Cline undertakes the helpful errand of organizing the by-now quite large monographic literature on all aspects of the Bronze-Age cataclysm, synthesizing and summarizing the knowledge thereof, and putting it in the form of a historical narrative written for non-specialists. In his new book The Year Civilization Collapsed Eric H. German scholars, blunter than their Gallic and Anglo-Saxon counterparts, refer to it as the “ Brandkatastrof,” because it entailed the incendiary obliteration of hundreds of populous settlements from Greece to Egypt and after it whole regions descended into a demographically much-reduced and materially restricted interregnum. Since the 1960s, scholarship has referred to this epoch as “The Catastrophe.”
Would that he had been born in some other, less wretched age, Hesiod laments but well he postponed his birth – for the Bronze Age ended in a paroxysm of urban destruction, famine, piracy, and disruptive migrations of peoples that might be both unprecedented and unparalleled. In Hesiod’s telling a primitive period comprising the Golden and Silver Ages gave way to socially complex and robust period comprising the Bronze and Heroic Ages and the latter period, finding its conclusion in destructive internecine strife, gave way to Hesiod’s own degenerate period, what he calls the Iron Age. As Eric Voegelin long ago pointed out, Hesiod’s five ages are actually three, in parallel with his three generations of gods. Language owes the label “Bronze Age” to the Greek poet Hesiod (Eighth Century BC) whose prototypical georgic poem Works and Days includes a discussion of the Five Ages of Man.
Archeological investigation of the Eastern-Mediterranean Bronze-Age civilizations began in the late Nineteenth Century with Heinrich Schliemann’s work at Troy and Mycenae and with Sir Arthur Evans’ investigations on the island of Crete, principally at Knossos.
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