1
00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:04,880
Speaker 1: So civilization comes and goes right, Empires rise and fall.

2
00:00:05,480 --> 00:00:09,799
Speaker 1: For the most part, we know what happened, and we

3
00:00:09,840 --> 00:00:14,160
Speaker 1: know approximately win with the benefit of retrospect. However, back

4
00:00:14,200 --> 00:00:19,440
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, we started digging into a very strange,

5
00:00:20,200 --> 00:00:24,239
Speaker 1: unsolved historical mystery, not just the death of one person,

6
00:00:24,360 --> 00:00:30,080
Speaker 1: but the death of an entire series of civilizations.

7
00:00:29,600 --> 00:00:33,040
Speaker 2: The whole century lost to time. Time.

8
00:00:33,960 --> 00:00:35,760
Speaker 3: That's right, the Bronze Age.

9
00:00:35,880 --> 00:00:36,879
Speaker 2: The mystery of the.

10
00:00:36,800 --> 00:00:40,600
Speaker 3: Bronze Age collapse. What exactly happened, and perhaps more disturbingly,

11
00:00:41,200 --> 00:00:44,639
Speaker 3: what can the Bronze Age collapse teach us about this

12
00:00:45,159 --> 00:00:46,080
Speaker 3: our modern day.

13
00:00:47,080 --> 00:00:47,760
Speaker 2: Let's roll the.

14
00:00:47,720 --> 00:00:53,199
Speaker 1: Tape from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History

15
00:00:53,320 --> 00:00:56,920
Speaker 1: is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now

16
00:00:57,720 --> 00:00:59,840
Speaker 1: or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.

17
00:01:00,760 --> 00:01:02,600
Speaker 1: A production of iHeartRadio.

18
00:01:12,959 --> 00:01:16,080
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,

19
00:01:16,240 --> 00:01:17,080
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.

20
00:01:17,280 --> 00:01:19,679
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined as always with

21
00:01:19,760 --> 00:01:24,240
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul Mission Control decade. Most importantly, you

22
00:01:24,319 --> 00:01:27,920
Speaker 1: are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff

23
00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:31,680
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. I've always thought from

24
00:01:32,040 --> 00:01:35,280
Speaker 1: a very young age that the world is ending for

25
00:01:35,440 --> 00:01:41,000
Speaker 1: someone somewhere every day, and it's a thought that becomes increasingly,

26
00:01:41,120 --> 00:01:43,880
Speaker 1: as we say, top of mind in these the days

27
00:01:43,920 --> 00:01:46,840
Speaker 1: of our modern era. And it has a lot to

28
00:01:46,880 --> 00:01:50,200
Speaker 1: do with what we're investigating today. Today we are attempting

29
00:01:50,280 --> 00:01:54,320
Speaker 1: to solve a mystery, perhaps with your help, fellow conspiracy realist.

30
00:01:54,760 --> 00:01:57,520
Speaker 1: It is an old one. It is the very definition

31
00:01:57,560 --> 00:02:00,480
Speaker 1: of a cold case. You see about three one thousand,

32
00:02:00,680 --> 00:02:05,280
Speaker 1: two hundred years ago ballpark, the world of human civilization

33
00:02:05,760 --> 00:02:10,760
Speaker 1: as we know it collapsed, It imploded, and even now

34
00:02:10,800 --> 00:02:16,000
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, the full causes of this collapse remain unsolved.

35
00:02:16,560 --> 00:02:20,120
Speaker 1: We have to wonder what would civilization be like today

36
00:02:20,600 --> 00:02:24,120
Speaker 1: if the civilization of the past hadn't been crippled all

37
00:02:24,160 --> 00:02:28,920
Speaker 1: those millennia go, And what does this collapse mean for

38
00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:32,160
Speaker 1: our present day? Maybe the best place for us to

39
00:02:32,160 --> 00:02:37,200
Speaker 1: start is what exactly is the Bronze Age? So here

40
00:02:37,280 --> 00:02:38,040
Speaker 1: are the facts.

41
00:02:38,400 --> 00:02:41,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Bronze Age refers to a period that's generally

42
00:02:41,480 --> 00:02:45,560
Speaker 3: described as the third phase of development of material culture

43
00:02:45,880 --> 00:02:49,760
Speaker 3: among ancient civilizations in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

44
00:02:50,040 --> 00:02:53,080
Speaker 3: So you have the Stone Age which preceded the Bronze Age,

45
00:02:53,200 --> 00:02:56,600
Speaker 3: the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods collectively known as the Stone

46
00:02:56,600 --> 00:02:59,200
Speaker 3: Age and then the New Stone Age. And it was

47
00:02:59,240 --> 00:03:03,000
Speaker 3: a massive information because before the Bronze Age, civilization was

48
00:03:03,080 --> 00:03:06,799
Speaker 3: essentially a bunch of tiny city states that were ruled

49
00:03:06,800 --> 00:03:13,000
Speaker 3: by a heavy handed, oppressive politico religious priest or casts

50
00:03:13,120 --> 00:03:16,079
Speaker 3: of priests, kind of like a ruling class. And this

51
00:03:16,440 --> 00:03:19,320
Speaker 3: really shifted when the Bronze Age came into being.

52
00:03:19,760 --> 00:03:23,680
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, food was at a premium in a lot

53
00:03:23,800 --> 00:03:27,680
Speaker 1: of these pre Bronze Age societies, and it limited the

54
00:03:27,720 --> 00:03:34,560
Speaker 1: growth of both technology and population. It made us play

55
00:03:34,720 --> 00:03:39,600
Speaker 1: on hard mode in the Game of Civilization. Don't sue us, Sidmire.

56
00:03:39,440 --> 00:03:40,360
Speaker 1: We're big fans.

57
00:03:40,760 --> 00:03:43,360
Speaker 2: We really are if you've ever played a lot of

58
00:03:43,360 --> 00:03:45,880
Speaker 2: those games. For me, it was Age of Empires that

59
00:03:46,000 --> 00:03:48,720
Speaker 2: really got me to understand the difference between some of

60
00:03:48,760 --> 00:03:53,720
Speaker 2: those early ages of civilization and now you know we

61
00:03:53,760 --> 00:03:56,760
Speaker 2: sit in Is this the Silicon Age? What do we

62
00:03:56,800 --> 00:03:57,960
Speaker 2: call this age? I don't know.

63
00:03:57,960 --> 00:03:58,840
Speaker 3: Has it been coined yet?

64
00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:01,120
Speaker 2: I guess I haven't really seen it.

65
00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:03,240
Speaker 3: Maybe it's up for debate. Maybe there's like someone we

66
00:04:03,280 --> 00:04:07,240
Speaker 3: can submit ideas to, like like millennials and xenials and

67
00:04:07,280 --> 00:04:07,840
Speaker 3: all that stuff.

68
00:04:07,920 --> 00:04:09,840
Speaker 2: I haven't really seen it. Thrown around.

69
00:04:10,520 --> 00:04:16,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. There are a plethora, meaning too many.

70
00:04:16,560 --> 00:04:19,480
Speaker 1: There are a plethora of proposed names for this age.

71
00:04:19,839 --> 00:04:22,480
Speaker 1: The anthrops scene would be one we could throw around.

72
00:04:22,560 --> 00:04:26,880
Speaker 1: But in the world of material culture, through that lens,

73
00:04:26,920 --> 00:04:29,279
Speaker 1: perhaps there is one. Perhaps silicon is a good one.

74
00:04:29,920 --> 00:04:33,479
Speaker 1: Perhaps that information age is another thing, because information is

75
00:04:33,520 --> 00:04:34,960
Speaker 1: a substance of its own.

76
00:04:35,080 --> 00:04:37,680
Speaker 2: Perhaps the new Dark Ages. No, I'm kidding.

77
00:04:37,680 --> 00:04:41,360
Speaker 3: Technology is obviously great, but that's the thing too, Ben

78
00:04:42,080 --> 00:04:46,040
Speaker 3: to your point, I mean technology and development of new ideas.

79
00:04:46,200 --> 00:04:49,880
Speaker 3: That's a huge impetus for cultures developing and pushing forward

80
00:04:50,839 --> 00:04:55,359
Speaker 3: because material is essentially a technology. When you start thinking

81
00:04:55,400 --> 00:04:58,919
Speaker 3: outside the box or outside the rocks, I just pulled

82
00:04:58,920 --> 00:05:01,800
Speaker 3: that off the top of my head, you get these

83
00:05:01,880 --> 00:05:04,599
Speaker 3: new ideas that are very important to actually make new

84
00:05:04,640 --> 00:05:08,799
Speaker 3: things that help you hunt and that help you keep

85
00:05:09,200 --> 00:05:14,039
Speaker 3: order in your civilization without depending on superstition as much.

86
00:05:14,360 --> 00:05:18,320
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, So there's there's a there's already what could

87
00:05:18,360 --> 00:05:22,440
Speaker 1: be called kind of a catch twenty two for civilizations.

88
00:05:22,480 --> 00:05:26,680
Speaker 1: So to for a civilization to grow, to innovate, and

89
00:05:26,720 --> 00:05:30,560
Speaker 1: to expand, it needs to have some sort of leisure

90
00:05:30,680 --> 00:05:37,400
Speaker 1: time with necessity compelling the focused use of that free time.

91
00:05:38,120 --> 00:05:42,440
Speaker 1: But to to arrive at that free time, we have

92
00:05:42,520 --> 00:05:45,479
Speaker 1: to have the tools that allow that to exist. And

93
00:05:45,520 --> 00:05:48,680
Speaker 1: my tools also mean socio political things. So what we

94
00:05:48,720 --> 00:05:51,440
Speaker 1: see with the Bronze Age is we see something. If

95
00:05:51,520 --> 00:05:54,080
Speaker 1: I'm always using cliches like catch twenty two, it'd be

96
00:05:54,120 --> 00:05:56,080
Speaker 1: good to use a cliche like chicken in the egg.

97
00:05:56,440 --> 00:06:01,000
Speaker 1: Did fortuitous weather lead to more leisure time, which then

98
00:06:01,279 --> 00:06:06,160
Speaker 1: led to farming innovations, which led to an agricultural revolution,

99
00:06:06,360 --> 00:06:09,400
Speaker 1: creating a surplus of food that led to the existence

100
00:06:09,440 --> 00:06:14,760
Speaker 1: of specialized, specialized jobs and careers, which led to innovations

101
00:06:14,760 --> 00:06:18,240
Speaker 1: and technology, innovations in religion and government and so on.

102
00:06:18,760 --> 00:06:22,839
Speaker 1: Or did someone just figure out a better way to

103
00:06:22,920 --> 00:06:27,359
Speaker 1: farm themselves. It's tricky to extract these things, but we

104
00:06:27,440 --> 00:06:30,360
Speaker 1: know regardless of the order in which those things occurred,

105
00:06:30,560 --> 00:06:33,960
Speaker 1: we know those occurred and created what we define as

106
00:06:34,040 --> 00:06:37,400
Speaker 1: the Bronze Age. It was a brand new world, a

107
00:06:37,440 --> 00:06:42,240
Speaker 1: golden dawn for humanity in what's called you know, sometimes

108
00:06:42,240 --> 00:06:45,480
Speaker 1: the Near East, the Mediterranean, North Africa, Egypt, and so on.

109
00:06:46,000 --> 00:06:50,599
Speaker 1: And this was primarily due to the stability of these empires,

110
00:06:50,680 --> 00:06:54,160
Speaker 1: which can to be was primarily due to the surplus

111
00:06:54,200 --> 00:06:56,799
Speaker 1: of food at the beginning. It allowed for the creation

112
00:06:57,320 --> 00:07:02,160
Speaker 1: of big, bustling, multi cultrual cities instead of walled off,

113
00:07:02,200 --> 00:07:06,640
Speaker 1: isolated city states. And then it allowed these states to

114
00:07:06,760 --> 00:07:10,920
Speaker 1: institute treaties, to institute rule of law that went beyond

115
00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:13,840
Speaker 1: the stone walls of a citadel. So for the first

116
00:07:13,880 --> 00:07:18,280
Speaker 1: time in human history, as far as we know, as

117
00:07:18,320 --> 00:07:20,800
Speaker 1: far as we know, for the first time in human history,

118
00:07:20,840 --> 00:07:25,600
Speaker 1: we had international trade occurring on a regular, sustainable basis.

