The Elites Were Living High. Then Came the Fall.

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    The article is about the collapse of Ugarit and Mycenae which dominated the eastern Mediterranean Sea during what historians call the Bronze Age.

Based on the article, we might think and / or assume that a collapse is imminent and that we cannot change it, much less prevent it. History repeats, there are many empires that disappeared in the same way. Regardless of their size, regardless of the time of existence, much less the power they had.

In this particular story there are no exact records of what really happened and caused these countries to collapse. There are many theories, but nothing concrete.

According to Sarah Murray, a professor at the University of Toronto the collapse could be due to a combination of war, drought and migration. 

It is difficult to think otherwise since the combination of these can truly lead anywhere to disappear.

 I was struck by the theory that the same people, oppressed, were the ones who rose up against the empire and managed to end it. So they decided to do something against the government. Josephine Quinn says "Given what’s known about these societies, I have concluded that the city’s lower classes may have gotten fed up and burned it all down." Sounds logical, I can think that there was a time when citizens had nothing to lose.

Another reason that caught my attention was the almost complete disappearance of writing. I cannot imagine how something so necessary for communication could have undergone these changes. The power of writing became counterproductive. Instead of opening ourselves to overcoming, it led us to oppression.

The last thing I can think of is that everything that starts has to come to an end. So we can be sure that like other places we will undergo changes. The article also talks about positive changes. Finally not all is lost.  The article talks about local companies in Tyre and Sidon. They were owners of small companies without any formal affiliations or political ties. They had the right to travel unknown seas with the fall of the old Kingdoms. Tyre's traders went much further than Ugarit 's representatives ever had, and settled in the land that became Spain, Morocco and Tunisia.

The merchants of Tyre and Sidon thrived in this new world. They were local business owners with no formal affiliations or political ties. Tyre's traders went much further than Ugarit 's representatives ever had, and settled in the land that became Spain, Morocco and Tunisia.

That is to say, the fall of civilization in the Bronze Age was not an all-out collapse. More precisely, it was changing the essence of cities' political force. Instead of a centralized, multinational power system that dominated the entire eastern Mediterranean region, each city-state had local governments.


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-inequality-history.html

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