Dr. R.M. de Jonge ©, drsrmdejonge@hotmail.com

c.3201 BC Worldwide Comet Catastrophe
Pre-Dynastic Period
Duration: 70 days
Nature: forest-fires, rains, floodings
Casualties: 7 % of world population
Casualties were only counted in Egypt

c.3006 BC Worldwide Comet Catastrophe
1st Dynasty
Duration: 11 days
Nature: rains, floodings
Casualties: 2.6 % of world population
Casualties were only counted in Egypt

2344 BC Worldwide Comet Catastrophe
6th Dynasty (ended 5th Dynasty)
Biblical Flood
Duration: 2+2= 4 months
Nature: forest-fires, rains, floodings
Casualties: c.2.6 million people

1628 BC Worldwide Comet Catastrophe
15th Dynasty (ended 14th Dynasty)
Deucalion Flood
Duration: 9 days
Nature: rains, floodings
Casualties: c.510 thousand people

1159 BC Worldwide Comet Catastrophe
20th Dynasty (ended New Kingdom)
Dardanus Flood
Duration: 80 days
Nature: forest-fires, rains, floodings
Casualties: c.5.8 million people

424 BC Worldwide Catastrophe
27th Dynasty, King Darius II
Duration: 2 days
Nature: rains, floodings (?)
Casualties: c.20 thousand people

207 BC Worldwide Comet Catastrophe
Ptolemy IV Philopator
Duration: 3 days
Nature: forest-fires, rains, floodings
Casualties: c.80 thousand people

44 BC Worldwide Comet Catastrophe
Ptolemy XV Caesarion
Duration: 3 days
Nature: forest-fires, rains, floodings
Casualties: c.30 thousand people

536 AD Worldwide Catastrophe
Eruption of the Krakatau Volcano, Indonesia (535 AD)
Duration: 4 days floodings
3 months severe dust
18 months dust
Nature: sunlight dimmed, drought, cold, crop failure
Casualties: c.2.9 million people

Sincerely yours,
Reinoud de Jonge
Email: drsrmdejonge@hotmail.com
The Netherlands

P.S.
I am the main author of the books:
De Jonge, R.M., and IJzereef, G.F., De Stenen Spreken, Kosmos Z & K, Utrecht/Antwerpen, 1996 (ISBN 90-215-2846-0) (Dutch) (192 pgs.)
De Jonge, R.M., and Wakefield, J.S., How the SunGod Reached America c.2500 BC, A Guide to Megalithic Sites, 2002 (ISBN 0-917054-19-9) (384 pgs.). Available: MCS Inc., Box 3392, Kirkland, Wa 98083-3392, USA, also on CD

When it comes to the classical world it is generally difficult to tell who is and who is not a “barbarian.” Who are the barbarians in the contest between Rome and the Dacians? Or Rome and the Syracusans? Or Rome and the Persian dynasties it came up against? Or Athens and the Melesians? Or Sparta and Thebes?

Phil Fraering,

There are literally dozens of explanations for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. It can probably best be explained as a result of some combination of these.

Just to summarize: there are theories and hypotheses about impacts near the start of the bronze dark age and at the end of the Roman Empire (I think JEP has talked about that, putatively labeled “Phaeton,” although there may have been another event that gave rise to the legend of Phaeton to begin with… and also in China, there is the legend of Yi the Archer…)

A brief note on catastrophes, systemic collapse, and other factors for the fall of civilization:

I think people like Robert Drews may be on to something. It’s a very interesting hypothesis. BUT: If there were these massive impacts happening at the same time, or massive eruptions involving Thera, and tsunamis associated with both events that were a couple orders of magnitude larger than the recent Boxing Day tsunami that killed so many people… how does it _not_ affect the human civilizations at the time?

(Notice I’m not bringing up factors like the Sirente Crater field in Italy, which despite being created in a time and place of interest to anyone studying societal collapse went unnoticed until recently, or Tungusta-event type events, which might have left even less traces than that if it happened in 5th century Italy).

I’m curious what your background is

There’s not much to tell. I was educated as biologist with the intent of becoming a scientist studying cognition but the vagaries of life led me into a career in the computer industry.