119
00:07:25,840 --> 00:07:28,360
Speaker 1: It was no longer quite as much of a pipe

120
00:07:28,400 --> 00:07:32,239
Speaker 1: dream to say, hey, let me get some hippopotamus ivory

121
00:07:32,280 --> 00:07:36,040
Speaker 1: from this place people are calling Egypt or whatever, and

122
00:07:36,880 --> 00:07:39,120
Speaker 1: just kind of pray it shows up in six months. No,

123
00:07:39,680 --> 00:07:43,200
Speaker 1: they were able to do this. Things were flourishing. This

124
00:07:43,360 --> 00:07:48,040
Speaker 1: is also, you know, it's called the Bronze Age because

125
00:07:48,080 --> 00:07:50,920
Speaker 1: it's the first period in which metal was used in

126
00:07:51,080 --> 00:07:54,480
Speaker 1: very widespread ways. Like as you said, Nol, Before then,

127
00:07:54,840 --> 00:07:57,760
Speaker 1: we were really really good with stone and a lot

128
00:07:57,800 --> 00:08:01,360
Speaker 1: of stone Age stuff. We built a ton, but comparatively

129
00:08:01,400 --> 00:08:03,400
Speaker 1: a lot of Stone Age stuff we built. It was

130
00:08:03,440 --> 00:08:05,880
Speaker 1: pretty durable. You can see some of it today if

131
00:08:05,880 --> 00:08:09,200
Speaker 1: you travel out to a museum or if you travel

132
00:08:09,280 --> 00:08:13,160
Speaker 1: to where some of these monuments might still stand. But

133
00:08:13,840 --> 00:08:18,720
Speaker 1: the Bronze Age itself, I don't know tough. It's tough

134
00:08:18,760 --> 00:08:22,560
Speaker 1: to say when it began for which people like in

135
00:08:22,680 --> 00:08:25,160
Speaker 1: China and Greece, for instance, If we define it just

136
00:08:25,200 --> 00:08:28,239
Speaker 1: by that use of metal, we're talking three thousand BCE,

137
00:08:29,200 --> 00:08:32,160
Speaker 1: and that's so long ago, it's more than five thousand

138
00:08:32,240 --> 00:08:35,520
Speaker 1: years ago. But if we're talking about a place like

139
00:08:35,920 --> 00:08:38,720
Speaker 1: what we call Britain today, it didn't start till nineteen

140
00:08:38,800 --> 00:08:44,120
Speaker 1: hundred BCE. The technology is disruptive, but it's not ubiquitous automatically.

141
00:08:44,160 --> 00:08:46,360
Speaker 1: It has to spread. So anyway, with all that, all

142
00:08:46,400 --> 00:08:50,920
Speaker 1: those caveats at astis Bronze Age thirty three hundred BC,

143
00:08:51,120 --> 00:08:54,640
Speaker 1: let's say three thousand, thirty three hundred BC to twelve

144
00:08:54,720 --> 00:08:59,160
Speaker 1: hundred BCE. Twelve hundred BCE is pretty much regarded as

145
00:08:59,200 --> 00:09:03,280
Speaker 1: the cutoff, and we'll see why. There's a reason we

146
00:09:03,360 --> 00:09:06,959
Speaker 1: have like a more definitive grasp of that for sure.

147
00:09:07,320 --> 00:09:09,480
Speaker 2: And you know we're talking about international trade and how

148
00:09:09,480 --> 00:09:13,480
Speaker 2: important that was for the Bronze Age. It seems very

149
00:09:13,480 --> 00:09:18,360
Speaker 2: elementary right now, so very normal just to have countries

150
00:09:18,920 --> 00:09:22,319
Speaker 2: and cities across the world gathering the things that are

151
00:09:22,360 --> 00:09:25,120
Speaker 2: near that city or close enough to that city or

152
00:09:25,760 --> 00:09:29,240
Speaker 2: place of civilization, and then sending some of that stuff

153
00:09:29,320 --> 00:09:31,400
Speaker 2: elsewhere so that we can so that they can then

154
00:09:31,480 --> 00:09:35,000
Speaker 2: receive something from somewhere else. Right. But as Ben was saying,

155
00:09:35,480 --> 00:09:40,240
Speaker 2: this was such a new thing. One of the one

156
00:09:40,280 --> 00:09:43,360
Speaker 2: of the big occurrences here is that there was one

157
00:09:43,520 --> 00:09:48,600
Speaker 2: particular place where you could find this stuff that was

158
00:09:48,679 --> 00:09:50,920
Speaker 2: called ten And we're going to tell you a little

159
00:09:50,920 --> 00:09:54,040
Speaker 2: bit more about that in the future there, but there's

160
00:09:54,080 --> 00:09:57,040
Speaker 2: one particular place where you could get it, at least

161
00:09:57,080 --> 00:09:59,000
Speaker 2: a good supply of it that then had to be

162
00:09:59,080 --> 00:10:02,640
Speaker 2: loaded onto donkey and then scent wherever it was going

163
00:10:02,679 --> 00:10:05,080
Speaker 2: to go to be traded with some other place. Right.

164
00:10:05,760 --> 00:10:11,439
Speaker 2: And tin is important because it creates bronze, right, or

165
00:10:11,440 --> 00:10:15,240
Speaker 2: it's really interesting you combine tin and copper, I believe

166
00:10:15,280 --> 00:10:18,080
Speaker 2: is that is that correct, guys, Tin and copper become bronze.

167
00:10:18,120 --> 00:10:20,120
Speaker 2: These are the two metals that you need to create

168
00:10:20,160 --> 00:10:24,880
Speaker 2: this durable thing that becomes the cornerstone of civilization and

169
00:10:24,920 --> 00:10:29,720
Speaker 2: everything from uh stuff to eat out of, to tools

170
00:10:29,800 --> 00:10:34,600
Speaker 2: to fix other things, to the weapons. And that's the

171
00:10:34,720 --> 00:10:37,680
Speaker 2: really the big thing here. The weapons were made of

172
00:10:37,720 --> 00:10:39,240
Speaker 2: this substance I have.

173
00:10:39,400 --> 00:10:44,400
Speaker 1: There's one theory about this that is woefully unproven and

174
00:10:44,480 --> 00:10:47,000
Speaker 1: probably never prove it. But it's a cool story if

175
00:10:47,000 --> 00:10:50,559
Speaker 1: we want to put ourselves back in that time period.

176
00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:53,439
Speaker 1: How did people figure out bronze? It's a big question,

177
00:10:53,600 --> 00:10:56,840
Speaker 1: like did how how on earth did someone say, ah, tin,

178
00:10:57,320 --> 00:10:59,120
Speaker 1: you like it, you love it, you want some more

179
00:10:59,200 --> 00:11:02,760
Speaker 1: of it, and you it will copper. It's amazing, guys,

180
00:11:02,920 --> 00:11:06,120
Speaker 1: let's start a war. It's kind of like the story

181
00:11:06,120 --> 00:11:09,280
Speaker 1: about the discovery of cheese. The discovery of cheese story

182
00:11:09,520 --> 00:11:12,680
Speaker 1: is that someone was hauling milk in a saddle bag

183
00:11:12,960 --> 00:11:15,920
Speaker 1: and the continual churning and chafing of that made cheese

184
00:11:16,000 --> 00:11:18,080
Speaker 1: during their journey. No way to prove it.

185
00:11:18,440 --> 00:11:21,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the same story with a lot of firsts, right,

186
00:11:21,240 --> 00:11:24,679
Speaker 3: like the first person to eat an oyster or a mushroom.

187
00:11:24,720 --> 00:11:27,560
Speaker 3: It seems like a really outlandish proposition when you think

188
00:11:27,559 --> 00:11:30,400
Speaker 3: of what is actually going into this act, and it

189
00:11:30,440 --> 00:11:33,400
Speaker 3: obviously required a lot of trial and error. Maybe gave

190
00:11:33,480 --> 00:11:37,240
Speaker 3: men eating poisonous mushrooms and dying off, and then people noticing, oh,

191
00:11:37,280 --> 00:11:39,840
Speaker 3: maybe don't eat that mushroom, eat the one that's delicious

192
00:11:39,840 --> 00:11:42,640
Speaker 3: and tasty, or maybe makes you hallucinate, because that's fun too,

193
00:11:43,440 --> 00:11:46,440
Speaker 3: But with this thing, it's such a process in and

194
00:11:46,480 --> 00:11:49,199
Speaker 3: of itself. The idea of smelting, like when you melt

195
00:11:49,240 --> 00:11:53,040
Speaker 3: this stuff down and to either maybe something spilled in

196
00:11:53,600 --> 00:11:55,840
Speaker 3: and they realized it made it a cool color, or

197
00:11:56,000 --> 00:11:58,720
Speaker 3: like it made it stronger. I'm wondering what point along

198
00:11:58,960 --> 00:12:01,720
Speaker 3: the maybe it was a whoopsie kind of moment, did

199
00:12:01,720 --> 00:12:04,280
Speaker 3: they realize, oh, this is actually a really solid idea.

200
00:12:04,960 --> 00:12:07,480
Speaker 3: Or maybe someone saw the person doing it and then

201
00:12:07,520 --> 00:12:09,840
Speaker 3: did it themselves and did it better again. It's interesting

202
00:12:09,920 --> 00:12:10,559
Speaker 3: to think about.

203
00:12:10,880 --> 00:12:13,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's what That's what I was getting to

204
00:12:13,679 --> 00:12:15,800
Speaker 1: is the is that there is a myth like that

205
00:12:15,960 --> 00:12:18,600
Speaker 1: with UH, or a theory we can call it if

206
00:12:18,600 --> 00:12:20,720
Speaker 1: we want to put a tie on it, about the

207
00:12:20,800 --> 00:12:24,120
Speaker 1: discovery of bronze, and the idea is that this, like

208
00:12:24,160 --> 00:12:27,720
Speaker 1: I was originally saying, let's picture ourselves were at a campfire, right,

209
00:12:28,200 --> 00:12:31,480
Speaker 1: we have copper, and we're hanging out. We're playing with

210
00:12:31,480 --> 00:12:34,800
Speaker 1: our copper or something, and we don't know that the

211
00:12:34,880 --> 00:12:40,760
Speaker 1: rocks lining our campfire are naturally rich in tin. So

212
00:12:40,840 --> 00:12:44,880
Speaker 1: how amazing is it to see the UH? To see

213
00:12:44,920 --> 00:12:48,880
Speaker 1: the rocks and the and the copper upon them start

214
00:12:48,920 --> 00:12:51,840
Speaker 1: to melt and mold together. While you're just sitting by

215
00:12:51,840 --> 00:12:55,960
Speaker 1: the fire, you know something's up, you know something's happening.

216
00:12:56,280 --> 00:13:01,319
Speaker 1: That is like the cinematic origin story of bronze. And

217
00:13:01,679 --> 00:13:05,480
Speaker 1: with this, I mean it's probably Again even if that's true,

218
00:13:05,520 --> 00:13:08,160
Speaker 1: we can't prove it, but we know people were always

219
00:13:08,200 --> 00:13:11,200
Speaker 1: experimenting with stuff as soon as they had that very

220
00:13:11,280 --> 00:13:15,400
Speaker 1: valuable free time. Again, right, So what we did see is,

221
00:13:15,480 --> 00:13:20,280
Speaker 1: even if there wasn't this aha revelatory moment of watching

222
00:13:20,720 --> 00:13:27,360
Speaker 1: this reaction occur accidentally, we know people immediately started experimenting

223
00:13:27,400 --> 00:13:30,800
Speaker 1: with it. We have to remember that before this point,

224
00:13:31,200 --> 00:13:35,720
Speaker 1: the most common tool in the world and as far

225
00:13:35,760 --> 00:13:39,120
Speaker 1: as we know in the universe was the stone axe,

226
00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:42,360
Speaker 1: which is better than your hand. I guess would be

227
00:13:42,400 --> 00:13:45,679
Speaker 1: the tagline for it. But now that they're able to

228
00:13:46,240 --> 00:13:50,920
Speaker 1: cast bronze, they're seeing that it has numerous qualities that

229
00:13:50,960 --> 00:13:55,360
Speaker 1: make it superior to either copper or tin. And like

230
00:13:55,440 --> 00:13:59,120
Speaker 1: you said, Matt, it becomes a game changer when people

231
00:13:59,200 --> 00:14:02,360
Speaker 1: realize it can be used as a weapon far superior

232
00:14:02,440 --> 00:14:06,760
Speaker 1: to stone. So there's still they don't perfect bronze in

233
00:14:06,800 --> 00:14:09,400
Speaker 1: a day, just like Rome wasn't built in a day.

234
00:14:10,120 --> 00:14:13,000
Speaker 1: We know the use of copper was already well known

235
00:14:13,080 --> 00:14:16,200
Speaker 1: throughout the area, and it was beginning to infiltrate the

236
00:14:16,200 --> 00:14:18,840
Speaker 1: cultures of Europe, which were still running a little behind.

