Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
Speaker 1: me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul Mission controlled decades. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1: You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. I've always thought from a very
Speaker 1: young age that the world is ending for someone somewhere
Speaker 1: every day, and it's a thought that becomes increasingly, as
Speaker 1: we say, top of mind in these the days of
Speaker 1: our modern era, and it has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with what we're investigating today. Today. We are attempting to
Speaker 1: solve a mystery, perhaps with your help, fellow conspiracy realists.
Speaker 1: It is an old one. It is the very definition
Speaker 1: of a cold case. You see, about three thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred years ago Ballpark, the world of human civilization as
Speaker 1: we know it collapsed. It imploded, and even now in
Speaker 1: the full causes of this collapse remain unsolved. We have
Speaker 1: to wonder what would civilization be like today if the
Speaker 1: civilization of the past hadn't been crippled all those millennia
Speaker 1: go and and what does this collapse mean for our
Speaker 1: present day? Maybe the best place for us to start
Speaker 1: is what exactly is the Bronze Age? So here are
Speaker 1: the facts. Yeah, the Bronze Age refers to a period
Speaker 1: that's generally described as the third phase of development of
Speaker 1: material culture among ancient civilizations in Europe, AA and the
Speaker 1: Middle East. So you know, you have the Stone Age
Speaker 1: which preceded the Bronze Age, the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods
Speaker 1: collectively known as the Stone Age, and then the New
Speaker 1: Stone Age UM. And it was a massive transformation because
Speaker 1: before the Bronze Age, civilization was essentially a bunch of
Speaker 1: tiny city states that were ruled by a heavy handed,
Speaker 1: oppressive politico religious priests um or casts of priests, kind
Speaker 1: of like a ruling class. And this really shifted when
Speaker 1: the Bronze Age came into being. Yeah. Yeah, food was
Speaker 1: out of premium in a lot of these pre Bronze
Speaker 1: Age societies and it limited the growth of of both
Speaker 1: technology and population. It made us play on hard mode
Speaker 1: in the game of civilization. Don't sue us, admire we're
Speaker 1: big fans. We really are if you've ever played a
Speaker 1: lot of those games. For me, it was the Age
Speaker 1: of Empires that really got me to understand the difference
Speaker 1: between some of those early ages of civilization. Um, and
Speaker 1: now you know we sit in Is this the Silicon age?
Speaker 1: What do we what do we call this age? I
Speaker 1: don't know has it been coined yet? I guess I
Speaker 1: haven't really seen it, And maybe it's up for debate. Babe,
Speaker 1: there's like someone we can submit ideas to, uh, like
Speaker 1: like millennials and zennials and all that stuff. I haven't
Speaker 1: really seen it thrown around. Yeah, I don't know. There
Speaker 1: there are a plethora meaning too many. Uh, there are
Speaker 1: a plethora of proposed names for this age. Uh. The
Speaker 1: other posine would be one we could throw around. But
Speaker 1: in the world of material culture, through that lens, perhaps
Speaker 1: there is one. Perhaps Silicon is a good one. Perhaps
Speaker 1: Information Age is another thing, because information is a substance
Speaker 1: of its own. Perhaps the new Dark Ages. Now I'm kidding.
Speaker 1: Technologies obviously great, but that's the thing to bend to
Speaker 1: your point. I mean technology and development of new ideas.
Speaker 1: That's a huge impetus for cultures developing and pushing forward. UM,
Speaker 1: because material is essentially a technology. When you start thinking
Speaker 1: outside the box or outside the rocks, I just pulled
Speaker 1: that off the top of my head. You you get
Speaker 1: these new ideas that are very important to actually make
Speaker 1: new things that help you hunt and that help you, um,
Speaker 1: keep order in your civilization without depending on superstition as much. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there's there's a there's already UM what could be
Speaker 1: called UH kind of a catch twenty two for civilizations.
Speaker 1: So too, for a civilization to grow, to innovate, and
Speaker 1: to expand, it needs to have some sort of leisure
Speaker 1: time with necessity compelling the focused use of that free time.
Speaker 1: But to UH to arrive at that free time, we
Speaker 1: have to have the tools that allow that to exist.
Speaker 1: My tools, I also mean socio political things. So what
Speaker 1: see what the bronze ages? We see something? If I'm
Speaker 1: always using cliches like catch twenty two, would be good
Speaker 1: to use the cliche like chicken and the egg. Did
Speaker 1: fortuitous weather lead to more leisure time, which then led
Speaker 1: to UH farming innovations, which led to an agricultural revolution,
Speaker 1: creating a surplus of food that led to the existence
Speaker 1: of specialized UH specialized jobs and careers which led to
Speaker 1: innovations and technology, innovations and religion and government and so on.
Speaker 1: Or did someone just figure out a better way to
Speaker 1: farm themselves. It's tricky to extract these things, but we
Speaker 1: know regardless of the order in which those things occurred,
Speaker 1: we know those occurred and created what we define as
Speaker 1: the Bronze Age. It was a brand new world, a
Speaker 1: golden dawn for humanity in what's called you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: the Nearies, the Mediterranean, North Africa, Egypt, and so on.
