[HN Gopher] The Bronze Age has never looked stronger
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The Bronze Age has never looked stronger
Author : thetan
Score : 99 points
Date : 2023-05-08 22:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thechatner.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thechatner.com)
| Micoloth wrote:
| This was amazing and I loved it, on so many levels.
|
| The only thing I found ironic: "If you're going to record a
| historical occurrence, you can't beat a good stelae. ... What
| could possibly erode stone? Nothing that I can think of" -
|
| Yeah that's pretty much on point. We are _still_ reading some of
| them so..
|
| Definitely more durable than a hard drive, trust me!
| ftxbro wrote:
| > "Everyone wants copper ingots. Everyone. I've traveled pretty
| extensively in this world, and everywhere I go, everyone wants
| the same thing: copper ingots."
|
| some of them want tin ingots
| int_19h wrote:
| It's worth noting that, when iron first appeared, it was _not_
| superior to bronze on just about any metric other than cost. But
| you need to use iron at scale to figure out steel...
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| That part about meteorites was ironic.
| dmreedy wrote:
| Riffing on this, I think an interesting and fundamental
| phenomenon of societies is exactly their frequent inability to
| imagine their successors, or even the possibility of a successor.
| Each seeing themselves as a logical peak of the progressive arrow
| history, especially post-enlightenment (cf. Fukuyama's (in)famous
| _The End of History_ [0]).
|
| It seems to boil down to the sort of societal consensus
| definition of "us" that serves as a foundation for the individual
| definitions of "me" that comprise a society. It's why societies
| seem to tend to see their peers and predecessors as lesser as
| well; they are all their own "us"es, in some ways inaccessible to
| our "us". They may say the same words, but mean different things.
| They have the same human equipment for reasoning and synthesis,
| but a different set of priors from which this calculus
| manipulates and concludes. They seem dumb because they don't come
| to the same obvious conclusions we do.
|
| And it seems to motivate conservative behavior, by way of fear.
| At least we can grapple and argue with our contemporaries, and
| scorn our predecessors. We know what they think, or at least we
| think we know what they think, filtered through the lens of what
| we think. But as a societal consensus starts to shift, and we
| start seeing new priors appearing, things start to get
| uncomfortable. We see a glimpse of a future we don't understand;
| we used to be with "it" but "it" changed[1]. We don't know
| anymore what the next ones _will_ think. What they will be like.
|
| They will still be humans, but they will be a different _us_ ,
| completely inaccessible to our _us_.
|
| ---
|
| [0] I know his philosophy is more a bit more nuanced, but it's
| such a perfect and unfortunate phrasing, accepted so implicitly
| and literally.
|
| [1] To quote Grampa Simpson
| lazide wrote:
| It's a survival strategy, near as I can tell.
|
| Frankly, even _really_ understanding the moment is impossible,
| let alone something as distant as the past, or the as yet not-
| existing future.
|
| That's true for the individual, and the society.
|
| Enlightenment MIGHT come close, but the first thing in
| traditions that have that as an option/goal is realizing that,
| well, knowing things objectively/without delusions is basically
| actually impossible and the concept of 'us' or 'I' is basically
| one of those delusions. We can have FEWER delusions, and with
| luck we can be aware of most of them, but we can't really have
| zero.
|
| So we constrict our information, scope, and framing down to
| what we consider useful in that moment, and the narratives come
| from that. Sometimes it's pretty close to 'truth' (as in,
| matches objectively verifiable facts with a minimal amount of
| suspension of disbelief, fantasy, or outright delusion), and
| provides useful information.
|
| sometimes... well, it does not. Often/usually, frankly.
|
| It requires extremely rigorous approaches to get close to
| anything else, and frankly the forest gets lost for the trees
| 99.99% of the time.
|
| True for the individual, and for the society too.
| zamfi wrote:
| Not just societies frankly -- people individually believe this
| as well, psychologists call it the "end-of-history illusion".
| Quoting Wikipedia:
|
| > The end-of-history illusion is a psychological illusion in
| which individuals of all ages believe that they have
| experienced significant personal growth and changes in tastes
| up to the present moment, but will not substantially grow or
| mature in the future. Despite recognizing that their
| perceptions have evolved, individuals predict that their
| perceptions will remain roughly the same in the future.
|
| (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-history_illusion)
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| > Riffing on this, I think an interesting and fundamental
| phenomenon of societies is exactly their frequent inability to
| imagine their successors, or even the possibility of a
| successor. Each seeing themselves as a logical peak of the
| progressive arrow history, especially post-enlightenment (cf.
| Fukuyama's (in)famous The End of History[0]).
|
| "Late stage capitalism" is a good example of this. Although in
| some ways it's possibly closer to secular End Times rhetoric.
| astrange wrote:
| "Late stage capitalism" is the opposite. People just keep
| saying it claiming history is going to resume soon, and have
| been saying it since it was invented 110-ish years ago, and
| yet capitalism continues to not go anywhere.