237
00:14:19,040 --> 00:14:22,280
Speaker 1: They were still in what we would call the Stone

238
00:14:22,320 --> 00:14:28,240
Speaker 1: Acte days. During the second millennium BCE, the use of

239
00:14:28,560 --> 00:14:31,320
Speaker 1: bronze and the casting and the smelting, the creation of

240
00:14:31,360 --> 00:14:35,960
Speaker 1: it was increasingly improved. We see the emergence of what

241
00:14:36,080 --> 00:14:39,880
Speaker 1: is called true bronze. People are making bronze weapons, and

242
00:14:40,080 --> 00:14:42,440
Speaker 1: we know this because we can do a little bit

243
00:14:42,440 --> 00:14:46,120
Speaker 1: of forensic work, even in places you might not expect,

244
00:14:46,160 --> 00:14:47,440
Speaker 1: like Cornwall, England.

245
00:14:47,960 --> 00:14:50,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, not only the place known for you know, having

246
00:14:50,640 --> 00:14:54,080
Speaker 3: lego pieces wash up on the beach. It in fact

247
00:14:54,120 --> 00:14:56,160
Speaker 3: is also what you were indicating at the top of

248
00:14:56,160 --> 00:15:00,240
Speaker 3: the show, Matt. It has massive deposits of ten. It

249
00:15:00,480 --> 00:15:04,200
Speaker 3: gave them this kind of stronghold in terms of you know, civilization,

250
00:15:04,400 --> 00:15:07,680
Speaker 3: in terms of material evolution. I guess uh to be

251
00:15:07,920 --> 00:15:10,040
Speaker 3: kind of a source for that, because it was so

252
00:15:10,240 --> 00:15:12,920
Speaker 3: rich just in them hills that there was ten.

253
00:15:13,320 --> 00:15:17,280
Speaker 2: Oh for sure. And again a lot of the tin

254
00:15:17,440 --> 00:15:20,840
Speaker 2: carrying from the deposits there was by donkey for a

255
00:15:20,880 --> 00:15:23,640
Speaker 2: long time, but you have to remember it right around

256
00:15:23,640 --> 00:15:28,200
Speaker 2: this time. Guess what's invented the real game changer. The

257
00:15:28,240 --> 00:15:31,800
Speaker 2: wheel gets invented around this around this age.

258
00:15:31,920 --> 00:15:34,960
Speaker 1: And I want to jump in here before anybody uh

259
00:15:35,320 --> 00:15:37,640
Speaker 1: reaches out, reaches out too me or to us with

260
00:15:37,720 --> 00:15:42,080
Speaker 1: a with a question about Incoan civilizations and why there

261
00:15:42,160 --> 00:15:46,280
Speaker 1: was quote unquote not a wheel invented in those civilizations.

262
00:15:46,840 --> 00:15:51,360
Speaker 1: The invention of the wheel is uh is a novelty

263
00:15:51,760 --> 00:15:57,920
Speaker 1: for many ancient cultures, unless they have domesticated livestock to

264
00:15:58,200 --> 00:16:01,520
Speaker 1: pull it. Also, the giography of a lot of those

265
00:16:01,800 --> 00:16:06,320
Speaker 1: mountainous cultures in South America did not lend itself to

266
00:16:06,360 --> 00:16:10,080
Speaker 1: a person hauling a wheelbarrow. So these people are not

267
00:16:10,440 --> 00:16:15,440
Speaker 1: somehow cognitively superior. They were just able to make a

268
00:16:15,480 --> 00:16:20,280
Speaker 1: tool that worked with the geography and the biology of

269
00:16:20,320 --> 00:16:22,200
Speaker 1: the creatures they had already conquered.

270
00:16:22,400 --> 00:16:25,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, because they had oxen, and you could they've figured

271
00:16:25,240 --> 00:16:29,360
Speaker 2: out how to attach a plow to the back of

272
00:16:29,400 --> 00:16:31,680
Speaker 2: a car with an oxen. So I mean, you've got wheels,

273
00:16:32,560 --> 00:16:35,120
Speaker 2: a large animal that can pull a lot of weight,

274
00:16:35,200 --> 00:16:37,920
Speaker 2: and there you go. Now you've got plenty of food

275
00:16:38,200 --> 00:16:40,000
Speaker 2: because you can plant way more.

276
00:16:40,400 --> 00:16:43,000
Speaker 1: Farm in revolution. Take that Norman borlog.

277
00:16:43,640 --> 00:16:48,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right, wheat, get out of here, wheat.

278
00:16:50,360 --> 00:16:54,920
Speaker 2: So we then we know around one thousand BCE there's

279
00:16:54,960 --> 00:16:57,160
Speaker 2: a new thing that surfaced, and we kind of talked

280
00:16:57,800 --> 00:16:59,720
Speaker 2: about it a little bit, but that's the ability to

281
00:17:00,640 --> 00:17:05,240
Speaker 2: forge a different metal iron. That's you know, when you

282
00:17:05,280 --> 00:17:08,679
Speaker 2: get the Iron age, and when iron comes around, it's like, hey,

283
00:17:09,240 --> 00:17:11,960
Speaker 2: you know, Bronze was cool and everything. We appreciate you.

284
00:17:11,960 --> 00:17:14,720
Speaker 2: You did a lot for us, but I'm here now,

285
00:17:14,840 --> 00:17:21,359
Speaker 2: so bye. It really was the beginning of something completely

286
00:17:21,400 --> 00:17:26,119
Speaker 2: different when the forging of iron came around.

287
00:17:26,480 --> 00:17:30,240
Speaker 1: However, there's more to this story. It's not as clean

288
00:17:30,359 --> 00:17:34,840
Speaker 1: cut as a brand new form of metal coming out

289
00:17:34,880 --> 00:17:38,800
Speaker 1: like a brand new iPhone, right, you see, for some reason,

290
00:17:39,080 --> 00:17:43,800
Speaker 1: instead of transitioning peacefully over a gradient, over a spectrum

291
00:17:43,840 --> 00:17:48,960
Speaker 1: over time to the Iron Age, multiple Bronze Age civilizations

292
00:17:49,000 --> 00:17:54,760
Speaker 1: and cultures just imploded. And what are we talking about.

293
00:17:54,880 --> 00:18:05,040
Speaker 1: We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor, and

294
00:18:05,119 --> 00:18:08,960
Speaker 1: we're back. The Bronze Age did not end with a whimper,

295
00:18:09,080 --> 00:18:11,960
Speaker 1: as the old quotation goes. It ended with a bank.

296
00:18:12,560 --> 00:18:17,760
Speaker 1: It popped sort of abruptly, with the near simultaneous collapse

297
00:18:17,800 --> 00:18:23,680
Speaker 1: of multiple Bronze Age civilizations, the biggest empires in the world.

298
00:18:24,080 --> 00:18:29,680
Speaker 1: Modern day Egypt is like a survivor of this enormous

299
00:18:29,760 --> 00:18:33,920
Speaker 1: human catastrophe. Imagine now, for example, in the modern day,

300
00:18:34,240 --> 00:18:40,600
Speaker 1: imagine if China, the US, Canada, India, and Russia all

301
00:18:40,640 --> 00:18:44,840
Speaker 1: fell within less than a century, within fifty years of

302
00:18:44,880 --> 00:18:49,760
Speaker 1: each other, they became dreams of bygone empires. That's a

303
00:18:49,800 --> 00:18:53,399
Speaker 1: modern day version of exactly what happened during the Bronze Age.

304
00:18:53,800 --> 00:18:59,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, so major Bronze Age civilizations like Mycenaean Greece, the

305
00:18:59,400 --> 00:19:03,760
Speaker 3: Hittitere in Turkey, and ancient Egypt fell within a comparatively

306
00:19:04,000 --> 00:19:08,399
Speaker 3: short period of time. These ancient cities were abandoned. The

307
00:19:08,440 --> 00:19:10,600
Speaker 3: trade routes that we talked about they were so important

308
00:19:10,640 --> 00:19:15,679
Speaker 3: were abandoned as well, were lost, and literacy even declined

309
00:19:15,760 --> 00:19:18,960
Speaker 3: throughout that region. So more than just a little over

310
00:19:19,000 --> 00:19:21,560
Speaker 3: thirty two hundred years ago, they all went from being

311
00:19:21,680 --> 00:19:25,440
Speaker 3: huge power players in the world economy of the time,

312
00:19:26,119 --> 00:19:30,440
Speaker 3: world class civilizations, to essentially we refer to today as failed

313
00:19:30,520 --> 00:19:36,000
Speaker 3: states or more so even non existent states. And you

314
00:19:36,080 --> 00:19:42,040
Speaker 3: can today find crushed skeletons and scattered remnants and debris

315
00:19:42,080 --> 00:19:45,280
Speaker 3: from you know, artifacts of the time that remain. But

316
00:19:45,400 --> 00:19:48,560
Speaker 3: that's about all there is left of these once incredibly

317
00:19:48,600 --> 00:19:50,200
Speaker 3: influential and powerful cities.

318
00:19:50,880 --> 00:19:54,399
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can see, you know, where there was something

319
00:19:54,480 --> 00:20:00,480
Speaker 2: once and archaeologists, like like you said, have have found well,

320
00:20:00,840 --> 00:20:03,880
Speaker 2: I don't want to spoil anything here, Ben, but archaeologists

321
00:20:03,920 --> 00:20:07,480
Speaker 2: have found on a specific layer of soil of ground

322
00:20:07,600 --> 00:20:11,560
Speaker 2: essentially all in the same layer where all of these

323
00:20:11,680 --> 00:20:16,040
Speaker 2: various cities all went seemed to be with fire, some

324
00:20:16,160 --> 00:20:20,960
Speaker 2: kind of great battle or great terrible thing that occurred

325
00:20:21,280 --> 00:20:24,720
Speaker 2: in all of these cities within a very short time span.

326
00:20:25,800 --> 00:20:27,919
Speaker 2: It's very odd, very very odd.

327
00:20:28,480 --> 00:20:30,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, within as little as the span of a century,

328
00:20:31,000 --> 00:20:35,919
Speaker 1: which is just like a fingersnap. It's the span of

329
00:20:35,920 --> 00:20:40,840
Speaker 1: his century is like a micrometer in the timeline. But

330
00:20:41,520 --> 00:20:45,480
Speaker 1: we know that other civilizations have disappeared in the past,

331
00:20:45,720 --> 00:20:50,159
Speaker 1: maybe not at this level, but very large populated places. Kahokio.

332
00:20:50,280 --> 00:20:54,480
Speaker 1: We did an episode on that. Ancient cultures in Southeast Asia,

333
00:20:54,520 --> 00:20:58,679
Speaker 1: like modern day Cambodia, South America as well. Some of

334
00:20:58,680 --> 00:21:01,639
Speaker 1: those things remain at least part the unexplained. But in

335
00:21:01,720 --> 00:21:04,960
Speaker 1: most of those cases, what we're seeing is a single

336
00:21:05,400 --> 00:21:10,040
Speaker 1: community or a single culture, a single civilization being affected.

337
00:21:10,720 --> 00:21:15,720
Speaker 1: We still have serious questions about what could have made

338
00:21:15,880 --> 00:21:21,880
Speaker 1: so many massive, successful cultures self destruct all at once,

339
00:21:22,040 --> 00:21:25,520
Speaker 1: especially when we know that they had a vested interest

340
00:21:25,760 --> 00:21:29,320
Speaker 1: in maintaining a status quo to a degree, supporting one

341
00:21:29,359 --> 00:21:33,800
Speaker 1: another to enable the whole to rise. And we're struggling

342
00:21:33,880 --> 00:21:38,440
Speaker 1: to figure out what happened. Here's where it gets crazy.

343
00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:41,000
Speaker 2: Oh oh jeez.

344
00:21:42,160 --> 00:21:45,720
Speaker 1: So over the centuries, people have been guessing. Multiple scholars

345
00:21:45,920 --> 00:21:50,880
Speaker 1: have put forward multiple arguments of varying credibility to explain

346
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:54,680
Speaker 1: this disturbing historical mystery.

347
00:21:55,080 --> 00:21:57,720
Speaker 2: You know, well, yeah, the first one we you know,

348
00:21:57,800 --> 00:22:01,760
Speaker 2: I mentioned they're kind of as a spoiler or a precursor

349
00:22:01,880 --> 00:22:04,520
Speaker 2: to this, that there is a layer of ash in

350
00:22:04,640 --> 00:22:06,920
Speaker 2: a lot of these citadels, in what we would call

351
00:22:06,960 --> 00:22:10,840
Speaker 2: cities back in the day that existed around the same time.