Speaker 1: And this was primarily due UH. This ability of these empires,
Speaker 1: which can to be was primarily due to UH the
Speaker 1: surplus of food at the beginning. It allowed for the
Speaker 1: creation of big, bustling, multicultural cities instead of walled off,
Speaker 1: isolated city states. And then it allowed these states to
Speaker 1: institute treaties, to institute rule of law that went beyond
Speaker 1: the stone walls of a citadel. So, for the first
Speaker 1: time in human history, as far as we know, as
Speaker 1: far as we know, for the first time in human history,
Speaker 1: we had international trade occurring on a regular, sustainable basis.
Speaker 1: It was no longer quite as much of a pipe
Speaker 1: dream to say, hey, let me get some hippopotamus ivory
Speaker 1: from this place, people are calling Egypt or whatever, and
Speaker 1: and just kind of pray it shows up in six months. No,
Speaker 1: they were able to do this. Things were flourishing. This
Speaker 1: is also you know, it's called the Bronze Age because
Speaker 1: it's the period in which metal was used in very
Speaker 1: widespread ways. Like as you said, Nold, before then we
Speaker 1: were really really good with stone and a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of stone Age stuff we built, well, not
Speaker 1: a ton, but comparatively a lot of stone Age stuff
Speaker 1: we built. It was pretty durable. You can see some
Speaker 1: of it today if you travel out to uh A museum,
Speaker 1: or if you travel to where some of these monuments
Speaker 1: might still stand. But the Bronze Age itself, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it's tough. It's tough to say when it began,
Speaker 1: for which people like in China and Greece, for instance,
Speaker 1: If we define it just by that use of metal,
Speaker 1: we're talking three thousand b C. And that's that's so
Speaker 1: long ago, that's more than five thousand years ago. But
Speaker 1: if we're talking about a place like what we call
Speaker 1: Britain today, it didn't start till b C. The technology
Speaker 1: is disruptive, but it's not ubiquitous automatically has to spread.
Speaker 1: So anyway, with all that, all those caveats and asterisks,
Speaker 1: bronze A each thirty BC, let's say, three thousand to
Speaker 1: b C is pretty much regarded as they cut off.
Speaker 1: And we'll see why. There's a reason we have like
Speaker 1: a more definitive grasp of that for sure. And you
Speaker 1: know we're talking about international trade and how important that
Speaker 1: was for the Bronze Age. Uh, it seems very elementary
Speaker 1: right now, so very normal just to have countries and
Speaker 1: cities across the world gathering the things that are near
Speaker 1: that city, are close enough to that city or place
Speaker 1: of civilization, and then sending some of that stuff elsewhere
Speaker 1: so that we can so that they can then receive
Speaker 1: something from somewhere else. Right. But as Ben was saying,
Speaker 1: this was such a new thing, one of the one
Speaker 1: of the big occurrences here is that there was one
Speaker 1: particular place where you could find this stuff that was
Speaker 1: called tin. We're gonna tell you a little bit more
Speaker 1: about that in the future there, but there's one particular
Speaker 1: place where you could get it, at least a good
Speaker 1: supply of it that then had to be loaded onto
Speaker 1: donkeys and then sent wherever it was going to go
Speaker 1: to be traded with some other place. Right, and ten
Speaker 1: is important because it creates bronze, right, or create It's
Speaker 1: really interesting you combine tin and copper, I believe is
Speaker 1: that is that correct? Guys? Tinnet copper become bronze. These
Speaker 1: are the two medals that you need to create this
Speaker 1: durable thing that becomes the cornerstone of civilization and everything
Speaker 1: from uh, stuff to eat out of, two tools to
Speaker 1: fix other things, to who the weapons? And that's the
Speaker 1: really the big thing here. The weapons were made of
Speaker 1: this substance I have. There's one theory about this that
Speaker 1: is um woefully unproven. We'll probably never prove it, but
Speaker 1: it's a cool story if we want to put ourselves
Speaker 1: back in that time period. How did people figure out bronze?
Speaker 1: It's a big question, like, uh, how how on earth
Speaker 1: did someone say, ah, tin, you like it, you love it,
Speaker 1: you want some more of it, and you make it
Speaker 1: with copper. It's amazing, guys, let's start a war. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the story about the discovery of cheese.
