels Journal
"Well-written, very fairly argued, and excellent value, it will set the agenda for Late Bronze Age studies for some time to come."---Peter Jones, Classics for All
"Cline's book is something special in ancient history writing. . . . The book is up to date in its research, covers a lot of ground, is careful in its conclusions, and will be referred to and cited by students of Aegean and eastern Mediterranean prehistory, discussed by the scholarly community, as well as read by the interested public. Cline has done a good job of bringing the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean to a very wide audience."---Guy D. Middleton, American Journal of Archaeology
"Written in a lively, engaging style."---Michael McGaha, Middle East Media and Book Reviews
"Cline has created an excellent, concise survey of the major players of the time, the latest archaeological developments, and the major arguments, including his own theories, regarding the nature of the collapse that fundamentally altered the area around the Mediterranean and the Near East."---Evan M. Anderson, Library Journal
"Cline explores a vast array of variables that could have led to the disruption of the society of this era, including earthquakes, famines, droughts, warfare, and, most notably, invasions by the 'Sea Peoples.'" ― Publishers Weekly
"Eric H. Cline has written a work of great scholarship, but has written in a manner so that the non-expert . . . can not only understand, but also appreciate it."---Don Vincent, Open History
"Cline expertly and briskly takes the reader through the power politics of the fifteenth, fourteenth, and thirteenth centuries BC with excursuses on important archaeological discoveries and introductions for each of the major players. No reader with a pulse could fail to be captivated by the details."---Dimitri Nakassis, Mouseion
"[An] engaging book. . . . Cline builds a convincing case for his theory over a long and absorbing tour of the Late Bronze Age.”"---Josephine Quinn, London Review of Books
"In this enjoyable new book, Eric H. Cline has set himself an ambitious task: Not only must he educate a popular audience about the wealth and power of the eastern Mediterranean civilizations of the Bronze Age, he must then make his readers care that, some time around the year 1200 B.C., these empires, kingdoms, and cities suffered a series of cataclysms from which they never recovered."---Susan Kristol, Weekly Standard
"Fresh and engaging."---Andrew Robinson, Current World Archaeology
"Cline has written one of this year's most interesting books."---Jona Lendering, NRC Handelsblad
"The end of the Late Bronze Age, around the turn of the twelfth century BCE, was a civilizational collapse similar to the much better known fall of the Roman Empire seventeen centuries later. . . . The causes of this collapse have been among the enduring mysteries of ancient history and archaeology, a complicated detective story for which Eric Cline deftly serves as guide. Cline . . . presents for educated general readers a survey of the evidence and scholarship concerning the end of the Late Bronze Age. He also engagingly establishes the historical and geographical context of the collapse, complete with a motley and compelling cast of characters."---Matthew A. Sears, Canadian Journal of History
"A fascinating look at the Late Bronze Age, proving that whether for culture, war, economic fluctuations or grappling with technological advancement, the conundrums we face are never new, but merely renewed for a modern age."---Larry Getlen, New York Post
Review
“1177 B.C. tells the story of one of history’s greatest mysteries. Unknown invaders shattered the splendid civilizations of the Bronze Age Mediterranean in a tidal wave of fire and slaughter, before Egypt’s pharaoh turned them back in a fierce battle on the banks of the Nile. We do not know who these attackers were, and perhaps we never will; but no archaeologist is better equipped to guide us through this dramatic story than Eric Cline. 1177 B.C. is the finest account to date of one of the turning points in history.”―Ian Morris, author of Why the West Rules―for Now
“This book is a very valuable and very timely addition to the scholarship on the end of the Late Bronze Age. Cline provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and up-to-date treatment of one of the most dramatic and enigmatic periods in the history of the ancient world.”―Trevor Bryce, author of The World of the Neo-Hittite Kingdoms: A Political and Military History
“This is an excellent, thought-provoking book that brings to life an era that is not well known to most readers.”―Amanda H. Podany, author of Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East
“This enthralling book describes one of the most dramatic and mysterious processes in the history of mankind―the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations. Cline walks us through events that transpired three millennia ago, but as we follow him on this intriguing sojourn, lurking in the back of our minds are tantalizing, perpetual questions: How can prosperous cultures disappear? Can this happen again; to us?”―Israel Finkelstein, coauthor of The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
“Impressively marshaling the most recent archaeological and historical evidence, Eric Cline sets the record straight: there was a ‘perfect storm’ of migrations, rebellions, and climate change that resulted in the collapse of states that were already unstable in the Late Bronze Age. There followed an ‘age of opportunity’ for new kinds of political systems and ideologies that remade the world of the eastern Mediterranean in the first millennium B.C. Onward and upward with collapse!”―Norman Yoffee, University of Michigan
“Cline has written a wonderfully researched and well-crafted overview of one of the most fascinating, complex, and debated periods in the history of the ancient world. Tying together an impressively broad range of disparate data, he weaves together a very convincing re-creation of the background, mechanisms, and results of the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age in the eastern Mediterranean and beyond.”―Aren Maeir, Bar-Ilan University
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B08KKTCS22
- Publisher : Princeton University Press; Revised, Updated edition (February 2, 2021)
- Publication date : February 2, 2021
- Language : English
- File size : 13594 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 290 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #464 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

DR. ERIC H. CLINE is Professor of Classics and Anthropology, Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute, and former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at The George Washington University, in Washington DC. A National Geographic Explorer, Fulbright scholar, and NEH Public Scholar with degrees from Dartmouth, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania, he is an active field archaeologist with more than 30 seasons of excavation and survey experience in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, and the United States, including ten seasons at the site of Megiddo (biblical Armageddon) in Israel and eight seasons at Tel Kabri, also in Israel, where he is currently Co-Director. Winner of the 2014 "Nancy Lapp Award for Best Popular Book" from the American Schools of Oriental Research for his book "1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed," which was also considered for a Pulitzer Prize, and winner of the same award again in 2018 for his book "Three Stones Make a Wall: The Story of Archaeology," he is also a three-time winner of the Biblical Archaeology Society's "Best Popular Book on Archaeology" Award (2001, 2009, and 2011). A popular lecturer who has appeared frequently on television documentaries, he has also won national and local awards for both his research and his teaching. He is the author or editor of 20 books, which have been translated into sixteen languages, as well as nearly 100 articles, and several recorded lecture courses. His previous books written specifically for the general public include "The Battles of Armageddon: Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age" (2000); "Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel" (2004); "From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible" (2007); "Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction" (2009); "The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction" (2013); "1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed" (2014; revised 2021); "Three Stones Make a Wall: The Story of Archaeology” (2017); and, most recently, "Digging Up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon" (2020).