352
00:22:11,240 --> 00:22:12,960
Speaker 2: And one of the theories that's been put forth is

353
00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:16,320
Speaker 2: that some kind of natural disaster caused these, you know,

354
00:22:16,480 --> 00:22:21,399
Speaker 2: various cities and civilizations to collapse simultaneously, and one of

355
00:22:21,440 --> 00:22:25,440
Speaker 2: those would be like a massive volcanic eruption or perhaps

356
00:22:25,720 --> 00:22:30,199
Speaker 2: an earthquake or series of those two things occurring. You know,

357
00:22:30,280 --> 00:22:34,440
Speaker 2: agent people didn't have any way to communicate, at least

358
00:22:34,440 --> 00:22:37,439
Speaker 2: through technology. That is, a disaster was coming from some

359
00:22:37,960 --> 00:22:40,120
Speaker 2: far flowing part of the world. But it doesn't mean

360
00:22:40,600 --> 00:22:45,080
Speaker 2: that the disasters couldn't impact them all simultaneously, right, And

361
00:22:45,160 --> 00:22:47,800
Speaker 2: there are few There are some Egyptologists that have dated

362
00:22:47,840 --> 00:22:52,240
Speaker 2: back the Hecla volcano. It's Hecla three volcanic eruption that

363
00:22:52,560 --> 00:22:55,160
Speaker 2: was in Iceland. It occurred in eleven fifty nine BCE.

364
00:22:55,880 --> 00:23:00,000
Speaker 2: They're saying that possibly it caused this these civilizations to collapse,

365
00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:03,800
Speaker 2: but not because of the eruption itself, because the volcanic

366
00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:08,840
Speaker 2: eruption may have caused a famine that affected this large

367
00:23:08,880 --> 00:23:10,040
Speaker 2: swath of area.

368
00:23:10,680 --> 00:23:14,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have some you know, we have evidence from

369
00:23:14,840 --> 00:23:20,000
Speaker 1: Egyptian sources. We know under Ramsey's three, during the wider

370
00:23:20,760 --> 00:23:25,040
Speaker 1: overall Bronze Age collapse, it's called the Late Bronze Age collapse.

371
00:23:25,400 --> 00:23:29,200
Speaker 1: We know that the rulers of the time were addressing

372
00:23:29,280 --> 00:23:34,160
Speaker 1: civil unrest and crime and it was tied into famine, right,

373
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:39,920
Speaker 1: It was tied into migration to people becoming refugees. And

374
00:23:40,160 --> 00:23:42,359
Speaker 1: I love what you said, man, Just because they didn't

375
00:23:42,400 --> 00:23:46,520
Speaker 1: see an eruption in Iceland doesn't mean it didn't screw

376
00:23:46,640 --> 00:23:51,520
Speaker 1: up the connected weather systems equally less food. And remember,

377
00:23:51,640 --> 00:23:54,320
Speaker 1: part of the reason people were so successful in the

378
00:23:54,320 --> 00:23:57,200
Speaker 1: Bronze Age and this part of the world was entirely

379
00:23:57,240 --> 00:24:00,960
Speaker 1: because of that surplus of food and the positive domino effect,

380
00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:05,720
Speaker 1: the positive feedback loop that creates. Now we're seeing the

381
00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:09,159
Speaker 1: opposite its evil twin. We know an eruption of that

382
00:24:09,240 --> 00:24:15,480
Speaker 1: size could definitely impact agriculture, but I mean, scholars still

383
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:18,320
Speaker 1: of course argue back and forth about the degree to

384
00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:21,480
Speaker 1: which that's affected it. Right, You'll hear a lot of

385
00:24:21,520 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 1: people say, well, that one eruption couldn't spell the end

386
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:30,440
Speaker 1: of multiple empires. It just didn't have the size for that.

387
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:34,560
Speaker 1: And even if there is this butterfly ripple effect, it

388
00:24:34,560 --> 00:24:38,720
Speaker 1: wouldn't have lasted long enough to destroy those empires by itself.

389
00:24:39,280 --> 00:24:42,320
Speaker 1: But we have to keep in mind. Volcanic eruptions can

390
00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:45,879
Speaker 1: also be linked to earthquakes, and earthquakes can also do

391
00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:48,399
Speaker 1: a massive amount of damage in a short amount of time.

392
00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:54,000
Speaker 1: They can also maybe be linked to tsunamis, so flooding

393
00:24:54,720 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 1: or saying as you can get a combo meal for

394
00:24:56,400 --> 00:24:59,280
Speaker 1: natural disaster, it doesn't always have to be ordered a

395
00:24:59,359 --> 00:24:59,919
Speaker 1: la carte.

396
00:25:00,480 --> 00:25:04,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, two meets two sides, one bread exactly.

397
00:25:05,000 --> 00:25:07,720
Speaker 3: I mean, can't some of those eruptions produce so much

398
00:25:07,840 --> 00:25:11,040
Speaker 3: ash and nastiness that it literally blocks out the sun

399
00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:12,639
Speaker 3: like for a while.

400
00:25:13,359 --> 00:25:16,480
Speaker 2: That's what we're talking about. You could essentially disrupt the

401
00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:20,639
Speaker 2: weather systems in a large area, if not the entire planet.

402
00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:24,040
Speaker 3: Or it's also you know, the ability for crops to

403
00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:27,399
Speaker 3: get you know, the nutrients they need from from sunlight

404
00:25:27,440 --> 00:25:28,000
Speaker 3: and all of that.

405
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:30,800
Speaker 1: That's a really good point. Yeah, because imagine you're you're

406
00:25:30,840 --> 00:25:35,439
Speaker 1: a farmer, and you know the religions of this time,

407
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:41,160
Speaker 1: the ones that are authorized by the ruling class. When

408
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:43,760
Speaker 1: it comes to the lower class, they're entirely meant to

409
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:47,600
Speaker 1: keep you farming and feel like you're vaguely in trouble

410
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 1: and struggling. Right, it's cultur rules again. And and so

411
00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:55,400
Speaker 1: what do you do when this sky goes black? Someone

412
00:25:55,440 --> 00:26:00,159
Speaker 1: has messed something up. You're not a volcanologist. Volcanologists don't exist.

413
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:05,720
Speaker 1: You're trying to grow food, and as politicians are so

414
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:09,719
Speaker 1: fond of saying, today, feed your family. And then just

415
00:26:09,720 --> 00:26:11,880
Speaker 1: like you said, no, the sky goes black, No one

416
00:26:11,880 --> 00:26:17,360
Speaker 1: knows why. Perhaps, and then the rain disappears, right.

417
00:26:17,680 --> 00:26:20,320
Speaker 2: Or then the ground starts shaking.

418
00:26:20,400 --> 00:26:22,960
Speaker 1: Yep, and the crops are fallow.

419
00:26:23,320 --> 00:26:23,560
Speaker 2: Right.

420
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:26,639
Speaker 1: You just can't grow like you used to. There's a

421
00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:31,240
Speaker 1: geophysicist named Amos Nerve from Stanford, and he argues that

422
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:35,560
Speaker 1: a string of massive earthquakes could have knocked down one

423
00:26:35,600 --> 00:26:38,840
Speaker 1: of these city states after another. You can pull up

424
00:26:39,440 --> 00:26:41,959
Speaker 1: I think there's a really cool Google Maps layer you

425
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:45,639
Speaker 1: can pull up that will show you the Bronze Age

426
00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:50,920
Speaker 1: empires and you can see how his argument. You can

427
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:54,080
Speaker 1: see how his argument proceeds that these cities fell one

428
00:26:54,080 --> 00:26:56,800
Speaker 1: by one to earthquakes. They didn't have FEMA, they didn't

429
00:26:56,840 --> 00:27:01,400
Speaker 1: have the communication or infrastructure resources available in the modern day,

430
00:27:01,960 --> 00:27:05,960
Speaker 1: so this could have brought those empires to a premature end.

431
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:10,320
Speaker 1: He also and I thought this would be interesting to

432
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:14,119
Speaker 1: historical scholars of the Bible in the audience. He also

433
00:27:14,960 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 1: argues that earthquake activity maybe the real life inspiration for

434
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:23,199
Speaker 1: the biblical prophecy of Armageddon, that's the site of the

435
00:27:23,200 --> 00:27:27,040
Speaker 1: final conflict between good and evil. He says, you know,

436
00:27:27,119 --> 00:27:32,159
Speaker 1: the repeated destruction of the city Meguido probably ast and

437
00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:35,080
Speaker 1: this is almost nervous opinion. He says it inspired the

438
00:27:35,119 --> 00:27:40,880
Speaker 1: author of Revelation to write his prediction of the apocalypse,

439
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:45,440
Speaker 1: like this guy saw an earthquake, experienced it, live through it,

440
00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 1: said this is going to happen again, And now you

441
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:51,520
Speaker 1: know he is a co author of one of the

442
00:27:51,520 --> 00:27:55,080
Speaker 1: most famous books of all time. But that's a cold comfort,

443
00:27:55,240 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't get you out of an earthquake.

444
00:27:57,320 --> 00:28:00,879
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So we're telling you where talking about these

445
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 2: various things we've you know, we've gone through volcanoes and earthquakes. Well,

446
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:09,400
Speaker 2: what if for one reason or another, it wasn't those things,

447
00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:13,160
Speaker 2: and it was just a lack of consistent rain water

448
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 2: for the crops that were so important at the time.

449
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:20,200
Speaker 2: What if there was a massive drought that ended up

450
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:27,359
Speaker 2: causing chaos essentially within the civilizations themselves. And you know,

451
00:28:28,040 --> 00:28:31,159
Speaker 2: is that even a possibility? Well guess what we have

452
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:34,119
Speaker 2: good news for you. Intelligent people have been studying it.

453
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:35,920
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, that's right.

454
00:28:36,359 --> 00:28:39,440
Speaker 3: There was an article in the Journal of the Institute

455
00:28:39,440 --> 00:28:44,680
Speaker 3: of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University where researchers led by

456
00:28:44,800 --> 00:28:50,080
Speaker 3: a palaeonologist, Dafna Langett, put forth this very theory.

457
00:28:50,280 --> 00:28:53,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly Langa argues that drought led to the

458
00:28:53,960 --> 00:28:57,800
Speaker 1: collapse of at least the ancient Southern levant and that

459
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:02,200
Speaker 1: cascaded out to the rest of the known world like

460
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:05,040
Speaker 1: this is we were talking about the known world at

461
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:10,600
Speaker 1: this time. Uh. Palenologist is sort of a word for

462
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:13,400
Speaker 1: the word of the day for us. I don't know

463
00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: about you, guys, I didn't know this was a job.

464
00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:19,840
Speaker 1: It's someone who studies ancient pollens. So gtfo with your

465
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:21,200
Speaker 1: modern pollms.

466
00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:24,920
Speaker 3: Oh man, it reminds keeps. Oh that's so specialized. I

467
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:27,080
Speaker 3: love it that someone goes, I grow up. I want

468
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:28,600
Speaker 3: to study ancient pollens.

469
00:29:28,920 --> 00:29:34,160
Speaker 2: All right, I'm sorry, what do you want? What ancient pollens? Yes? Okay, No, No,

470
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:34,720
Speaker 2: you can't do it.

471
00:29:34,880 --> 00:29:37,080
Speaker 3: Please, I really feel passionately about it.

472
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:39,560
Speaker 2: Dad, there's no way. How are you going to even

473
00:29:39,680 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 2: find it? Get out of here?

474
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 1: Well, you know you dig it up.

475
00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:45,680
Speaker 3: I guess right. No, that's a good question, dad, Ben.

476
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:48,280
Speaker 3: How do you find ancient pollen samples?

477
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you asked buddying a polynologists. Uh. You know,

478
00:29:53,520 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 1: a lot of people are going to tell you it's

479
00:29:55,040 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 1: a weird dream. And I've come to your career day

480
00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:00,800
Speaker 1: to let you know that all dreams are kind of weird,

481
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:03,800
Speaker 1: and there's no reason that you should knock this one

482
00:30:03,840 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: out of the running. Look at all the pollen around today.

483
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:10,200
Speaker 1: It had to come from somewhere. Start digging, Start reading,

484
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:11,440
Speaker 1: start digging.

485
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 3: If you.

486
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:16,520
Speaker 1: Take you know, I don't want to get I don't

487
00:30:16,520 --> 00:30:18,640
Speaker 1: want to get lost in the weeds here kids on

488
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:22,000
Speaker 1: how you actually find these things. But you can. If

489
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 1: you dig through the layers of soil in places that

490
00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:30,800
Speaker 1: had pollen producing plants right on a regular basis, then

491
00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: you can take samples of those the same way you

492
00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:38,720
Speaker 1: take samples of a tree right at different chronicles in

493
00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:44,440
Speaker 1: its own dendo chronology, and then you can find what

494
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 1: Lengett calls the fingerprints of plants pollen grains or the

495
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:57,360
Speaker 1: fingerprints of plants. They can help scientists reconstruct the ancient

496
00:30:57,480 --> 00:31:01,520
Speaker 1: natural vegetation past climate can do. So I say to

497
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: you in this improv scene, I say to you, go forward,

498
00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:09,640
Speaker 1: start collecting all the pollen you can, and remember that

499
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:11,600
Speaker 1: one day we don't have to just think about you

500
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:15,480
Speaker 1: as a pollinologist. Now we can think about those who

501
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:18,120
Speaker 1: come after you. So save the pollen for them. You

502
00:31:18,200 --> 00:31:20,320
Speaker 1: may end up being there carl And aeus you may

503
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:22,360
Speaker 1: end up being there. Charles Darwin.