Speaker 1: The discovery of cheese story is that someone was hauling
Speaker 1: milk in a saddle bag and the continual churning and
Speaker 1: chafing of that made cheese during their journey. No way
Speaker 1: to prove it. Yeah, there's the same story with a
Speaker 1: lot of firsts, right, like the first person to eat
Speaker 1: an oyster or a mushroom. It seems like a really
Speaker 1: outlandish proposition when you think of what is actually going
Speaker 1: into this act, and it obviously required a lot of
Speaker 1: trial and error. Maybe caveman eating poisonous mushrooms and dying
Speaker 1: off and then people noticing, oh, maybe don't eat that mushroom,
Speaker 1: eat the one that's delicious and tasty, or maybe makes
Speaker 1: you hallucinate because that's fun too. Um. But with this thing,
Speaker 1: it's such a process in and of itself. The idea
Speaker 1: of smelting, like when you melt the stuff down and
Speaker 1: to either maybe something spilled in and they realized it
Speaker 1: made it a cool color, or like it made it stronger.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what point along the maybe it was a
Speaker 1: whoopsie kind of moment did they realize, oh, this is
Speaker 1: actually a really solid idea. Or maybe someone saw the
Speaker 1: person doing it and then did it themselves and did
Speaker 1: it better. Again. It's interesting to think about. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's what That's what I was getting to is the
Speaker 1: is that there is a myth like that with or
Speaker 1: a theory we can call it if we won't put
Speaker 1: a tie on it, about the discovery of bronze. And
Speaker 1: the idea is that this, like I was originally saying,
Speaker 1: let's picture ourselves were at a camp fire, right, we
Speaker 1: have copper, and we're hanging out. We're playing with our
Speaker 1: copper or something, and we don't know that the rocks
Speaker 1: lining our camp fire are naturally rich intent So how
Speaker 1: amazing is it to see the h to see the
Speaker 1: rocks and the and the copper upon them are to
Speaker 1: melt and mold together while you're just sitting by the fire.
Speaker 1: You know something's up, You know something's happening. That is
Speaker 1: like the cinematic origin story of bronze. And with with this,
Speaker 1: I mean it's probably again even if that's true, we
Speaker 1: can't prove it, but we know people were always experimenting
Speaker 1: with stuff as soon as they had that very valuable
Speaker 1: free time. Again, right, So what we did see is
Speaker 1: even if there wasn't this aha revelatory moment of watching
Speaker 1: this reaction occur accidentally, uh, we knew. We know people
Speaker 1: immediately started experimenting with it. We have to remember that
Speaker 1: before this point, the most common tool in the world,
Speaker 1: and as far as we know, in the universe, was
Speaker 1: the stone axe, which is better than your hand, I
Speaker 1: guess would be the tagline for it. But now that
Speaker 1: they're able to cast bronze, they're seeing that it's it's
Speaker 1: it has numerous qualities that make it superior to either
Speaker 1: copper or tin. And like you said, Matt, it becomes
Speaker 1: a game changer when people realize it can be used
Speaker 1: as a weapon, far superior to stone. So they're still
Speaker 1: they don't perfect bronze in a day, just like Rome
Speaker 1: wasn't built in a day. We know the use of
Speaker 1: copper was already well known throughout the area, and it
Speaker 1: was beginning to infiltrate the cultures of Europe, which were
Speaker 1: still running a little behind. They were still in what
Speaker 1: we would call the stone acts days. During the second
Speaker 1: millennium b c E. The use of bronze and the casting,
Speaker 1: the smelting, the creation of it was increasingly improved. We
Speaker 1: see the emergence of what is called true bronze. People
Speaker 1: are making bronze weapons, and we know this because we
Speaker 1: can do a little bit of forensic work, even in
Speaker 1: places you might not expect, like Cornwall, England. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: only the place known for you know, having lego pieces
Speaker 1: wash up on the beach. Uh. And in fact is
Speaker 1: also what you are indicating at the top of the show.
Speaker 1: Matt Um has massive deposits of tin. So it gave
Speaker 1: them this kind of stronghold in terms of you know, civilization,
Speaker 1: in terms of material evolution. I guess UH to be
Speaker 1: kind of the source for that because it was so
Speaker 1: rich just in in them hills there there was tin,
Speaker 1: oh for sure. And again a lot of the tin
Speaker 1: carrying from the deposits there was by donkey for a
Speaker 1: long time. But you have to remember it right around
Speaker 1: this time. Guess what's invented the real game changer. The
Speaker 1: wheel gets invented around this, around this age. And I
Speaker 1: want to jump in here before anybody UH reaches out,
Speaker 1: reaches out to ne near to us with a with
Speaker 1: a question about income civilizations and why there was quote
Speaker 1: unquote not a wheel invented in those civilizations. The invention
Speaker 1: of the wheel is uh, is a novelty for many
Speaker 1: ancient cultures, unless they have domesticated livestock to pull it. Also,
Speaker 1: the geography of a lot of those mountainous cultures in
Speaker 1: South America did not lend itself to a person hauling
Speaker 1: a wheelbarrow. So these people are not somehow cognitively superior.
Speaker 1: They were just able to make a tool that worked
Speaker 1: with the geography and the biology of the creatures they
Speaker 1: had already conquered. Yeah, because they had oxen, and you
Speaker 1: could have They've figured out how to attach a plow
Speaker 1: to the back of a car with an oxen. So
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got wheels, a large animal that can
Speaker 1: pull a lot of weight, and there you go. Now
Speaker 1: you've got plenty of food because you can plant way
Speaker 1: more farming revolution take that Norman borlog. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Wheat,
Speaker 1: get out of your wheat. Um. But so then we
Speaker 1: know around one thousand b C. There's a new thing
Speaker 1: that surfaced and we kind of talked about it a
Speaker 1: little bit, but that's the ability to forge a different metal. Iron.
