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Comment by einpoklum | Hacker News Reader

Is there a good documentary film or series about this period, which you could recommend?

1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed | Eric Cline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LRHJlijVU

I don't like his thesis (of "systems collapse"). It seems to be made so complex it can't be falsified.

I don't like historicism. History is not supposed to be generalized, it's quite the opposite. It's about cataloguing and remembering the things we've been through. History is not a science, it's an art form.

This has been on my watch-later list forever. Is it worth finally watching?

Patrick Wyman's, Tides of History podcast has done a lot of episodes on this and is a great introduction.

Yale's introductory Greek history class with lectures from Donald Kagan is available online and part of it covers the Mycenaean empire and its fall.

> Yale's introductory Greek history class with lectures from Donald Kagan

+1 for this.

For those that are interested:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL023BCE5134243987

For a longer-form treatment, Patrick Wyman's podcast, Tides of History, has been going through an extended series about prehistory, including the bronze age collapse. It's a lot, and mostly through a particular thinker's lens, but still worthy I think.

I really enjoyed youtube channel History Time's take on identifying the so-called 'sea peoples': "The Sea Peoples & The Late Bronze Age Collapse // Ancient History Documentary (1200-1150 BC)".

It gave me a lot of perspective on how much activity was happening all over the Mediterranean and beyond at that time. This and related channels have a lot of long form content on Ancient History, which I really appreciate.

Eric Cline has several talks on youtube. His book '1177 BC The Year Civilization Collapsed' is probably the most popular account of the collapse.

https://www.youtube.com/@FallofCivilizations

I decided to watch the episode on the Bronze Age Collapse there and... I can't say I enjoy the "Grand Narrative" style of presentation all that much. With regards to that one episode in particular, the final segment on the effects of the H3 eruption of Hekla struggles with the chronology just not working correctly. The presenter gives the eruption a date of around 1100 BC, which seems to already be on the early side of dates (mid-late 1000s BC looks more reasonable), but if you're paying attention to the chronology, it's well after the Sea Peoples start showing up and the Bronze Age Collapse has occurred (~1200-1150BC), so its putative role in inducing the Sea Peoples to start their raiding would require a time machine of some sort.

The margin of errors when dating events three millennia in the past are quite wide. Besides, the large scale collapse of multiple civilizations can't be lined up in a row of neatly separated events. Why does this particular eruption need to be before the evidence of large scale raiding of sea borne forces?

I recommend reading The Dawn of Everything

edit: harari is a hack, you wouldn't have made the comparison had you read the graeber/wengrow

Graeber did a top notch job with Debt: The First 5000 thousand years. But I think Anthropologists taking on big history is a bit of a stretch. Harari's books, for example are very superficial, trying to touch on everything from biology to politics and end up with very little real insight. I never felt Dawn of Everything would be worth the time and money...

edit: for the record, answering in edits is weird and I'm against it... authors slinging mud is hardly a case for their own competence, besides recommending a book about the whole of history to someone who wanted documentary recommendations on a very specific topic in History is also a bit of a hack

"Harari is a hack etc." - I'm not sure what you're referring to; perhaps you were replying to somebody else?

the other person replying to me. they equivocated the two authors whereas in reality they couldn't be further opposed.

I think you mean equated

yes but you understood.

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