504
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:25,800
Speaker 3: Well, it's so interesting though, because I mean, these are fossils,

505
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:28,880
Speaker 3: this is part of the fossil record. They're just really

506
00:31:28,920 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 3: really tiny fossils. And you're right, they act as kind

507
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 3: of like a fingerprint in the same way maybe ice cores,

508
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:41,520
Speaker 3: only obviously much much smaller do for you know, studying

509
00:31:41,560 --> 00:31:45,640
Speaker 3: the layers of collected ice, and that core tells a story,

510
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:47,480
Speaker 3: and poland does the same thing, and it's a story

511
00:31:47,520 --> 00:31:48,880
Speaker 3: about past climates.

512
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:53,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we can paint a pretty accurate picture. Of course,

513
00:31:53,360 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 1: the only way we can know whether it's one hundred

514
00:31:55,080 --> 00:31:59,120
Speaker 1: percent accurate is to travel back there. And unless you

515
00:31:59,200 --> 00:32:02,600
Speaker 1: believe that paper by that recent undergrad there's not a

516
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:06,280
Speaker 1: way to time travel. Yet. That's a story frustration, I think.

517
00:32:07,160 --> 00:32:13,440
Speaker 1: So right now we know that we know that this

518
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:18,440
Speaker 1: research shows a very specific, very sharp decline in the

519
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:24,000
Speaker 1: vegetation that up until that point was common. The scientists

520
00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 1: led by Langett found that in twelve fifty BCE, the

521
00:32:29,880 --> 00:32:33,960
Speaker 1: traditional plant life of the Mediterranean, the Late Bronze Age,

522
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:36,440
Speaker 1: seemed to just take a nose.

523
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 2: Dive, just be.

524
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 1: And in its place, they saw plants that you would

525
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 1: find in semi desert areas.

526
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was in like carab trees, pine trees,

527
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 2: oak trees, they're out there. And they also noticed that

528
00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:56,560
Speaker 2: there was a huge drop in olive trees, you know,

529
00:32:56,600 --> 00:32:59,680
Speaker 2: and that is a major thing that is being produced

530
00:32:59,680 --> 00:33:06,600
Speaker 2: out for food sources and for other reasons. And there's

531
00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:11,080
Speaker 2: an there's an indication that horticulture in general in that

532
00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:14,240
Speaker 2: area at the time was on the decline, right, And

533
00:33:14,320 --> 00:33:17,320
Speaker 2: really what the team came away with is that the

534
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:22,240
Speaker 2: region was in the grip of serious regular droughts within

535
00:33:22,360 --> 00:33:30,000
Speaker 2: a drought season that lasted for several seasons essentially. And

536
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 2: the dates of researchers came up with via all this

537
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:37,240
Speaker 2: pollen analysis that they went through, they correspond pretty darn

538
00:33:37,360 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 2: well with a few remaining historical records that you know,

539
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:46,120
Speaker 2: scientists and humanity has of that period, and they all

540
00:33:46,200 --> 00:33:48,960
Speaker 2: a lot of those, by the way, mentioned shortages of grains,

541
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:53,239
Speaker 2: So you know, all this this seems to be, like

542
00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:57,520
Speaker 2: Ben said, painting a pretty clear picture of no matter

543
00:33:57,560 --> 00:34:02,320
Speaker 2: what was going on, this was a sign magnificant factor. Right.

544
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:06,640
Speaker 1: It's spooky to build a puzzle of this size. We're

545
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 1: finding puzzle pieces in the twentieth century that connect with

546
00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:16,120
Speaker 1: puzzle pieces from five thousand, like from thousand, three thousand

547
00:34:16,200 --> 00:34:19,759
Speaker 1: so years ago. That's a lot of work. That's one

548
00:34:19,800 --> 00:34:23,160
Speaker 1: hell of a jigsaw. And the thing about these scant

549
00:34:23,320 --> 00:34:27,399
Speaker 1: historical records is that they're pretty informative for what they

550
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:31,319
Speaker 1: are also pretty cryptic, and they don't just mention shortages

551
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:34,680
Speaker 1: of grain. We're going to pause for word from our sponsor,

552
00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:38,239
Speaker 1: and as long as our civilization doesn't collapse in the

553
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 1: next couple minutes or so, then we'll return and put

554
00:34:43,080 --> 00:34:46,520
Speaker 1: some more puzzle pieces of the Bronze Age collapse together,

555
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:56,600
Speaker 1: and we're back off air. We were having a little

556
00:34:56,640 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 1: conversation about our earlier. Our earlier A great question. What's

557
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 1: the name for this age?

558
00:35:02,440 --> 00:35:02,600
Speaker 2: Uh?

559
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:06,080
Speaker 1: Noel, you proposed the plastics age. We talked about information

560
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 1: age because I do think information is a substance.

561
00:35:09,600 --> 00:35:09,719
Speaker 2: Uh.

562
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:11,200
Speaker 3: Silicon age was the first one.

563
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:11,879
Speaker 2: Matt put forth.

564
00:35:11,920 --> 00:35:15,480
Speaker 1: A Silicon age, yeah, or computer age. Some people are

565
00:35:15,520 --> 00:35:18,280
Speaker 1: calling it new media age, which all goes to show

566
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:21,719
Speaker 1: we don't we don't know what future historians are going

567
00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:24,640
Speaker 1: to call it. They might just latch onto one thing

568
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:27,520
Speaker 1: and they might be calling it the Ferby Age, like

569
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:32,240
Speaker 1: the most technologically significant invention of these ancient benighted people

570
00:35:33,360 --> 00:35:36,640
Speaker 1: was our one true god, the Ferbie. And that'll be

571
00:35:36,760 --> 00:35:39,640
Speaker 1: how we're known by our descendants on Mars in the moon.

572
00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:42,360
Speaker 3: And well, when when it ends up being the age

573
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:45,480
Speaker 3: that leads to the destruction of all civilization, maybe we

574
00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:48,759
Speaker 3: could refer to it as the idiot age, the apocalypse age,

575
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:50,000
Speaker 3: I don't know, just.

576
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:53,400
Speaker 2: Call it, just call it the last age. Yeah, yeah, that.

577
00:35:55,320 --> 00:35:58,160
Speaker 1: Old, that old, that old joke. I think it was

578
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:01,160
Speaker 1: from one of the chans about Handlejack. Do you guys

579
00:36:01,160 --> 00:36:05,400
Speaker 1: remember that you can't say his name or he diss anyway,

580
00:36:06,520 --> 00:36:10,280
Speaker 1: got me? It's okay, I mean, but yeah, the zoom

581
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:13,640
Speaker 1: froze and he got me. But what's what's so interesting

582
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:17,040
Speaker 1: about that name aside is that, you know, we have

583
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:21,759
Speaker 1: to remember any fans of literature, one thing that's infuriating

584
00:36:22,360 --> 00:36:27,440
Speaker 1: is that, uh, while backs uh some time ago, now

585
00:36:27,440 --> 00:36:29,600
Speaker 1: as far back as a Bronze age, someone got the

586
00:36:29,640 --> 00:36:34,960
Speaker 1: bride idea to call a certain school of literature modernism,

587
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 1: and what do they call the next one postmodernism? We can't.

588
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:41,480
Speaker 1: We can't name stuff like that.

589
00:36:41,760 --> 00:36:44,200
Speaker 3: It's the same with music genres. It's like you got rock.

590
00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:48,200
Speaker 3: Then you got post rock, which is basically just like

591
00:36:48,640 --> 00:36:53,000
Speaker 3: minimalist rock with it's got guitars, doesn't really have many changes,

592
00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:57,120
Speaker 3: it's a lot of it's like ambient music and rock

593
00:36:57,160 --> 00:37:00,839
Speaker 3: and roll had like a weird slow child. Or are

594
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:02,600
Speaker 3: the same with punk and post punk? What do you even?

595
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:04,720
Speaker 3: I guess post punk is just punk that's a little

596
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:08,160
Speaker 3: more intelligent. I don't know, it's interesting all of those terms.

597
00:37:08,600 --> 00:37:10,839
Speaker 2: You guys, when do you think we're going to reach

598
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:14,840
Speaker 2: the post war stage? Do you think that's going to happen?

599
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:20,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, when humanity is Actually no, it'll still happen

600
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:23,440
Speaker 1: after humanity is gone, because by that point, the machines

601
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:27,439
Speaker 1: and algorithms we've made will continue fighting an entirely automated war.

602
00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 1: But eventually they'll need repairs, and if they are successful enough,

603
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:36,720
Speaker 1: it's self repairing. Then if they extend past the solar system,

604
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 1: the death of the sun won't matter. So I guess

605
00:37:39,560 --> 00:37:42,520
Speaker 1: by the heat death of the universe will definitely be

606
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:48,279
Speaker 1: in a post war. The economy, the economy, Yes, the

607
00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:53,000
Speaker 1: universe is ended, but we fixed the economy. Good news,

608
00:37:53,040 --> 00:37:56,360
Speaker 1: bad news, right, which, First, you're right, the war is

609
00:37:56,400 --> 00:37:58,719
Speaker 1: a fundamental piece of this, and that's why I really

610
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:01,000
Speaker 1: appreciate one of the things point out there, Matt, when

611
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:07,719
Speaker 1: you said immediately, of course, some bright bulb, well we

612
00:38:07,719 --> 00:38:10,560
Speaker 1: can't say bulb. There there were no light bulbs. Some

613
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:16,279
Speaker 1: some bright candle around that bronze discovery campfire said we

614
00:38:16,360 --> 00:38:19,920
Speaker 1: could we could use this to do amazing things. We

615
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:23,839
Speaker 1: could build plumbing, you know, we could like probably make

616
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:35,759
Speaker 1: some medical improvements, or we could kill like everybody, you guys.

617
00:38:35,600 --> 00:38:38,400
Speaker 3: That's a last resort, though, gotta be a last resort.

618
00:38:38,640 --> 00:38:41,160
Speaker 3: Surely there's another way, right, And.

619
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:43,720
Speaker 1: Everyone's like yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, totally, yeah.

620
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:51,600
Speaker 3: Totally just not me, right, I mean, I'm good, Okay.

621
00:38:51,719 --> 00:38:54,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're great, dude, you like put together the fire,

622
00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:59,480
Speaker 1: come on, man, So so uh yeah, let's just do

623
00:38:59,520 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 1: a show with historical reenactments that we make up. We

624
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:06,000
Speaker 1: catch that one time behind the scenes. By the way,

625
00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:12,040
Speaker 1: it was still great. It was such a great idea.

626
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:17,960
Speaker 1: I know, it was not drunk history. It was weirder anyway.

627
00:39:18,239 --> 00:39:18,479
Speaker 2: War.

628
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:21,120
Speaker 1: The reason we're talking about it is because it is

629
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:25,359
Speaker 1: unfortunately a very common process in human history, the fall

630
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:28,800
Speaker 1: of a status quo or a stable government for some reason,

631
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:33,160
Speaker 1: regardless of how good or fair, or how terrible or

632
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:38,640
Speaker 1: authoritarian that structure might be, it inevitably leads to violence. Right.

633
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:42,800
Speaker 1: It's the equivalent of removing those painted lines, those silly

634
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:45,359
Speaker 1: painted lines that we have on the interstate highways. They

635
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:49,960
Speaker 1: actually do reduce accidents, not just as a visual aid,

636
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:54,239
Speaker 1: but because they remind people of these intangible laws that

637
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 1: we all obey, because we feel as though they are

638
00:39:57,560 --> 00:40:01,080
Speaker 1: constantly applied, and of course they're not. Just in general,

639
00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:03,920
Speaker 1: people tend to agree that those are good things. So

640
00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:07,200
Speaker 1: now those laws are removed, and people then, just like

641
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:12,760
Speaker 1: people now, started doing whatever they wish when those laws

642
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:15,480
Speaker 1: were not in play, especially when they felt like they

643
00:40:15,480 --> 00:40:18,080
Speaker 1: were fighting for their own survival. That's why the collapse

644
00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:21,239
Speaker 1: of le bronze age is marked by what would be

645
00:40:21,360 --> 00:40:26,720
Speaker 1: described as an upticking crime in the modern world, and

646
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:30,160
Speaker 1: that is a very diluted milk socet way to say it.

647
00:40:30,360 --> 00:40:34,360
Speaker 1: We're talking about is widespread pillaging, disruption of those precious

648
00:40:34,440 --> 00:40:38,640
Speaker 1: international trade routes, civil unrest, let's fight, Let's get that

649
00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: bastard the king. He's had it coming to him and

650
00:40:41,640 --> 00:40:44,080
Speaker 1: I don't think his God is going to stop us

651
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 1: this time. War over diminishing resources one of the biggest

652
00:40:49,600 --> 00:40:54,799
Speaker 1: mysteries here that we may have to dedicate an entire

653
00:40:54,840 --> 00:41:01,439
Speaker 1: episode to is the emergence of a mysterious seafaring confederation.