Speaker 1: That's you know, when you get the iron age, and
Speaker 1: when iron comes around, it's like, hey, you know, bronze
Speaker 1: was cool and everything. We we appreciate you. You did
Speaker 1: a lot for us, But I'm here now, so by um,
Speaker 1: it really was the beginning of something completely different. Uh
Speaker 1: when when the Forging of Iron came around. However, there's
Speaker 1: more to this story. It's not as clean cut as
Speaker 1: a brand new form of metal coming out like a
Speaker 1: brand new iPhone, right, you see. For some reason, instead
Speaker 1: of transitioning peacefully over a gradient, over a spectrum over
Speaker 1: time to the Iron Age, multiple Bronze Age civilizations and
Speaker 1: cultures just imploded. And what are we talking about. We'll
Speaker 1: tell you after a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Speaker 1: The Bronze Age did not end with a whimper, as
Speaker 1: the old quotation goes, and ended with a bank. It
Speaker 1: popped sort of abruptly with the near simultaneous collapse of
Speaker 1: multiple Bronze Age civilizations, the biggest empires in the world.
Speaker 1: Modern day Egypt is like a survivor of this enormous
Speaker 1: human catastrophe. Imagine now, for example, in the modern day,
Speaker 1: imagine if China, the US, Canada, India, and Russia all
Speaker 1: fell within less than a century, within fifty years of
Speaker 1: each other, they became dreams of bygone empire. That's a
Speaker 1: modern day version of exactly what happened during the Bronze Age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so major Bronze Age civilizations like Mycenaean Greece, UMU, the
Speaker 1: Hittite Empire in Turkey, and ancient Egypt fell within a
Speaker 1: comparatively short period of time. Um. These ancient cities were abandoned.
Speaker 1: The trade routes that we talked about they were so
Speaker 1: important were abandoned as well, were lost, and literacy even
Speaker 1: declined throughout that region. So um, more than just a
Speaker 1: little over thirty two years ago, they all went from
Speaker 1: being huge power players in the world economy of the time,
Speaker 1: world class civilizations, to essentially we refer to today as
Speaker 1: failed states or more so even nonexistent states. Um. And
Speaker 1: you can today find crushed skeletons and scattered remnants and
Speaker 1: debris from you know, artifacts of the time that remain.
Speaker 1: But that's about all there is left of these once
Speaker 1: incredibly influential and powerful cities. Yeah, you can see, you
Speaker 1: know where there was something once and archaeologists like like
Speaker 1: you said, have have have found well, I I don't
Speaker 1: want to spoil anything here, Ben, but archaeologists have found
Speaker 1: on a specific layer of soil of ground, essentially all
Speaker 1: in the same layer where all of these various cities
Speaker 1: all went. It seemed to be with fire and some
Speaker 1: kind of great battle or or great terrible thing that
Speaker 1: occurred in all of these cities within a very short
Speaker 1: time span. Um, it's very odd, very very odd. Yeah,
Speaker 1: within as little as the span of a century, which
Speaker 1: is just like a fingersnap. It's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: The span of his century is like a micrometer in
Speaker 1: the timeline. But we know that other civilizations have disappeared
Speaker 1: in the past, maybe not at this level, but very
Speaker 1: large populated to places Cojo Kio. We did an episode
Speaker 1: on that ancient cultures in Southeast Asia like modern day Cambodia,
Speaker 1: uh South America as well. Some of those things remain
Speaker 1: at least partially unexplained, but in most of those cases,
Speaker 1: what we're seeing is a single community or a single
Speaker 1: culture or a single civilization being affected. We still have
Speaker 1: serious questions about what could have made so many massive,
Speaker 1: successful cultures self destruct all at once, especially when we
Speaker 1: know that they had a vested interest in maintaining a
Speaker 1: status quo to a degree, supporting one another to enable
Speaker 1: the whole to rise. And we're struggling to figure out
Speaker 1: what happened. Here's where it gets crazy. Oh, so over
Speaker 1: the centuries people have been guessing. Multiple scholars have put
Speaker 1: forward multiple arguments of vary incredibility to explain this disturbing
Speaker 1: historical mystery. You know, well, yeah, the first the first
Speaker 1: one we you know, I mentioned they're kind of as
Speaker 1: a spoiler, a precursor to this, that there is a
Speaker 1: layer of ash and a lot of these citadels and
Speaker 1: what we would call cities um back in the day
Speaker 1: that existed around the same time. And one of the
Speaker 1: theories that's been put forth is that some kind of
Speaker 1: natural disaster caused these you know, various cities and civilizations
Speaker 1: to collapse simultaneously. And one of those would be like
Speaker 1: a massive vulcan volcanic eruption or perhaps an earthquake or
Speaker 1: series of those two things occurring. You know, agent people
Speaker 1: didn't have any way to communicate, at least through technology,
Speaker 1: that it is a disaster was coming from some far
Speaker 1: flowing part of the world. But it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: the disasters couldn't impact them all simultaneously, right, And there
Speaker 1: are a few there are some Egyptologists that have dated
Speaker 1: back the heck Of volcano. It's hecla three volcanic eruption
Speaker 1: that was in Iceland. It occurred in eleven b c E.
