Yes. This is the entire point of the article. It was an advanced civilisation. Then it fell to the point that it could be colonised by its former inferiors. How that happens is objetively interesting.
Nowhere as back as "the bronze age" though. More like "well into the 14-15th century".
>Then it fell to the point that it could be colonised by its former inferiors.
Not very difficult since they eventually had the looting of the Americas and gunpowder to their advantage. Even with that, they came close to being conquered themselves when the Ottomans went westwards (not to mention the Caliphate of Cordoba).
The Hittites. (The Sea Peoples?) The Parthians. The Romans. You're talking about a fertile patch near the birth of civilisation, of course it's going to have had an old and violent history.
> since they eventually had the looting of the Americas and gunpowder to their advantage
Gunpowder was invented in China. The Arab world had vastly superior maritime capabilities in its heyday. (To the extent that it single handedly enabled Europe's blue-ocean capabilities.) Its empires were also colonising powers, so it's not like in an alternate timeline they wouldn't have expanded across the Atlantic.
And in case it needs to be stated, the Arabs were successful colonisers and conquerors [1].
Near --a-- birth of civilization.
I was referring to Ur, but fair enough, I haven't tracked recent discoveries in other cradles.
I contested the "Arab world was basically in a state of managed chaos" similar to the colonial era situation "since the Bronze Age" claim. The arab world (speaking of the areas) did quite well for close to a millenium before the colonial era. And Europe itself had a huge bloody history of course both until Westphalia (and, unfortunately) well after it - so if the arab world having wars and disputes before the colonial era can be said to be "managed chaos", then the same can be said of it.
>Gunpowder was invented in China.
It was still put to use for guns in a large scale in the west first. This just says that the Chinese and the Arabs missed the opportunity to adopt it first - it doesn't disprove that gunpowder was a key advantage for the european rise and dominance.
>Its empires were also colonising powers, so it's not like in an alternate timeline they wouldn't have expanded across the Atlantic.
In an alternative timeline they could even go to the moon first. In this timeline, they didn't benefit from the looting of a whole new continent with easy to defeat locals dying of gunpowder and sickness.
On a slightly unrelated tangent, I recommend reading "The Rise and Fall of E.A.S.T" by Yasheng Huang [0].
He's a Professor at MIT Sloan who has advised the Chinese, Israeli, and Indian governments on Human Capital Development, and provides a pretty interesting take on the development of management and institutional capacity within China, and how it's impacted R&D capacity.
[0] - https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300266368/the-rise-and-f...
Arab and Western conolialism have different flavors but enormous exploitation and abuse.