654
00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:06,000
Speaker 1: You could call them known as the Sea People's. They're like,

655
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:10,719
Speaker 1: they're like Matt Max esque raiders in this scenario, or

656
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:16,200
Speaker 1: they're like in water World, they're like the Smokers. They

657
00:41:16,200 --> 00:41:24,360
Speaker 1: were going to these stable, relatively stable, but struggling fonts

658
00:41:24,400 --> 00:41:28,200
Speaker 1: of civilization, and they were just running through them and

659
00:41:28,239 --> 00:41:30,840
Speaker 1: then you couldn't catch them because they were back on

660
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:33,760
Speaker 1: the votes. They were gone and on to the next city.

661
00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:38,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, it becomes a pretty horrifying vision thinking about the

662
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:43,640
Speaker 2: quote see Peoples, and I'll tell you why. In quick

663
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:49,319
Speaker 2: shout out to the podcast Fall of Civilizations for an

664
00:41:49,320 --> 00:41:52,360
Speaker 2: episode they did on a similar topic here about the

665
00:41:52,920 --> 00:41:57,080
Speaker 2: Bronze Age collapse. They did a great job of explaining

666
00:41:57,320 --> 00:42:02,839
Speaker 2: the very small descriptions that exist out there for the

667
00:42:03,239 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 2: Sea People's, and it sounds weird. They it sounds, I

668
00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:10,480
Speaker 2: think the way they put on the podcast like a

669
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:12,800
Speaker 2: monster from the deep. When you hear the Sea People's,

670
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:15,200
Speaker 2: it sounds like, what are those merman? Is that what

671
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 2: we're talking about? Are we talking about something from you know,

672
00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:22,879
Speaker 2: creatures from below the water that emerged and attacked these

673
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:27,840
Speaker 2: towns and pillaged them. No, we're not, at least I

674
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:31,200
Speaker 2: certainly don't think so. But there is so little evidence

675
00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 2: about what they actually did and so few descriptions that

676
00:42:34,520 --> 00:42:38,359
Speaker 2: it becomes I don't know, more of a nightmare than

677
00:42:38,400 --> 00:42:39,319
Speaker 2: I guess it needs to be.

678
00:42:40,160 --> 00:42:44,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we know they're like the descriptions that we

679
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 1: find are sometimes just terrifies. The translations are like these

680
00:42:51,080 --> 00:42:56,400
Speaker 1: plaintive things from one authority to another saying, look, uh,

681
00:42:56,719 --> 00:43:00,200
Speaker 1: my armies are in the capitol that is way way

682
00:43:00,239 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 1: in land right let's say the Hittites, for example, and

683
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:07,800
Speaker 1: then my ships whatever would pass from my naval force

684
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:12,200
Speaker 1: is way over here, far to the west of me,

685
00:43:12,560 --> 00:43:14,960
Speaker 1: and they can't get there in time. There's an exact

686
00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:21,480
Speaker 1: quote where one authority says, thus, the lands are prostrate

687
00:43:21,840 --> 00:43:25,120
Speaker 1: to these raiders. There's no one to defend them, you

688
00:43:25,160 --> 00:43:27,120
Speaker 1: know what I mean. There's not like a police force

689
00:43:27,160 --> 00:43:30,920
Speaker 1: at this time that can stand up to reavers like this.

690
00:43:31,600 --> 00:43:34,640
Speaker 1: And the thing is that the cause of the difficulties

691
00:43:34,719 --> 00:43:41,480
Speaker 1: of transmitting both information and resources, they would these empires

692
00:43:41,520 --> 00:43:45,719
Speaker 1: would often find out after the fact that someone had

693
00:43:45,800 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 1: destroyed a trade hub or a city, or a or

694
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:58,680
Speaker 1: a holy place, and this this devastated the many of

695
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:05,240
Speaker 1: these empires. The Sea Peoples did lose campaigns at times,

696
00:44:05,920 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 1: but they kept coming. Ramsey's three I think we mentioned

697
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 1: he's got some He's got some inscriptions that people have

698
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:18,240
Speaker 1: recovered in Thebes, and in those inscriptions in mortuary temple,

699
00:44:18,560 --> 00:44:24,160
Speaker 1: you can find sources recounting at least three different legitimate

700
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:28,160
Speaker 1: victories against the Sea Peoples. But again that's Egypt. One

701
00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 1: thing you need to remember about Egypt in this period

702
00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 1: is that Egypt kind of survived. There's still a country

703
00:44:34,080 --> 00:44:37,200
Speaker 1: called Egypt. It's not a country called, you know, Home

704
00:44:37,239 --> 00:44:38,040
Speaker 1: of the Hittites.

705
00:44:39,440 --> 00:44:41,880
Speaker 3: But I will say that is a number one on

706
00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:43,960
Speaker 3: my list or what they should have been called, just

707
00:44:43,960 --> 00:44:47,040
Speaker 3: like hyphenated maybe or maybe it all want work called Home.

708
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:47,480
Speaker 2: Of the Hittites.

709
00:44:48,040 --> 00:44:50,719
Speaker 1: Love it and I like that as one word. Yeah,

710
00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 1: so we again we can we can say that there

711
00:44:56,719 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 1: is a wealth of insightful and value valuable literature and

712
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:05,839
Speaker 1: research into the ultimate identity of what is commonly called

713
00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:10,680
Speaker 1: the Sea People's the reason that everybody speaking English and

714
00:45:10,719 --> 00:45:13,959
Speaker 1: French definitely has been using this phrase for so long

715
00:45:14,360 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 1: is that it comes from a French egyptologist named Emmanuel

716
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:23,319
Speaker 1: de Roge who kind of coined the term, and then

717
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:26,920
Speaker 1: someone else popularized it and it started circulating in the

718
00:45:26,960 --> 00:45:30,000
Speaker 1: cannon because it answered a question a lot of scientists

719
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:32,920
Speaker 1: and unrelated fields had had for a long long time.

720
00:45:33,719 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 1: They're also the explanation, they're one of the main explanations

721
00:45:38,239 --> 00:45:42,440
Speaker 1: for that common disaster, soil. I guess we could call

722
00:45:42,520 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 1: it disaster sediment, right, the one groove of the historical

723
00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:50,920
Speaker 1: record that is foo bar as the acronym.

724
00:45:51,440 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 2: Well, that showed clearly there was a massive fire here

725
00:45:55,200 --> 00:45:58,520
Speaker 2: and bodies were just in streets and you know, in

726
00:45:59,040 --> 00:46:03,840
Speaker 2: houses at the same time. It's really disturbing stuff. So

727
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:06,719
Speaker 2: we've kind of been looking at these things individually is

728
00:46:06,840 --> 00:46:11,560
Speaker 2: as causes, right, But as we know just throughout history,

729
00:46:12,840 --> 00:46:16,759
Speaker 2: just because you're dealing with one disaster one bad thing,

730
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:19,880
Speaker 2: doesn't mean another one can't come up. Right, we're dealing

731
00:46:19,880 --> 00:46:23,839
Speaker 2: with that right now. We've got a we've got three

732
00:46:23,920 --> 00:46:27,840
Speaker 2: handfuls at least of disasters that are hitting the globe

733
00:46:27,920 --> 00:46:32,200
Speaker 2: right now. And why would it be any different during

734
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:34,560
Speaker 2: the Bronze Age.

735
00:46:33,880 --> 00:46:37,400
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, because we've been we've been perhaps a little

736
00:46:41,120 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 1: a little misleading when we're when we're presenting these problems,

737
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:50,960
Speaker 1: we said, natural disasters like ongoing droughts, like earthquakes like volcanoes,

738
00:46:52,120 --> 00:46:55,960
Speaker 1: human problems like war, or the fact that humans are

739
00:46:56,400 --> 00:46:58,840
Speaker 1: often just inherently greedy, bad.

740
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:05,400
Speaker 2: People, or you just uh, what unrest within cities right? Right? Yeah?

741
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:08,759
Speaker 1: And competing for things? Right? Why should why should my

742
00:47:08,920 --> 00:47:12,279
Speaker 1: children die such that yours can live? You know, that's

743
00:47:12,320 --> 00:47:14,760
Speaker 1: not an even trade to me, says the other person

744
00:47:14,760 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 1: with kids.

745
00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:15,680
Speaker 3: Uh.

746
00:47:15,880 --> 00:47:20,600
Speaker 1: So each of these explanations alone, taken by their themselves

747
00:47:20,640 --> 00:47:24,319
Speaker 1: in a vacuum. They've all happened before, right, A lot

748
00:47:24,400 --> 00:47:26,279
Speaker 1: of them are happening now, as you said, Matt, in

749
00:47:26,320 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 1: the modern age. Uh. But these often were, These were

750
00:47:30,680 --> 00:47:33,880
Speaker 1: happening in the Bronze Age. But they weren't all happening

751
00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:38,040
Speaker 1: at once. Because these all happened, and these cultures, the

752
00:47:38,040 --> 00:47:44,000
Speaker 1: world's first stable, long term international trade network survived, weathered

753
00:47:44,080 --> 00:47:48,520
Speaker 1: every storm. But experts are arguing it's very clever that

754
00:47:48,640 --> 00:47:51,120
Speaker 1: what happened is humanity met a storm and had never

755
00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:54,960
Speaker 1: seen before, met a perfect storm, and met an insidious

756
00:47:55,520 --> 00:48:00,520
Speaker 1: geopolitical domino effect that probably yes began and with the

757
00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:07,000
Speaker 1: natural world. I think we can determine that. But when

758
00:48:07,040 --> 00:48:11,400
Speaker 1: we see it, it's got spooky parallels. Right, So climate change,

759
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:14,640
Speaker 1: whether it's an eruption, whether it's something abrupt like a

760
00:48:14,719 --> 00:48:18,560
Speaker 1: natural disaster in eruption, whether it's a slow cycle that

761
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: maybe has nothing to do with humans. It leads to

762
00:48:21,239 --> 00:48:26,279
Speaker 1: political instability that leads to a rise in crime. I mean,

763
00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:30,160
Speaker 1: that's why the historian Robert Druz calls this the Late

764
00:48:30,200 --> 00:48:33,279
Speaker 1: Bronze Age collapse. He calls it the worst disaster in

765
00:48:33,320 --> 00:48:36,360
Speaker 1: ancient history, more calamitous than the collapse of the Western

766
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:40,280
Speaker 1: Roman Empire. And people are saying, like, these sea people's

767
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:43,440
Speaker 1: didn't just you know, wake up and say, yeah, you know,

768
00:48:43,520 --> 00:48:47,200
Speaker 1: I know we usually fish, but what if we just sacked.

769
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:50,560
Speaker 1: What if we just sacked or something like that. What

770
00:48:50,600 --> 00:48:54,880
Speaker 1: if we guys, guys, what if we get into pillaging,

771
00:48:55,160 --> 00:49:00,200
Speaker 1: like in a big way and the other people the

772
00:49:00,239 --> 00:49:04,520
Speaker 1: boat didn't look around and just go yeah.

773
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:08,160
Speaker 2: Maybe they didn't. I'm gonna start a gang. It's called

774
00:49:08,200 --> 00:49:14,160
Speaker 2: the Sea Boys, and we're gonna I.

775
00:49:14,120 --> 00:49:14,560
Speaker 1: Was just gonna.

776
00:49:14,640 --> 00:49:16,080
Speaker 3: I was just gonna put forth the Why can't we

777
00:49:16,120 --> 00:49:18,640
Speaker 3: just simplified and just call them the sea people, you know,

778
00:49:18,920 --> 00:49:21,080
Speaker 3: the people from the sea. I just I think that's

779
00:49:21,160 --> 00:49:24,239
Speaker 3: just a little more straightforward. The idea of the sea

780
00:49:24,280 --> 00:49:27,239
Speaker 3: peoples just makes it seem too too academic. Let's let's

781
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:28,200
Speaker 3: let's have some fun with it.

782
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:31,200
Speaker 2: But you're making a yeah, yes, you're making a great point.

783
00:49:31,239 --> 00:49:33,360
Speaker 2: Then they didn't just decide to do it. It was

784
00:49:33,400 --> 00:49:36,640
Speaker 2: because they were facing some kind of issue, likely from

785
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:39,680
Speaker 2: the natural world, like you're saying, like a drought, unable

786
00:49:39,719 --> 00:49:42,160
Speaker 2: to feed their families, and they had to go and

787
00:49:42,200 --> 00:49:45,360
Speaker 2: find something. And when they couldn't trade or they couldn't

788
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:48,759
Speaker 2: find a viable way to do it peacefully, the only

789
00:49:48,800 --> 00:49:51,400
Speaker 2: option then was to take by force, or at least

790
00:49:51,560 --> 00:49:53,880
Speaker 2: perhaps it was thought that the only option was to

791
00:49:53,920 --> 00:50:00,400
Speaker 2: take what they needed by force. Again, the parallels freaking

792
00:50:00,440 --> 00:50:02,320
Speaker 2: me out a little bit exactly.