Speaker 1: They're saying that possibly it caused this the civilizations to collapse,
Speaker 1: but not because of the eruption itself, because the volcanic
Speaker 1: eruption may have caused a famine that affected this large
Speaker 1: swath of area. Yeah, we have some uh you know,
Speaker 1: we have evidence from Egyptian sources. We know under Ramsey's
Speaker 1: three during the wider overall uh Bronze Age collapse called
Speaker 1: the Late Bronze Age collapse, we we know that the
Speaker 1: rulers of the time were addressing civil unrest and crime,
Speaker 1: and it was tied into famine, right, it was tied
Speaker 1: into migration to people becoming refugees. And I love what
Speaker 1: you said. Man, just because they didn't see an eruption
Speaker 1: in Iceland doesn't mean it didn't screw up the connected
Speaker 1: weather systems equaling less food. And remember, part of the
Speaker 1: reason people were so successful in the Bronze Age and
Speaker 1: this part of the world was entirely because of that
Speaker 1: surplus of food and the positive domino effect, the positive
Speaker 1: feedback loop that creates. Now we're seeing the opposite. It's
Speaker 1: evil twin. We know in eruption of that size could
Speaker 1: definitely impact agriculture. But well, I mean, scholars still of
Speaker 1: course argue back and forth about the degree to which
Speaker 1: that's affected it. Right now, you'll hear a lot of
Speaker 1: people say, well, that one eruption couldn't spell the end
Speaker 1: of you know, multiple empires. It just didn't have the
Speaker 1: size for that. And even if there is this butterfly
Speaker 1: ripple effect, it wouldn't have lasted long enough to destroy
Speaker 1: those empires by itself. But we have to keep in
Speaker 1: mind Volcanic eruptions can also be linked to earthquakes, and
Speaker 1: earthquakes can also do a massive amount of damage in
Speaker 1: a short amount of time. On they can also maybe
Speaker 1: be linked to tsunami, so flooding. We're saying, as you
Speaker 1: can get a combo meal for natural disaster, it doesn't
Speaker 1: always have to be ordered a la cart. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: two meets, two sides, one bread, exactly. I can't, can't.
Speaker 1: Some of those eruptions produce so much ash and nastiness
Speaker 1: that it literally blocks out the sun like for a while.
Speaker 1: That's what we're talking about. You could essentially disrupt the
Speaker 1: weather systems at a large area, if not the entire
Speaker 1: planner or it's also you know, the ability for crops
Speaker 1: to get you know, the nutrients they need from from
Speaker 1: sunlight and all of that. That's a really good point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because imagine you're you're a farmer, and you know the
Speaker 1: religions of this time, uh, the ones that are authorized
Speaker 1: by the ruling class. When it comes to the lower class,
Speaker 1: they're entirely meant to keep you farming and feel like
Speaker 1: you're vaguely in trouble and struggling his cultur rules again
Speaker 1: and and so what do you do when this guy
Speaker 1: goes black? Someone has messed something up. You know, you're
Speaker 1: not a vulcanologist. Vulcanologists don't exist. You're you're you're trying
Speaker 1: to grow food. And as politicians are so fond of saying, today,
Speaker 1: feed your family. Uh. And then, just like you said, no,
Speaker 1: the sky goes black. No one knows why. Perhaps and
Speaker 1: then the rain disappears, right, or then the ground start yep,
Speaker 1: and the crops are fallow. Right. You just can't grow
Speaker 1: like you used to. There's a geophysicist named Amost Nerve
Speaker 1: from Stanford, and he argues that a string of massive
Speaker 1: earthquakes could have knocked down one of the city states
Speaker 1: after another. You can pull up. I think there's a
Speaker 1: really cool Google Maps layer you can pull up that
Speaker 1: will show you the Bronze Age empires and you can
Speaker 1: see how his argument, Uh, you can see how his
Speaker 1: argument proceeds that these cities fell one by one to earthquakes.
Speaker 1: They didn't have FEMA and have the communication or infrastructure
Speaker 1: resources available in the modern day, so this could have
Speaker 1: brought those empires to a premature And he also and
Speaker 1: I thought this would be interesting, um to historical scholars
Speaker 1: of the Bible in the audience. He he also argues
Speaker 1: that earthquake activity maybe the real life inspiration for the
Speaker 1: biblical prophecy of Armageddon. That's the site of the final
Speaker 1: conflict between good and evil. He says, you know, the
Speaker 1: repeated destruction of the city Moguido, probably at least in
Speaker 1: this almost nurse opinion, he says, it inspired the author
Speaker 1: of Revelation to write his prediction of the apocalypse. Like
Speaker 1: this guy saw an earthquake, experienced that lived through it,
Speaker 1: said this is going to happen again, and out you
Speaker 1: know he uh, he is a co author of one
Speaker 1: of the most famous books of all time. But that's
Speaker 1: a cold comfort, you know. It doesn't get you out
Speaker 1: of an earthquake. Yeah. Yeah, So we're talking, we're talking
Speaker 1: about these various things we've you know, we've gone through
Speaker 1: volcanoes and earthquakes. Well, what if what if for one
Speaker 1: reason or another, it wasn't those things and it was
Speaker 1: just a lack of consistent rain water for the crops
Speaker 1: that were so important at the time. What if there
Speaker 1: was a massive drought that ended up causing chaos essentially
Speaker 1: within the civilizations themselves. And uh, you know, is that
Speaker 1: even a possibility. Well, guess what we have good news
Speaker 1: for you. Intelligent people have been studying it. That's right.