| pphysch wrote:
| > fundamental phenomenon of societies
|
| It's dangerous to assert that this is a "fundamental" behavior,
| because it's not always true. Certainly, in USA and the broader
| West there is an almost total lack of _vision_ right now, from
| leaders to cultural fabric. We obsess over Nth-derivative
| Disney films: where is Ursula Le Guin?
|
| Visionaries are rejected (or killed, in the 60s) for rocking
| the boat, innovation has been gutted by worn as a skin suit by
| Wall St. We are totally uncurious about our foreign peers, some
| of whom are outpacing us in substantial ways.
| dmreedy wrote:
| Agreed! I'm testing a hypothesis here through the dialectic,
| not asserting one!
|
| There are definitely visionaries and prophets and doom-seers
| in each society; when I talk about societal consensus I'm
| talking about averages.
|
| Though I'd hesitate to agree that vision === imagination of
| successors. To my mind, there's a difference between
| improving the extant, and having a new one. Maybe you can get
| to the latter by way of the former over time, and that way
| you get into "Gentle Seduction"[0] territory. But that also
| kind of amounts to a lack of imagination, and a rejection of
| endings.
|
| > Where is Ursula Le Guin?
|
| Where indeed! Though I haven't given enough of the newer
| generations of sci fi authors a chance myself, to be fair.
|
| ---
|
| [0] http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/GentleSeduction.html
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Visionaries continue to be around, but it's so much easier to
| make noise that you have to really work to sift the wheat
| from the chaff. It's in Wall Street's best interest to have
| you thinking that when they stop innovating innovation is
| dead. But I really think this is what our culture looks like
| when it's _becoming_.
| mlyle wrote:
| > We obsess over Nth-derivative Disney films
|
| Pop culture is pop culture and only really gets interesting
| in brief flashes.
|
| > where is Ursula Le Guin?
|
| We've got a whole lot of great speculative fiction these
| days, but there's no one dominant. It's a curse and benefit
| of the long tail.
|
| > there is an almost total lack of vision right now
|
| I think the big thing we're missing is some shared set of
| optimism and an idea of what kinds of things we should want
| for ourselves. We're divided; we're feeling ennui from being
| at a bit of a local maximum in a whole lot of ways; looming
| doom of various kinds (climate, geopolitical, economic)
| suppresses us.
|
| > innovation has been gutted by worn as a skin suit by Wall
| St.
|
| That whole financial, administrative, and managerial class
| has to shrink. Look, finance is a superpower and a key export
| of the West and it would be a mistake to gut it, but to
| continue to allow it to grow without bound is an equally big
| mistake.
| majormajor wrote:
| I think predicting the exact successor societies would be
| difficult, but there's a lot of SF out there that predicts
| potential ones. Like the Ousters in the Dan Simmons' Hyperion
| series or the Drummers in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age or
| various other flavors of u- or dys-topias.
|
| Or even the Millenia of premillennial dispensationalists, for a
| religious alternative.
|
| I'd argue some of those are more radical imaginations than much
| of what actually followed past ages.
| notahacker wrote:
| > Or even the Millenia of premillennial dispensationalists,
| for a religious alternative.
|
| > I'd argue some of those are more radical imaginations than
| much of what actually followed past ages.
|
| This. People throughout history have frequently predicted the
| end of the civilization they lived in, they just tended to
| get it wrong, usually because their prediction was some
| fantasy involving superhuman powers ending the world as we
| know it, and not just dumb culture wars and succession crises
| and poor resource allocation and the neighbouring
| civilization being a bit stronger and more adaptable.
| dmreedy wrote:
| Yeah I agree completely.
|
| I have been thinking lately about that as a defining feature
| of science fiction, or I guess speculative fiction more
| broadly; thought experiments into other "us"es. What it's
| like to be something else. I don't mean to say that as if
| it's some novel position, just a particular facet that has
| been resonating.
|
| The eschatology angle is a super interesting one I hadn't
| considered. If anything though, especially for the
| millenarian/apocalyptic flavors, it seems like almost the
| platonic ideal of being unable to imagine a successor; we are
| the end, and when we end, the world ends, preserving us
| forever.
|
| And incidentally, there is still resistance there. "Don't
| immanentize the eschaton!"
| leroy-is-here wrote:
| I think that it is equally hard determining causes. We can
| clearly see differences between humans in the past and humans
| as we are today. Because humans are in the past, we easily
| think they are lesser and more stupid than our technological
| superior selves. But they didn't have mass-produced cars and
| roads everywhere, so they didn't die of weight-related heart
| failure. But labor was tougher, so perhaps those same men were
| getting drunk every night.
|
| Our former selves realized everyone should have a right toward
| education, but we barely teach the trivium, the education of a
| free man. Instead we have politicized our education instead of
| requiring students to read Plato because even our teachers
| haven't read him.
| qwytw wrote:
| > triumvirate
|
| Trivium. Unless you're talking about ancient Roman history or
| alternative political systems.
|
| > Instead we have politicized our education instead
|
| Well Plato's writings were heavily politicized and
| controversial back in the day. So maybe it's not that
| different...