793
00:50:02,360 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it. So, this the positive domino

794
00:50:06,719 --> 00:50:12,640
Speaker 1: effect we mentioned earlier. Right, stable populations are creating more food, right,

795
00:50:12,719 --> 00:50:16,359
Speaker 1: and so those they don't naturally want to go out

796
00:50:16,400 --> 00:50:19,239
Speaker 1: into the wild. And I would hope if people are

797
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:24,800
Speaker 1: people are creatures of convenience and necessity, right, So it's

798
00:50:24,960 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 1: relatively anomalous for a group to just decide to kill

799
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:33,919
Speaker 1: people for fun rather than to kill them for resources

800
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:38,399
Speaker 1: or something like that. So these stable populations during the

801
00:50:38,440 --> 00:50:41,799
Speaker 1: heyday of the Bronze Age, they are dependent on producing

802
00:50:41,920 --> 00:50:45,399
Speaker 1: food or importing food for their own consumption and then

803
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:49,640
Speaker 1: possibly exporting it across trade networks for other things they

804
00:50:49,680 --> 00:50:53,719
Speaker 1: can't get, And so when they can't grow crops, they

805
00:50:53,760 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 1: cannot participate in that trade network, and most importantly, they

806
00:50:58,560 --> 00:51:02,120
Speaker 1: cannot feed themselves. That's the whole reason they're living in

807
00:51:02,160 --> 00:51:04,560
Speaker 1: this area, right, So they have to look for some

808
00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:08,680
Speaker 1: other means of sustenance. But the problem is, unless they're

809
00:51:08,719 --> 00:51:12,440
Speaker 1: the very first people who became these migrants and refugees,

810
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:16,160
Speaker 1: other people have already hit the road. Other people have

811
00:51:16,200 --> 00:51:19,080
Speaker 1: been down these tracks before, been down this road before,

812
00:51:19,120 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: if you're a Hank Williams senior fan, and they have

813
00:51:22,120 --> 00:51:25,200
Speaker 1: done the same. And they already knew about these pre

814
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:28,480
Speaker 1: existing trade routes. They already knew where the ports were,

815
00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:30,920
Speaker 1: they already knew where the cities were. The people who

816
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:34,680
Speaker 1: were already pushed into a nomadic existence are therefore either

817
00:51:34,920 --> 00:51:39,440
Speaker 1: laying weight in established migration routes and waiting to pounce

818
00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 1: on merchants and families and refugees, or they hopped in

819
00:51:44,560 --> 00:51:49,239
Speaker 1: their boats, perhaps driven by necessity, and decided that they

820
00:51:49,560 --> 00:51:52,439
Speaker 1: instead of waiting for something to be given to them,

821
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:55,719
Speaker 1: they would take it by any means necessary, And morality

822
00:51:55,800 --> 00:51:59,440
Speaker 1: doesn't really enter the equation when you're talking about survival.

823
00:52:00,120 --> 00:52:03,960
Speaker 1: Think about it on a worldwide scale. Now, we think

824
00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:08,480
Speaker 1: about cities and empires as individuals, right, we know that

825
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:12,479
Speaker 1: city states don't really have friends. Empires don't really have friends,

826
00:52:12,520 --> 00:52:16,560
Speaker 1: They have alliances. So these entire, these entire groups of

827
00:52:16,600 --> 00:52:20,879
Speaker 1: people are shifting into militarism. They're already probably pretty militaristic,

828
00:52:20,920 --> 00:52:24,759
Speaker 1: but they're protecting their own defenses, right, their upper classes

829
00:52:24,800 --> 00:52:28,160
Speaker 1: and their mid tiers from pillagers. And they're also trying

830
00:52:28,200 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: to send out their military forces to wage wars, wars

831
00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:36,240
Speaker 1: of acquisition of other resources, perhaps wars of protection against

832
00:52:36,239 --> 00:52:41,360
Speaker 1: these mysterious sea peoples who keep getting away. And it happens,

833
00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:44,680
Speaker 1: this is the scariest part. It happens very very quickly,

834
00:52:45,239 --> 00:52:49,480
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. These longstanding treaties are thrown away.

835
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:54,000
Speaker 1: Egypt retreats into itself, right because it needs to tamp

836
00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:56,959
Speaker 1: down domestic unrest. You have to fix your own house

837
00:52:57,000 --> 00:52:58,480
Speaker 1: before you fix someone else's.

838
00:52:58,960 --> 00:53:01,600
Speaker 2: Just think about what we're saying and describing here, just

839
00:53:01,800 --> 00:53:08,680
Speaker 2: overlay it onto the twenty first century. Who started start

840
00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:12,800
Speaker 2: in the late nineties and just like, oh god.

841
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:17,040
Speaker 1: It was during this time someone figured out how to

842
00:53:17,080 --> 00:53:17,640
Speaker 1: make iron.

843
00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:21,080
Speaker 2: Oh there you go. Guess what, I guess what the

844
00:53:21,120 --> 00:53:24,399
Speaker 2: military has. They've just come out. They're saying that they

845
00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:27,120
Speaker 2: think fusion is definitely going to be a thing now.

846
00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:30,839
Speaker 2: They're like just talking about it openly. Yeah, fusion, you know,

847
00:53:31,040 --> 00:53:34,279
Speaker 2: for power, fusion for power. It's only gonna be for power.

848
00:53:34,320 --> 00:53:37,760
Speaker 2: It's gonna be fine. Are you serious? Yeah? Yeah, man?

849
00:53:37,880 --> 00:53:43,160
Speaker 2: And oh it's all good. The first round of fusion bombs,

850
00:53:43,280 --> 00:53:45,960
Speaker 2: we just gotta wait for that. That's that's somebody making

851
00:53:45,960 --> 00:53:49,840
Speaker 2: the first iron and going, oh.

852
00:53:48,719 --> 00:53:51,000
Speaker 1: Those are those are fusion bombs for peace?

853
00:53:53,680 --> 00:53:56,000
Speaker 3: But then we get some who gets them? You know,

854
00:53:56,200 --> 00:53:58,600
Speaker 3: who gets the fusion bombs? We gotta I don't know.

855
00:53:58,680 --> 00:54:00,759
Speaker 3: It's the same with like these weapons. You know, it's

856
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:03,359
Speaker 3: all about who who figured it out first, and then

857
00:54:03,480 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 3: you know, people backwards engineer things. I'm sure both sides

858
00:54:07,680 --> 00:54:11,480
Speaker 3: of these these conflicts had similar weapons, but maybe the

859
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:13,359
Speaker 3: upper hand goes to the ones that figured it out

860
00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:15,480
Speaker 3: a little better. I don't know it's interest.

861
00:54:15,280 --> 00:54:17,000
Speaker 2: And then they get all the oil, and you know,

862
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:21,000
Speaker 2: it lasts until it all burns out, and and there

863
00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:21,200
Speaker 2: we go.

864
00:54:25,400 --> 00:54:29,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is uh there, this is this the

865
00:54:29,600 --> 00:54:32,520
Speaker 1: spookiest part of this story. No, if we want to

866
00:54:32,560 --> 00:54:35,080
Speaker 1: give it a little bit of an epilogue, Yes, the

867
00:54:35,160 --> 00:54:39,400
Speaker 1: area entered dark age. You know, the closest thing we

868
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:43,920
Speaker 1: had to global civilization full stop collapsed. Uh And you know,

869
00:54:44,040 --> 00:54:47,840
Speaker 1: Nol you raised the point earlier about the collapse in education.

870
00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:53,120
Speaker 1: Literacy bottomed out, right, who has time to learn to read?

871
00:54:53,280 --> 00:54:57,840
Speaker 1: I am trying to avoid these pillagers and possible cannibals.

872
00:54:57,920 --> 00:54:59,480
Speaker 1: I just threw cannibals in there.

873
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:01,600
Speaker 3: And now it's who has time to read? I'm being

874
00:55:01,640 --> 00:55:05,840
Speaker 3: distracted by these cat videos? Yes, I mean I was

875
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:07,880
Speaker 3: joking at the top of the show about this maybe

876
00:55:08,320 --> 00:55:10,040
Speaker 3: maybe being the new dark I don't know. It makes

877
00:55:10,120 --> 00:55:13,080
Speaker 3: me think of that movie Idiocracy, which is all about

878
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:17,200
Speaker 3: a breakdown in education, a breakdown in intelligence, leading to

879
00:55:17,239 --> 00:55:20,200
Speaker 3: a breakdown in civilization and society as we know it

880
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:23,080
Speaker 3: because people can't solve problems anymore. People don't think about

881
00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:26,600
Speaker 3: how to fix these, you know, existential threats that face

882
00:55:26,680 --> 00:55:29,839
Speaker 3: them and that's when this really hits the fan.

883
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:33,520
Speaker 1: And this is our Daniel mol Right, this our epilogue.

884
00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:39,319
Speaker 1: Eventually the seasonal rains return, and experts believe that this

885
00:55:40,520 --> 00:55:43,960
Speaker 1: eventually again led the descendants of some of those uprooted

886
00:55:43,960 --> 00:55:47,880
Speaker 1: groups we talked about to settle down once again. But

887
00:55:48,080 --> 00:55:53,440
Speaker 1: make no mistake, history was forever and permanently stunted by

888
00:55:53,480 --> 00:55:57,640
Speaker 1: this collapse. We have no idea where the world would

889
00:55:57,680 --> 00:56:01,840
Speaker 1: be if this had not a curd right like, part

890
00:56:01,840 --> 00:56:05,799
Speaker 1: of the reason we are making this podcast now, part

891
00:56:05,840 --> 00:56:10,000
Speaker 1: of the reason podcasts exists, is because thousands of years ago,

892
00:56:10,280 --> 00:56:14,080
Speaker 1: the world as we knew it burned the down like.

893
00:56:14,719 --> 00:56:21,399
Speaker 1: That's true, And most importantly, we can't mistake this from

894
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:26,160
Speaker 1: some for some like long ago story from some dusty

895
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:29,680
Speaker 1: tome or I guess some dusty time before books, some

896
00:56:29,840 --> 00:56:33,799
Speaker 1: dusty tablet or a hieroglyph. We should, and I think

897
00:56:33,800 --> 00:56:36,680
Speaker 1: we must, take this as a parable. It's a warning

898
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:41,799
Speaker 1: about the fragility inherent to all human civilizations. Civilization is

899
00:56:41,800 --> 00:56:45,440
Speaker 1: a covenant. It is an agreement, and it only works

900
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:50,640
Speaker 1: so long as the majority of people agree that it works. Otherwise,

901
00:56:50,920 --> 00:56:54,919
Speaker 1: it's just like a thing we thought was a good

902
00:56:54,920 --> 00:57:00,400
Speaker 1: idea at the time, like you know, police Academy for it.

903
00:57:00,360 --> 00:57:02,880
Speaker 3: As any Has anyone been watching the new season of

904
00:57:02,960 --> 00:57:04,960
Speaker 3: Fargo It just started the other night.

905
00:57:05,480 --> 00:57:06,520
Speaker 2: Oh no, I can't wait.

906
00:57:07,040 --> 00:57:09,160
Speaker 3: Well, I'm gonna This isn't really a spoiler, but it's

907
00:57:09,160 --> 00:57:12,360
Speaker 3: sort of about warring groups, waring factions, and they have

908
00:57:12,480 --> 00:57:16,520
Speaker 3: this ritual and this agreement where they essentially one faction

909
00:57:16,800 --> 00:57:20,320
Speaker 3: whether it's the Italians and the Irish or African American

910
00:57:20,400 --> 00:57:23,200
Speaker 3: gang comes in in the present day of the show,

911
00:57:23,200 --> 00:57:26,760
Speaker 3: which is like the fifties versus the Italians, and they

912
00:57:26,760 --> 00:57:28,680
Speaker 3: have this ritual. We're in order to kind of make peace,

913
00:57:28,720 --> 00:57:32,760
Speaker 3: quote unquote, they exchange a youngest child and each of

914
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:34,840
Speaker 3: them raised the other's youngest child.

915
00:57:35,240 --> 00:57:38,120
Speaker 2: And again there's ritual.

916
00:57:37,760 --> 00:57:40,520
Speaker 3: Involved in that, and it's an inherent like agreement and

917
00:57:40,560 --> 00:57:44,040
Speaker 3: a compact. But do you know people don't always hold

918
00:57:44,120 --> 00:57:46,400
Speaker 3: up their endo the bargain, and otherwise if they did,

919
00:57:46,480 --> 00:57:49,800
Speaker 3: you wouldn't have a show. It's the same with history.