Speaker 1: There is an article in the Journal of the Institute
Speaker 1: of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University UM where researchers led
Speaker 1: by a paleonologist, Dafna languet Um, put forth this very theory. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Lanna argues that drought led to the collapse of at
Speaker 1: least the ancient Southern levant and that cascaded out to
Speaker 1: the rest of the known world Like this is we
Speaker 1: were talking about the known world at this time. Uh,
Speaker 1: palein Ologists is sort of a word for the word
Speaker 1: of the day for us. I don't know about you guys,
Speaker 1: I didn't know this was a job. It's someone who
Speaker 1: studies ancient pollens. So g cfo with your modern pollens.
Speaker 1: Oh man, it reminds keeps you. Oh that's so specialized.
Speaker 1: I love it someone because I grew up I want
Speaker 1: to study ancient pollens. I'm sorry, what what ancient pollens? No?
Speaker 1: But please, I really feel passionately about it. Dad, there's
Speaker 1: how are you gonna find it? Get out of here? Well?
Speaker 1: You know you dig it up? I guess right, But no,
Speaker 1: that's a good question, dad, Ben how do you find
Speaker 1: ancient pollen samples? I'm so glad you asked, budding, Uh, pollinologists.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of people are gonna tell you
Speaker 1: it's a weird dream. And I've come to your career
Speaker 1: day to let you know that all dreams are kind
Speaker 1: of weird. And there's no reason that you should knock
Speaker 1: this one out of the running. Look at all the
Speaker 1: pollen around today. It had to come from somewhere. Start digging,
Speaker 1: Start reading to start digging. Uh, if you take you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get I don't want to get
Speaker 1: lost in the weeds. Your kids on how you actually
Speaker 1: find these things? But you can if you dig through
Speaker 1: the layers of soil in places that had pollen producing
Speaker 1: plants right on a regular basis, then you can take
Speaker 1: samples of those the same way you take samples of
Speaker 1: tree right at different chronicles in its own uh dendo chronology,
Speaker 1: and then you can find what Lingek calls the fingerprints
Speaker 1: of plants. Pollen grains are the fingerprints and plants. They
Speaker 1: can help scientists reconstruct the ancient natural vegetation, past climate conditions.
Speaker 1: So I say to you in this in the simprov scene,
Speaker 1: I say to you, go forward, start collecting all the
Speaker 1: pollen you can, and remember that one day we don't
Speaker 1: have to just think about you as a pollenologist. Now
Speaker 1: we can think about those who come after you. So
Speaker 1: save the pollen for them. You may end up being there, carlineus.
Speaker 1: You may end up being there, Charles Darwin. Well, it's
Speaker 1: so interesting though, because I mean, these are fossils, this
Speaker 1: is part of the fossil record. They're just really really
Speaker 1: tiny fossils um, And and you're right, they act as
Speaker 1: kind of like a fingerprint in the same way maybe
Speaker 1: ice cores only obviously much much smaller do for um,
Speaker 1: you know, studying the layers of of collected ice, and
Speaker 1: that core tells the story and pollen does the same thing,
Speaker 1: and it's a story about past climate. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: can paint a pretty accurate picture. Of course, the only
Speaker 1: way we can know whether it's a d percent accurate
Speaker 1: is to travel back there. Uh And unless you believe
Speaker 1: that paper by that recent undergrad there's not a way
Speaker 1: to time travel yet that's a that's the story for strange.
Speaker 1: So so right now we know that there's we know
Speaker 1: that this research shows a very specific, very sharp decline
Speaker 1: in the vegetation that up until that point was common.