| RigelKentaurus wrote:
| The question is, what will this essay look like if written today?
| Are some of our own ideas and technologies going to change as
| drastically? Are there frameworks (e.g. Hegel's concept of Geist)
| to help us think about what we're moving towards?
| RigelKentaurus wrote:
| Incredible! Made my day; thank you for sharing. I used to be
| bored by history until I read somewhere that it is really the
| study of change (I think Harari wrote it?)
| satisfice wrote:
| http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa17/P237990/html
|
| '[As to what you wrote]: "There are informers [... to the king]
| and coming to his presence; if it is acceptable to the king, let
| me write and send my messages to the king on Aram[aic] parchment
| sheets" -- why would you not write and send me messages in
| Akkadian? Really, the message which you write in it must be drawn
| up in this very manner -- this is a fixed regulation!'
|
| Ironically, the reason we know about this message from the King
| of Assyria about how hell no he won't upgrade to parchment is
| because it was a message baked into GOOD OLD CLAY...
|
| "Clay. It's the future of the past." -- Assyrian Clay Council
| Marketing Blurb
| namaria wrote:
| The Bronze age collapse is one of my favorite topics in History.
| And I see a lot of parallels between the centralized palace
| economies that produced much brittleness then and the 'everything
| is controlled by networked digital computers and defined in
| software' Ruby Goldberg machine of a civilization we have now.
| robinsord wrote:
| [dead]
| mcv wrote:
| Covid saw a lot of supply chain problems, and suddenly shorter,
| directer, more local supply chains were preferable to highly
| optimised international ones. If I'm not mistaken, the bronze
| age collapse also came from collapsing international supply
| chains, so maybe that's a lesson for us: depend less on stuff
| produced on the other side of the world, and more on local
| products. The international stuff is fine for luxuries, but not
| for essentials. I guess this is why the US and EU are trying to
| get more tech manufactured locally again, instead of depending
| on Taiwan that might be invaded by China.
| throwyawayyyy wrote:
| How much was it the advent of better technology that didn't
| require those supply chains? Iron. In which case the lesson
| is: have more and more complex supply chains, tie us all
| together, don't allow us to be independent because
| civilisation _is_ that interdependence.
| nradov wrote:
| Early forms of iron (before the development of decent
| steel) were _worse_ technology then bronze for most uses.
| Iron tools were soft, dull, and rusty.
| golemiprague wrote:
| [dead]
| qwytw wrote:
| Well you couldn't have had a 'bronze' age without without
| long and complex supply chains. Tin had to be imported from
| Western Europe and/or Central Asia. Same applies even more so
| the modern economy. Countries that rely on global trade will
| simply outcompete any autarkic ones before any apocalyptic
| event even occurs.
|
| > depending on Taiwan that might be invaded by China
|
| The more the west is reliant on Taiwan the less likely is
| China to invade. So maybe that's a good thing.
| namaria wrote:
| Trade collapse is much more of a symptom then a cause...
| mcv wrote:
| It's part of the causal chain. Whether it's sea peoples, a
| pandemic, or escalating international tension, if it
| disrupts trade of essential items, it will disrupt
| prosperity, the way of life, and a whole host of other
| things.
| namaria wrote:
| Sure once you start bleeding you die from blood loss but
| if you're knifed can you really say you died from anemia?
| [deleted]
| kbenson wrote:
| And what if that bleeding is from numerous sources
| internal and external, from a long succession of rough
| situations? You might not even die from blood loss, you
| might just have such anemia that mustering your strength
| to gather the resources needed to survive becomes harder
| and harder until you perish from exhaustion and lack of
| sustenance.
|
| I find that often the end of things comes down not just
| to a single definable cause, but when a few events that
| might have been weathered successfully in isolation
| happen in an overlapping manner, and may cause additional
| problems otherwise.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Is there a good documentary film or series about this period,
| which you could recommend?
| panzagl wrote:
| Eric Cline has several talks on youtube. His book '1177 BC
| The Year Civilization Collapsed' is probably the most popular
| account of the collapse.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| 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
| namaria wrote:
| 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
| ben_bai wrote:
| 1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed | Eric Cline
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LRHJlijVU
| dmreedy wrote:
| 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.
| rabf wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/@FallofCivilizations
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| 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.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| > 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
| namaria wrote:
| 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.
| mattnewport wrote:
| I'm not sure if the Ruby Goldberg pun was deliberate or a happy
| autocorrect accident but I appreciate it either way!
| namaria wrote:
| I typed from memory... But hey Rube and Ruby are the same
| distance from Reuben...
| LeonB wrote:
| "Reuben" to "Rube"
|
| - Levenshtein distance 2
|
| "Reuben" to "Ruby"
|
| - Levenshtein distance 3
|
| (No big deal, just funny)
| eyphka wrote:
| The parallels are definitely there. Two issues happening are
| imo primary causes, corporate consolidation and the move
| towards "Demand-driven Supply Chain".
| CmdrLoskene wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyu4u3VZYaQ
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