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Decades of science and scholarship slowly reveal a sometimes-frightening story of vibrant lives snuffed out by uncontrollably violent, tragic events. The most direct reports come from cuneiform letters on clay tablets between kings, merchants, and high official recording treaties, marriages, gift exchanges, requests for foreign aid, and so many other events of the day sounding as if they were yesterday’s CNN news reports. These tablets from sites in present day Egypt, Israel, Syria, Cyprus, Crete, and Iraq summarize the results of over 100 years of archeological excavations, documentation, and scholastic study of clay document records. A historical literature describing a highly sophisticated cooperative societies existing over thousands of years.
The intensity of trade and interchange of Bronze age civilization is most poignantly portrayed in careful reports of underwater excavations of trading ships off the coast of Greece, Egypt, and Turkey. George Bass from Texas A&M created a new field of study by documenting the 1300 BC shipwreck at Uluburun, Turkey with goods from sources in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Mycenae, Minos, and many other ports of call around the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. Most important were the discovery of tin ingots from Afghanistan and copper ingots from Cyprus, used for smelting of Bronze. Enough to create swords and armor for 300 soldiers of the king’s army. This lively trade, interchange and prosperity over centuries came to a crashing close for multiple collaborating empires – Hittite Empire, Kingdom of Minoa, Kingdom of Mycenae, and Babylonia. Only the weakened Egyptian Empire survived following their triumph over the invading sea people in 1177 B.C. It was the end.
What caused the rapid decline and collapse of such a vibrant civilization. For almost a century scholars attributed downfall to invasion by the “sea people” mentioned in multiple Egyptian documents. This convenient explanation could not be corroborated with archeological evidence to show who they were, where they came from and why they so suddenly appeared with forces sufficient to topple established empires with powerful armies. Using instrumentation developed in physics laboratories, experts dated events of destruction using Carbon-14. Electron microscopy of pollen deposition in cores from lakes, rivers, and seas show a clear century-long picture of mega-climate change relating to written historical events. The global summary is a chilling picture of one possible future for present-day civilizations. A mega-drought lasting centuries caused famine, political unrest, revolution by the lower classes and organized emigrations of forces – raiding armies – to find better living conditions. Trade collapsed due to roaming bands of bandits and pirates.
The final chapter of Kline’s book ponders the constant rise and fall of empires, kingdoms and entire collaborative groups forming a coherent civilization. He concludes “we should not think our current world is invincible, for we are in fact more susceptible than we might wish to believe.”
1172 B.C. is a worthwhile read especially when considering the ever-crazier people behavior in response to stresses. Many wish to ignore the risks of increasing carbon dioxide gas content in the atmosphere caused by human activities. Science competes with magic for the attention of the masses. Science appears to be losing.
Studies suggest that these kingdoms (ancient Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Crete, the early Greeks, Hittites, Philistines and Babylonians) had well established communications and commercial trade (both land and sea) throughout the whole region and civilization seemed to be flourishing . So, what happened?
This book brings together hundreds of years of Bronze Age archeology and historical study to try and find an answer. Wars, earthquakes, volcanoes, climate change, famine and disease were thoroughly analyzed, with nothing conclusive. The best bet is that the area experienced a little of ‘all of the above’ and a severe prolonged drought (lasting many, many decades) which forced people to either relocate or die.
Although the book is fairly easy to read, I found a lot of the archaeology and scientific info to be dry and repetitive. However, while laying it all out, the author provided a very good history of all those ancient civilizations....and it was worth the read just for THAT.
Except for Egypt and Greece, my only knowledge of those other kingdoms was from the Bible’s Old Testament. Evidently, Moses and Joshua made war against the Canaanites and Philistines during this time period, so the history in this book gives Exodus a little international context.
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Sin embargo, no es un libro básico, sino que combina un estilo ágil de escritura, con una gran erudición.
Cline es uno de los grandes estudiosos del periodo.



