Speaker 1: The scientists led by Languet found that in twelve fifty
Speaker 1: b C, the traditional plant life of the Mediterranean, the
Speaker 1: Late Bronze Age, seemed to just take a nose dive,
Speaker 1: just bear and in its place they saw plants that
Speaker 1: you would find in semi desert areas. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: was in like carol trees, pine trees, oak tree, these
Speaker 1: they're out there. And um, they also noticed that there
Speaker 1: was a huge drop in olive trees, you know, and
Speaker 1: that is a major thing that is being produced out
Speaker 1: there for food sources and and for other reasons. And
Speaker 1: there's any there's an indication that horticulture in general, at
Speaker 1: in that area at the time was on the decline, right,
Speaker 1: And really what the team came away with is that
Speaker 1: the region was in the grip of serious regular droughts
Speaker 1: within a drought season that lasted for several seasons essentially
Speaker 1: um and the dates of researchers came up with via
Speaker 1: all this pollen analysis that they went through, they correspond
Speaker 1: pretty darn well with a few remaining historical records that
Speaker 1: you know, scientists and humanity has of that period, and
Speaker 1: they all a lot of those, by the way, mentioned
Speaker 1: shortages of gray means, so you know, all this this
Speaker 1: seems to be, like Ben said, painting a pretty clear
Speaker 1: picture of no matter what was going on, this was
Speaker 1: a significant factor. Right. It's spooky to build a puzzle
Speaker 1: of this size. We're finding puzzle pieces in the twenty
Speaker 1: century that connect with puzzle pieces from five thousand, like
Speaker 1: from thousands, three thousands so years ago. That's that's a
Speaker 1: lot of work. That's one hell of a jigsaw. And
Speaker 1: the thing about these scant historical records is that they're
Speaker 1: pretty informative for what they are, also pretty cryptic, and
Speaker 1: they don't just mention shortages of grain. We're going to
Speaker 1: pause for word from our sponsor, and as long as
Speaker 1: our civilization doesn't collapse in the next couple of minutes
Speaker 1: or so, uh, then will return and put some more
Speaker 1: puzzle pieces of the Bronze Age collapse together, and we're
Speaker 1: back off air. We were having a little conversation about
Speaker 1: our earlier, our earlier great question. What's the name for
Speaker 1: this age? Uh know, you proposed the plastics age. We
Speaker 1: talked about information age, because I do think information is
Speaker 1: a substance. Uh. Silicon age was the first one Matt
Speaker 1: put forth. Silican age or computer age. Some people are
Speaker 1: calling it new media age, which all goes to show
Speaker 1: we don't we don't know what future historians are going
Speaker 1: to call it. They might just latch onto one thing
Speaker 1: and they might be calling it the Furby Age. Like
Speaker 1: the most technologically significant invention of these ancient benighted people
Speaker 1: was our one true God, the Furbye, and that'll be
Speaker 1: how we're known by our descendants on Mars in the
Speaker 1: moon and when when when it ends up being the
Speaker 1: age that leads to the destruction of all civilization, Maybe
Speaker 1: we could refer to it as the idiot age. The
Speaker 1: Apocalypse A. I don't know, just call it just call
Speaker 1: it the last A. Yeah, yeah, like that old that old,
Speaker 1: that old joke. I think it was from one of
Speaker 1: the chants about candle Jack. Do you guys remember that
Speaker 1: you can't say his name or he anyway? It's okay
Speaker 1: mean but yeah, the zoom frozen he got me. Um.
Speaker 1: But what's so what's so interesting about that name? Aside
Speaker 1: is that you know, we have to remember any fans
Speaker 1: of literature. One thing that's infuriating is that, uh, several
Speaker 1: while backs, uh some time ago, not as far back
Speaker 1: as the Bronze Age, someone got the bright idea to
Speaker 1: call a certain school of literature modernism, and what do
Speaker 1: they call the next one postmodernism? We can't. We can't
Speaker 1: name stuff like that. It's the same with music genre.
Speaker 1: Just like you got rock, then you got post rock,
Speaker 1: which is basically just like minimalist rock with it's got guitars,
Speaker 1: doesn't really have many changes, it's a lot of It's
Speaker 1: like ambient music and rock and roll had like a
Speaker 1: weird slow child, or the same with punk and post punk.
Speaker 1: What even is I guess post punk is just punk
Speaker 1: that's a little more intelligent I I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting all of those terms. You guys, when do you
Speaker 1: think we're going to reach the post war stage? Do
Speaker 1: you think that's going to happen, Yeah, yeah, when humanity
Speaker 1: is Actually no, it will still happen after humanity has
Speaker 1: gone because by that point the machines and algorithms we've
Speaker 1: made will continue fighting an entirely automated war. But eventually
Speaker 1: they'll need repairs um and if they are successful enough
Speaker 1: at self repairing, then if they extend past the Solar system,
Speaker 1: the death of the Sun won't matter. So I guess
Speaker 1: by the heat death of the universe will definitely be
Speaker 1: in a post war economy. Yes, the universus ended, but
Speaker 1: we fixed the economy. Good news, bad news, right, which
Speaker 1: the first You're right, the war is a fundamental piece
Speaker 1: of this. And that's why I really appreciate one of
Speaker 1: the things you point out there, Matt, when you said, immediately,
Speaker 1: of course some bright bulb uh, well, we can't say
Speaker 1: bold there were no light bulbs, some some bright candle
Speaker 1: around that bronze Discovery campfire. Said we could we could
Speaker 1: use this to do amazing things. We could build plumbing,
Speaker 1: you know, we could like probably make some medical improvements,
Speaker 1: or we could kill like everybody, you guys, she keep
Speaker 1: that's the last resort, though, gotta be a last resort.
Speaker 1: Surely there's another way, right, And everyone's like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, totally totally yeah, totally just just not me, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm good. Okay, Yeah, you're great, dude, you
Speaker 1: like put together the fire, come on, man. So so
Speaker 1: uh yeah, let's just do a show with historical re
Speaker 1: enactments that we make up. We touched that one time
Speaker 1: behind the scenes. By the way, it was still great.
