Felix Höflmayer | Chronologies of Collapse: Climate Change

Felix Höflmayer, Post-Doctoral Scholar, Oriental Institute -- University of Chicago presents the second lecture in our four-part series: Why Did Civilizations Collapse: Internal Decay or External Forces. Chronologies of Collapse: Climate Change and the late Third Millennium BCE Ancient Near East.
During the late third millennium BCE the Ancient Near East witnessed major historical transformations and the end of several empires, like the downfall of the Akkadian Empire in Upper Mesopotamia, the collapse of the first urban centers of the southern Levant and the end of the Egyptian Old Kingdom in the Nile Valley. In the lecture we will take a closer look at nature, date and possible reasons for these interregional collapses of the late third millennium BCE.
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[@moculus2063]

There is another regional wide collapse around the end of the Bronze Age, whose causes are mysterious, and ended a number of important civilizations, including the Hittites, Minoan, Canaanites, and New Kingdom Egyptian. Great presentation.

[@walther7147]

M Oculus a volcano wiped them out

[@michaels4255]

If you mean Santorini/Thera, that was too early.

[@intractablemaskvpmGy]

I'm wondering where are the parts 1&4 of the series "Why Did Civilizations Collapse: Internal Decay or External Forces?" I do not see them listed by description in the OI's list of videos. This is fantastic stuff.

[@ryandude3]

I also wish this was more clearly indicated.

[@terminatedaccount8750]

Checkout the playlist from Yale on Anthropology. we might be collapsing sooner then later from over population. Birth to death ratio is off. It's like we owe death or something. It's almost like if there are people here that shouldn't be here. kind of creepy. Yale also has a good political science playlist if you want to see how politicians do their "weapons of mass instructions". it's pretty cool. Here is one video about world ending. it's from Havard Total History: Alexander the Great to the End of the World | Paul J. Kosmin || Radcliffe Institute oh and i found a playlist with 53 videos called ancient history lectures. it has collapse of Civilizations all thru history.

[@intractablemaskvpmGy]

@@terminatedaccount8750 Thanks I will look into it as I find the subject fascinating and applicable. Currently I am reading Eric Cline's "1187 BC the year civilizaation collapsed." I'm not so sure that I ascribe much merit to the Malthusian philosophy that the are too many people- that concept has been around since the Middle Ages. And there is definitely no scarcity in resources despite what some would pressure you to believe. However, it wouldn't take much to topple the dominoes of our Global economy IMO. we've seen inklings of this during the covid pandemic! However, life and people will carry on as they always have unless we manage to extinct ourselves (highly unlikely)

[@DidivsIvlianvs]

So why did the southern Levant collapse (at the height of the Old Kingdom)? Were they brought in to build the pyramids or something?

[@ryandude3]

Are there Q&A sessions that follow these lectures? If so, I would love to be able to see those as well.

[@johnmanno2052]

Why Is it that everyone feels they have to explain radiocarbon dating, over and over again? Everybody knows what radiocarbon dating is. Even Creationists, for crying out loud. The chronology of the ancient Near East is really really complicated. Those pesky eclipses, those careless scribes, poor Ms Venus who's not behaving as she should, then all that uncooperative carbon. I had hoped he'd discuss the problems with all of it more than he did. I also wish that all these absolutely brilliant people would take some acting classes. They just do not have any kind of polished stage presence, which is a pity because it makes it difficult to listen to them, and they have a lot of very interesting things to say Finally, Bayesian analysis. Astronomers use it. Cosmologists LOVE it. Now it's looking like archeologists are buying into the game. It's fancy fudging. Mathematical models are just that. They're models.

[@annascott3542]

Well done presentation, enjoyed it very much. Brilliant use of Bayes Theorem. The late BA collapse gets so much attention it’s nice to see something about this earlier age, endlessly fascinating.