920
00:57:50,200 --> 00:57:52,840
Speaker 3: You know, people often, you know, make these agreements and

921
00:57:52,880 --> 00:57:55,560
Speaker 3: then decide, you know what, actually, I think we're just gonna.

922
00:57:55,320 --> 00:57:55,840
Speaker 2: Kill all of you.

923
00:57:56,520 --> 00:58:00,480
Speaker 1: And to this, like what we're talking about when we

924
00:58:00,520 --> 00:58:07,240
Speaker 1: talk about this dissolution of society is we're proposing essentially

925
00:58:07,280 --> 00:58:12,000
Speaker 1: what's called a general system's collapse. The argument is that

926
00:58:12,040 --> 00:58:14,640
Speaker 1: we made so much progress as a species during the

927
00:58:14,640 --> 00:58:17,480
Speaker 1: Bronze Age that we built a system that was too

928
00:58:17,600 --> 00:58:21,320
Speaker 1: intricate to fix, like we didn't know how to fix

929
00:58:21,400 --> 00:58:24,600
Speaker 1: it when parts of it started breaking. If it was

930
00:58:24,680 --> 00:58:28,120
Speaker 1: if it was disrupted, then we didn't have anybody with

931
00:58:28,160 --> 00:58:31,959
Speaker 1: the vantage point to say, okay, look, what we need

932
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:35,440
Speaker 1: to do is to first off, maintain the trade routes.

933
00:58:36,240 --> 00:58:39,280
Speaker 1: Let's do that. Everybody was panicking because the building was

934
00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:41,960
Speaker 1: on fire and we had built everything except for a

935
00:58:42,000 --> 00:58:47,440
Speaker 1: fire escape basically socio politically, and so now we see

936
00:58:47,440 --> 00:58:50,160
Speaker 1: that the things that happened and the order in which

937
00:58:50,200 --> 00:58:55,000
Speaker 1: they occurred, they exposed existing flaws in the system. The

938
00:58:55,120 --> 00:58:59,120
Speaker 1: reason that is important is because it can happen again. Right.

939
00:59:00,320 --> 00:59:03,680
Speaker 1: One of the questions that I think I think we'd

940
00:59:03,720 --> 00:59:05,840
Speaker 1: have to ask is do you think experts are missing

941
00:59:06,200 --> 00:59:09,720
Speaker 1: another explanation for the bizarre story of the late Bronze

942
00:59:09,720 --> 00:59:14,960
Speaker 1: Age collapse, this weird murder mystery of a civilization, And

943
00:59:15,040 --> 00:59:16,920
Speaker 1: what do you think we can learn about it in

944
00:59:16,960 --> 00:59:19,560
Speaker 1: the modern day? Like, what what can we do we

945
00:59:19,680 --> 00:59:22,959
Speaker 1: are The easy argument that a lot of people would

946
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:26,120
Speaker 1: make is that we are somehow better armed because we

947
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:33,200
Speaker 1: have vastly more sophisticated information technology and dissemination. But how

948
00:59:33,280 --> 00:59:35,720
Speaker 1: much of an advantage is that really, Like to your

949
00:59:35,720 --> 00:59:40,960
Speaker 1: point about cat videos, Noel, how much does knowing does

950
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:44,800
Speaker 1: the potential of knowing almost everything mean that it will

951
00:59:44,800 --> 00:59:47,120
Speaker 1: be applied in a useful way? I think that's a

952
00:59:47,200 --> 00:59:49,280
Speaker 1: logical misstep that.

953
00:59:49,280 --> 00:59:51,200
Speaker 2: We may Yeah, oh, it absolutely is.

954
00:59:51,240 --> 00:59:54,800
Speaker 3: I think we've seen that too much information leads people

955
00:59:54,840 --> 00:59:58,720
Speaker 3: to silo their education and and and and use do

956
00:59:58,800 --> 01:00:01,520
Speaker 3: what only seek out what only suits them as opposed

957
01:00:01,520 --> 01:00:02,960
Speaker 3: to you know, because you had to You used to

958
01:00:03,000 --> 01:00:04,600
Speaker 3: have to work for knowledge. You used to have to

959
01:00:04,640 --> 01:00:07,480
Speaker 3: work for you know, this access to it was a

960
01:00:07,560 --> 01:00:10,920
Speaker 3: very exclusive thing, and now everyone has it and nobody

961
01:00:10,960 --> 01:00:12,000
Speaker 3: appreciates it.

962
01:00:13,680 --> 01:00:16,320
Speaker 1: So what do you guys think is the safest way

963
01:00:16,680 --> 01:00:21,600
Speaker 1: to ensure your family's survival in any coming disaster collapse

964
01:00:21,640 --> 01:00:25,800
Speaker 1: of our society? Is the safest way to become a

965
01:00:25,880 --> 01:00:27,520
Speaker 1: nuclear fusion engineer?

966
01:00:28,160 --> 01:00:33,760
Speaker 2: Maybe? Or just play play the video game Superliminal, Like

967
01:00:33,920 --> 01:00:37,920
Speaker 2: right now, everybody, go play the video game Superliminal and

968
01:00:38,000 --> 01:00:41,400
Speaker 2: start thinking the way that game forces you to think,

969
01:00:41,920 --> 01:00:45,200
Speaker 2: and then I think we'll all get to a place

970
01:00:45,240 --> 01:00:50,040
Speaker 2: where we can solve any problem that's ever presented to us.

971
01:00:50,280 --> 01:00:51,640
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of Superliminal.

972
01:00:52,120 --> 01:00:54,640
Speaker 2: Well, if you haven't heard of it, I'm not I'm

973
01:00:54,680 --> 01:00:56,560
Speaker 2: not getting paid to tell you this, but you should

974
01:00:56,600 --> 01:01:00,320
Speaker 2: play it. For sure. It is a puzzle game, and yes,

975
01:01:00,400 --> 01:01:05,040
Speaker 2: it's it's it forces you to change your perspective literally

976
01:01:05,080 --> 01:01:07,960
Speaker 2: and figuratively, which is why I think it's important. It

977
01:01:07,960 --> 01:01:09,640
Speaker 2: could be a Yeah, that's why it could be applied

978
01:01:09,680 --> 01:01:14,320
Speaker 2: here because you know, to to find find answers to

979
01:01:14,360 --> 01:01:17,160
Speaker 2: some of these major problems that we face, as in,

980
01:01:17,480 --> 01:01:19,720
Speaker 2: you know, a global civilization right now. We just have

981
01:01:19,760 --> 01:01:23,160
Speaker 2: to think about things differently, and it's very difficult for

982
01:01:23,240 --> 01:01:23,960
Speaker 2: humans to do that.

983
01:01:24,840 --> 01:01:27,440
Speaker 1: And what are your copy mechanisms, folks? What are your

984
01:01:27,520 --> 01:01:32,160
Speaker 1: heuristics for what has sometimes been called the end of history?

985
01:01:32,240 --> 01:01:35,720
Speaker 1: I think, well, I think we'll soldier on because I

986
01:01:35,840 --> 01:01:39,400
Speaker 1: have to. But but let us let us know what

987
01:01:39,440 --> 01:01:41,480
Speaker 1: do you think we can learn from the Bronze Age collapse?

988
01:01:41,760 --> 01:01:44,600
Speaker 1: Do you think something like this could slash would happen now?

989
01:01:44,680 --> 01:01:46,640
Speaker 1: And if so, how would it play out? We would

990
01:01:46,680 --> 01:01:48,520
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can find us on

991
01:01:48,560 --> 01:01:51,040
Speaker 1: the internet as long as that thing is still around.

992
01:01:51,240 --> 01:01:54,000
Speaker 1: Hopefully We're on Instagram, We're on Facebook, We're on Twitter.

993
01:01:54,440 --> 01:01:57,360
Speaker 1: We recommend Here's where it gets crazy. Just join up

994
01:01:57,400 --> 01:02:01,760
Speaker 1: by saying typing in Nole's name or Matt's name, super

995
01:02:01,760 --> 01:02:05,880
Speaker 1: producer code name, Doc Holiday or super producer mission control

996
01:02:06,040 --> 01:02:09,200
Speaker 1: my name, drop me a pun, something that makes me laugh,

997
01:02:11,080 --> 01:02:14,480
Speaker 1: or just you know, in a witty way illustrates the

998
01:02:14,800 --> 01:02:16,200
Speaker 1: darkness of civilization.

999
01:02:16,800 --> 01:02:18,959
Speaker 3: Yeah, and in the event that we do have some

1000
01:02:19,000 --> 01:02:23,160
Speaker 3: sort of like escape from La esque situation where you know,

1001
01:02:23,240 --> 01:02:27,520
Speaker 3: the Internet disappears and all electronics, well, this wouldn't really

1002
01:02:27,520 --> 01:02:29,360
Speaker 3: work nevermind, forget it.

1003
01:02:29,440 --> 01:02:30,520
Speaker 1: You don't work with the landline.

1004
01:02:30,880 --> 01:02:32,880
Speaker 3: Well, okay, there you go. That's what I was getting at, Ben,

1005
01:02:32,960 --> 01:02:35,280
Speaker 3: thank you for rescuing me. You can give us a

1006
01:02:35,320 --> 01:02:39,320
Speaker 3: call on a landline, presuming that that infrastructure hasn't been

1007
01:02:39,680 --> 01:02:42,040
Speaker 3: This is too depressant one eight three to three std

1008
01:02:42,240 --> 01:02:43,840
Speaker 3: wy t K is that number?

1009
01:02:44,600 --> 01:02:46,360
Speaker 2: Reach out to us. You can leave us a voicemail.

1010
01:02:46,400 --> 01:02:49,200
Speaker 2: Well that part won't never met. Yeah, the voicemail won't

1011
01:02:49,200 --> 01:02:50,120
Speaker 2: work in this situation.

1012
01:02:50,200 --> 01:02:51,880
Speaker 3: But you know what, this is all just we're just

1013
01:02:51,920 --> 01:02:55,080
Speaker 3: spitballing here and everything's fine for now. Leave us a voicemail,

1014
01:02:55,400 --> 01:02:57,560
Speaker 3: keep it roughly around three minutes so that we can

1015
01:02:57,600 --> 01:02:59,480
Speaker 3: have a nice, concise story we can use on one

1016
01:02:59,480 --> 01:03:01,720
Speaker 3: of our weekly listener mail episodes. And be sure and

1017
01:03:01,760 --> 01:03:03,600
Speaker 3: let us know if it's okay to use your story

1018
01:03:03,720 --> 01:03:06,440
Speaker 3: and play your actual voice on the show. And if

1019
01:03:06,480 --> 01:03:08,520
Speaker 3: you want us to call you something specific or not

1020
01:03:08,600 --> 01:03:10,120
Speaker 3: use your name or be anonymous.

1021
01:03:10,120 --> 01:03:13,000
Speaker 2: We're all about that. Love to hear from you. And

1022
01:03:13,080 --> 01:03:16,160
Speaker 2: if you happen to enjoy looking at faces while you

1023
01:03:16,200 --> 01:03:18,400
Speaker 2: hear voices talk to you, you can head over to

1024
01:03:18,560 --> 01:03:21,959
Speaker 2: YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. Don't look at Ben's

1025
01:03:21,960 --> 01:03:25,720
Speaker 2: face right now if you're hearing them, don't. Oh, oh

1026
01:03:25,760 --> 01:03:28,440
Speaker 2: it haunts. Why do I get that it was that

1027
01:03:28,560 --> 01:03:33,840
Speaker 2: specific face? Yeah, but YouTube dot YouTube dot com slash

1028
01:03:33,880 --> 01:03:37,800
Speaker 2: conspiracy stuff, that's our channel. Subscribe, Tell your friends, we're

1029
01:03:37,840 --> 01:03:40,600
Speaker 2: going to be putting these up there, these conversations, and

1030
01:03:40,920 --> 01:03:43,560
Speaker 2: there will be other things on the way to you

1031
01:03:43,680 --> 01:03:46,240
Speaker 2: as soon as we can get them to you. Just

1032
01:03:46,520 --> 01:03:47,240
Speaker 2: be prepared.

1033
01:03:47,720 --> 01:03:51,000
Speaker 1: And if none of that quite bags or badgers or

1034
01:03:51,040 --> 01:03:55,760
Speaker 1: collapses your bronze age, as long as the as long

1035
01:03:55,800 --> 01:04:00,400
Speaker 1: as the electricity is moving and the great sky, and

1036
01:04:00,440 --> 01:04:03,680
Speaker 1: the sky stays there. You can always contact us through

1037
01:04:03,720 --> 01:04:05,920
Speaker 1: a good old fashioned email address where.

1038
01:04:05,720 --> 01:04:27,440
Speaker 3: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

1039
01:04:27,600 --> 01:04:29,640
Speaker 2: Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production

1040
01:04:29,760 --> 01:04:34,280
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1041
01:04:34,360 --> 01:04:37,840
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.