ka
Padawan Learner
Hi all,
My ears pricked up when I saw Laura’s latest contribution to SOTT:
http://www.sott.net/article/306208-The-great-global-change-game-Our-civilization-is-headed-for-the-fate-of-the-Bronze-Age-destruction
I’ve been riveted by the similarities between the Bronze Age and the present global world order, and I too, fear that we will replay the Bronze Age Collapse.
For the past 20 years, I’ve been ransacking history for much the same reasons Laura has: as a way to understand where we are at right now, and where we might be headed. Anyone who gets familiar with the Bronze Age has to deal with the conclusion that Laura draws: we are headed for a huge collapse.
BUT – after the Bronze Age Collapse, one of the big players was left standing: the Phoenicians.
I had searched out information about the spread of bronze technology and the international trade in metals in that period. The Canaanites, predecessors of the Phoenicians, were the innovators of the technology required to manufacture bronze on a scale large enough to equip armies. Archaeological evidence from way back in the seventh century BC tells us very clearly that the ancestors of the Phoenicians were responsible for spreading industrial bronze-making technology—and all the abominations associated with it—throughout the world. Anyone who made bronze on a large scale did it with the exact same furnaces and apparatus that the Canaanites invented. It’s ugly, of course: metal technology required mining, which required slaves, which required wars to capture slaves, which required paying mercenary soldiers with gold and silver, which required mining, and the vicious cycle escalated.
Bronze Age trade may not have been as huge in volume as it is right now, but it was very similar in pattern and effects. There were several big powers around the Mediterranean; they warred with one another, they exploited colonies for raw materials, they installed puppet governments, they instigated wars among the barbarian chieftains—it stimulated business. The core powers of the Bronze Age used the European hinterlands the way the Spanish conquistadors used the gold-rich territories of the New World. Not pretty.
It occurred to me that the incursions of the Sea Peoples blamed for bringing down the Bronze Age civilizations may have been sponsored by one of the core powers, to fight proxy wars. I speculated it may have been like the USA recruiting the scum of the earth to fight its proxy wars in Ukraine and Syria, for the purpose of spreading chaos and destroying its rivals.
After I’d arrived at the same depressing conclusion Laura came to, and lived with it for a year or so, something nagged my attention back to the fact that the Phoenicians did not go down with the Bronze Age Collapse. Wikipedia says the Canaanites became the Phoenicians and were a global power until the Third century B.C.. That is when Carthage and Rome fought a duel to the death in two Punic Wars, and Rome came out on top. Suddenly, that struck me as highly significant. Notably, we know the Sea Peoples attacked Egypt (West of the Phoenician cities) and Ugarit (East of the Phoenician cities), but the Phoenician cities were spared. The Hittite Empire collapsed, Ugarit collapsed, Crete and Mycenae collapsed, but the Phoenicians survived and prospered as a trading nation. Their old cities Tyre, Sidon survived, although business fell off steeply for a century or so, and Phoenicians founded even bigger cities in North Africa. They had captured the lion’s share of the shipping and trade from Cornwall to Persia, from the Baltic to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean—and they used their advantage.
I’m entertaining the idea that the Bronze Age didn’t just collapse—it was murdered.
It occurred to me that the histories of the Bronze Age and its aftermath don’t say much about the Phoenicians beyond their invention of the Western alphabet. The focus is almost entirely on Biblical “events” the purported Kingdoms of Judah and Israel, and topics relating to Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey, the period of and the Greek Dark Ages. Trying to substantiate Bible stories and talk up our Greek cultural heritage has perhaps diverted our attention from where the real action was—just as a stage magician works by diverting the audience’s eyes away from where the “magic” is happening.
Why were the Phoenicians the only ones left standing? How did they survive the collapse when others succumbed?
But that’s where my researches hit a brick wall. I haven’t been able to find out anything substantial about Phoenician activities between the Bronze Age Collapse and the Punic Wars. In fact, I couldn’t find any source of information about Phoenician civilization that comes close to the richness of cultural and historical information we have for Greek and proto-Greek civilization.
I suspect that Phoenician history has been ignored and/or destroyed for much the same reasons that we know so little about pagan European culture. I’m wondering if the Phoenician relationship with the Hebrews might be a can of worms. Palestinian and Lebanese historians may know things about the Phoenicians that don’t get into circulation among English-speaking scholars.
Laura, have any of your readings touched on this? If any of you out there know any good sources about the Phoenicians, I’d be interested in checking them out.
Since we seem to be recapitulating the events of the 12th century B.C., I’d like to know about those things! When the Big Change happens next, will some nation play the role that Phoenicia played in and after the Bronze Age?
