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Pastimes : Archaeology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Carolyn who wrote (24)	6/12/2001 9:46:01 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7898

I'll bet there are lots of interesting things still under water and land around the Mediterranean. A cataclysm of some sort caused the collapse of a civilization that was much more advanced than modern historians would like to believe. Most of the history is shrouded in myth, but there is real history mixed in there, too. There was an interesting discussion on Jerry Pournelle's site awhile back. Unfortunately it has kind of petered out. THE FIRST DARK AGE At some point I will do a short introductory essay; the important point is that sometime in the Bronze Ages, a thriving civilization with writing and the ability to build large walled cities and the beginnings of a market economy -- there were traders who were not merely raiders -- collapsed so thoroughly that it became legendary. The walls of Tiryns were so large and imposing that the people who lived in the region thought they were built by giants: by the Cyclopes, and they were called Cyclopian Walls by people who probably counted the actual builders among their ancestors. Writing was lost and had to be reinvented. Much technology was lost. It is a time that bequeaths us many legends, from the Trojan War to the legends of the House of Atreus, and Pelops, and Theseus, and Minos, Achilles and Odysseus, Talos and the stone god who rose from the sea, Jason and the Argonauts, all of which seem to reflect real events, embellished, of course, but real all the same. It was a time when the Maryannu and the Battle Ax people roamed the land, and the Peoples of the Sea invaded Egypt and came to Palestine where, as Philistines, they gave the region its name and passed into history as giants whose champion was a bronze armored hero named Goliath. In the Bible it is an age in which there was no king in Israel, and each man did as he thought right in his own heart. And so it was through the world. But that Dark Age came after a rich civilization with writing and commerce and technology: what killed that civilization? Theories run from barbarian invasions (the return of the Dorians) to earthquakes, to astronomical disasters, to volcanoes. It may have been all of these. If the issue is settled once and for all, that has happened very recently indeed: it certainly was no more than speculation last year... Herewith some comments and discussions. jerrypournelle.com