I am basically just a bibliophile with a good memory and broad, almost random taste. My training as a biologist gives me a different perspective on areas like history or political science that are usually dominated by people educated in the liberal-arts.

A few months ago I put up a related post here.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/14/news/meteor.php

It’s about the Holocene Impact Working Group.

(I have to go now. More later, esp. with regard to Australia).

pgf

I don’t think that chariots were quite so pivotal across the whole of the Mediterranean world. In bronze age greece for example, they played a limited role due to the terrain yet the same changes happened their. Further, chariots were used to transport heavy infantry dressed in the “panoply” bronze armor to and from the front lines. This allowed the rapid transport and rotation of heavy infantry, something very useful in repelling sudden attacks by other infantry.

The coming of iron (actually the making of iron more steel-like) might have change the battlefield in more indirect ways. Iron was used for agricultural tools long before its use in war (Bronze age greeks called iron the “democratic” metal, indicating its use by the lower classes) but these tools were to brittle to have a secondary use as weapons. As the quality of the iron improved, the balance in power between the classes would have shifted as commoners discovered that their agricultural tools could hold their own against the bronze weapons of the nobility.

Iron tools would have also changed ship building. It is very difficult to work hardwoods with bronze tools but steel works very well. The coming of iron would have allowed those in the Northern Mediterranean to begin constructing ships from the abundant hardwoods there. Such ships would have had an edge over the softwood ships of the southern regions. Perhaps that is why sea-borne raiding increased during that era.

I think the most likely explanation is that the upper classes in the major societies of the day had settled into a stasis in which warfare became increasingly ritualized. Only certain people could fight in certain ways. There overall power density would drop and those that did fight would not have the actual skills to make them effective and adaptable on the battle field. When faced with a combination of internal revolt, external invasion and environmental changes, they imploded.

Thanks for posting it.

It shows the general fact over history that the barbarians are always at the gates and civilization is always faced with the prospect of the savages swarming in. The Gap, historically, has usually closed the Core, not the other way around. The hinge moment seems to be when the military differential that initially favored the Core begins to decay as innovations arise in the Gap or Core-originated technologies and techniques seep out into the Gap. We are seeing both now, with sophisticated 4GW practitioners running circles around the developed world, and the struggle to acquire nuclear weapons.

I wonder if the barbarians can pull it off again?

The End of the Bronze Age

Ha, as if! This newfangled iron stuff is just a fad. Mark my words, bronze will make a great comeback soon!

On a more serious note, maybe it didn’t take overly dramatic events to trigger the destruction of the Mycenean, Cretan, and Hittite palaces. These buildings were luxuries and a considerable drain on the treasury in the best of times. These cultures only needed to suffer a couple of bad harvests to make palaces unaffordable. When I write ‘bad’ I don’t mean catastrophicly low harvests caused by droughts, but still bad enough to cause serious economic pain, the equivalent of what we call a serious recession nowadays. While not causing outright mass starvation such events would make the construction and maintenance of palaces unaffordable. The general populations of these cultures might have destroyed the palaces to get rid of these white elephants. Absent mass starvation and an outright overthrow of their ruling classes, there wouldn’t need to be extensisve historical records of these events, and subsequent rulers might have expunged those few records that were actually were made, to cover up their predecessors’ embarrassment.

As to

Subsequent settlements appeared to concentrate the population into more defensible sites, with heavier fortifications, and greater population sizes. There seemed to be a focus on monitoring seabourne approaches to these settlements.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that seaborne invaders had destroyed earlier settlements, the cultures in question might simply have identified the threat posed by the seafarers and adapted to it. Heavier fortifications and greater population sizes might indicate that the resources that previously would have been used for the construction and maintenance of palaces were now used for building defensive walls and to increase the number of children by allocating grain to families rather than selling it off for money. All this could have happened inside fifty years, about two generations. Given a great enough threat, they certainly could have adapted that fast.

Aside from the logistics required to maintain chariot armies, training enough archers up to standards that make them an effective force takes a lot of time and money, so giving up on chariots and archers in favor of swordsmen would be a rationale choice.