My ears pricked up when I saw Laura’s latest contribution to SOTT:
http://www.sott.net/article/306208-The-great-global-change-game-Our-civilization-is-headed-for-the-fate-of-the-Bronze-Age-destruction
I’ve been riveted by the similarities between the Bronze Age and the present global world order, and I too, fear that we will replay the Bronze Age Collapse.
For the past 20 years, I’ve been ransacking history for much the same reasons Laura has: as a way to understand where we are at right now, and where we might be headed. Anyone who gets familiar with the Bronze Age has to deal with the conclusion that Laura draws: we are headed for a huge collapse.
BUT – after the Bronze Age Collapse, one of the big players was left standing: the Phoenicians.
I had searched out information about the spread of bronze technology and the international trade in metals in that period. The Canaanites, predecessors of the Phoenicians, were the innovators of the technology required to manufacture bronze on a scale large enough to equip armies. Archaeological evidence from way back in the seventh century BC tells us very clearly that the ancestors of the Phoenicians were responsible for spreading industrial bronze-making technology—and all the abominations associated with it—throughout the world. Anyone who made bronze on a large scale did it with the exact same furnaces and apparatus that the Canaanites invented. It’s ugly, of course: metal technology required mining, which required slaves, which required wars to capture slaves, which required paying mercenary soldiers with gold and silver, which required mining, and the vicious cycle escalated.
Bronze Age trade may not have been as huge in volume as it is right now, but it was very similar in pattern and effects. There were several big powers around the Mediterranean; they warred with one another, they exploited colonies for raw materials, they installed puppet governments, they instigated wars among the barbarian chieftains—it stimulated business. The core powers of the Bronze Age used the European hinterlands the way the Spanish conquistadors used the gold-rich territories of the New World. Not pretty.
It occurred to me that the incursions of the Sea Peoples blamed for bringing down the Bronze Age civilizations may have been sponsored by one of the core powers, to fight proxy wars. I speculated it may have been like the USA recruiting the scum of the earth to fight its proxy wars in Ukraine and Syria, for the purpose of spreading chaos and destroying its rivals.
After I’d arrived at the same depressing conclusion Laura came to, and lived with it for a year or so, something nagged my attention back to the fact that the Phoenicians did not go down with the Bronze Age Collapse. Wikipedia says the Canaanites became the Phoenicians and were a global power until the Third century B.C.. That is when Carthage and Rome fought a duel to the death in two Punic Wars, and Rome came out on top. Suddenly, that struck me as highly significant. Notably, we know the Sea Peoples attacked Egypt (West of the Phoenician cities) and Ugarit (East of the Phoenician cities), but the Phoenician cities were spared. The Hittite Empire collapsed, Ugarit collapsed, Crete and Mycenae collapsed, but the Phoenicians survived and prospered as a trading nation. Their old cities Tyre, Sidon survived, although business fell off steeply for a century or so, and Phoenicians founded even bigger cities in North Africa. They had captured the lion’s share of the shipping and trade from Cornwall to Persia, from the Baltic to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean—and they used their advantage.
I’m entertaining the idea that the Bronze Age didn’t just collapse—it was murdered.
It occurred to me that the histories of the Bronze Age and its aftermath don’t say much about the Phoenicians beyond their invention of the Western alphabet. The focus is almost entirely on Biblical “events” the purported Kingdoms of Judah and Israel, and topics relating to Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey, the period of and the Greek Dark Ages. Trying to substantiate Bible stories and talk up our Greek cultural heritage has perhaps diverted our attention from where the real action was—just as a stage magician works by diverting the audience’s eyes away from where the “magic” is happening.
Why were the Phoenicians the only ones left standing? How did they survive the collapse when others succumbed?
But that’s where my researches hit a brick wall. I haven’t been able to find out anything substantial about Phoenician activities between the Bronze Age Collapse and the Punic Wars. In fact, I couldn’t find any source of information about Phoenician civilization that comes close to the richness of cultural and historical information we have for Greek and proto-Greek civilization.
I suspect that Phoenician history has been ignored and/or destroyed for much the same reasons that we know so little about pagan European culture. I’m wondering if the Phoenician relationship with the Hebrews might be a can of worms. Palestinian and Lebanese historians may know things about the Phoenicians that don’t get into circulation among English-speaking scholars.
Laura, have any of your readings touched on this? If any of you out there know any good sources about the Phoenicians, I’d be interested in checking them out.
Since we seem to be recapitulating the events of the 12th century B.C., I’d like to know about those things! When the Big Change happens next, will some nation play the role that Phoenicia played in and after the Bronze Age?