Speaker 1: It was such a great idea, and no it was
Speaker 1: it was not drunk history. Uh, it was weirder anyway. War.
Speaker 1: The reason we're talking about it is because it is
Speaker 1: unfortunately a very common process in human history, the fall
Speaker 1: of a status quo or a stable government for some reason.
Speaker 1: Regardless of how good or fair or how terrible or
Speaker 1: authoritarian that structure might be, it inevitably leads to violence. Right.
Speaker 1: It's the equivalent of removing those painted lines, those silly
Speaker 1: painted lines that we have on the interstate highways. They
Speaker 1: actually do reduce accidents, uh, not just as a visual aid,
Speaker 1: but because they remind people of these intangible laws that
Speaker 1: we all obey because we feel as though they are
Speaker 1: constantly applied, and of course they're not. It's just in
Speaker 1: general people tend to agree that those are good things.
Speaker 1: So now those laws are removed, and people then just
Speaker 1: like people now, started doing doing whatever they wish when
Speaker 1: those laws were not in play, especially when they felt
Speaker 1: like they were fighting for their own survival. That's why
Speaker 1: the collapse of le Bronze Age is marked by what
Speaker 1: would be described as a an upticking crime in the
Speaker 1: modern world, and that is a very diluted milk soast
Speaker 1: way to say it. We're talking about is widespread pillaging,
Speaker 1: disruption of those precious international trade routes, civil unrest, let's
Speaker 1: find Let's get that bastard, the king. He's had it
Speaker 1: coming to him and I don't think his God is
Speaker 1: going to stop us this time war over diminishing resources.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest mysteries here that we we may
Speaker 1: have to dedicate an entire episode two is the emergence
Speaker 1: of a mysterious seafaring confederation. You could call them known
Speaker 1: as the Sea People's. They're like, uh, they're like Matt
Speaker 1: Max esque raiders in this scenario, or they're like um
Speaker 1: in water World, they're like the smokers. They were going
Speaker 1: to these stable, relatively stable but struggling uh thoughts of civilization,
Speaker 1: and they were just running through them. And then that
Speaker 1: you couldn't catch them because they were back on the votes.
Speaker 1: They were gone and onto the next city. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: becomes a pretty horrifying vision thinking about the quote See
Speaker 1: People's and I'll tell you why, And quick shout out
Speaker 1: to the podcast Fall of Civilizations for an episode they
Speaker 1: did on similar topic here about the Bronze Age collapse.
Speaker 1: They did a great job of explaining the the very
Speaker 1: small descriptions that exist out there for the Sea People's
Speaker 1: and it sounds weird. They it sounds, I think the
Speaker 1: way they put on the podcast like a monster from
Speaker 1: the deep. When you hear the Sea People's, it sounds like,
Speaker 1: what are those mermon is that we're talking about? Are
Speaker 1: we talking about something from you know, creatures from below
Speaker 1: the water that emerged and attacked these towns and pillaged them. Um, No,
Speaker 1: we're not, at least I don't certainly don't think so.
Speaker 1: But there is so little evidence about what they actually
Speaker 1: did and so few descriptions that it becomes I don't
Speaker 1: know more of a more of a nightmare than I
Speaker 1: guess it needs to be, yeah, because we know there,
Speaker 1: like we the descriptions that we find are uh sometimes
Speaker 1: it's terrified. The translations are like these plaintive things from
Speaker 1: one authority to another saying, look, uh, my armies are
Speaker 1: in the capital that is way way in land right
Speaker 1: see the Hittites for example. And then uh, my ships
Speaker 1: whatever would pass from my naval force is way over here,
Speaker 1: far to the west of me, and they can't get
Speaker 1: there in time. There's an exact quote where one authority says, thus,
Speaker 1: the lands are prostrate to these raiders. There's no one
Speaker 1: to defend them, you know what I mean. There's not
Speaker 1: like a police force at this time that can stand
Speaker 1: up to reavers like this. And the thing is that
Speaker 1: the cause of the difficulties of transmitting both information and resources, uh,
Speaker 1: they would these empires would often find out after the
Speaker 1: fact that someone had destroyed a trade hub, or a
Speaker 1: city um or a or a holy place. And this
Speaker 1: this uh devastated the many of these empires. The Sea
Speaker 1: People's did lose campaigns at times, but they kept coming ramseys. Three.
Speaker 1: I think we mentioned he's got some He's got some
Speaker 1: inscriptions that people have recovered, uh and Thebes, and in
Speaker 1: those inscriptions in Mortuary Temple, you can find sources recounting
Speaker 1: at least three different legitimate victories against the Sea People's.
Speaker 1: But again, that's Egypt. One thing you need to remember
Speaker 1: about Egypt in this period is that Egypt kind of survived.
Speaker 1: There's still a country called Egypt. It's not a country called,
Speaker 1: you know, home of the Hittites. But that, I will
Speaker 1: say that is a number one on my list or
Speaker 1: what they should have been called, just like hyphenated maybe
Speaker 1: or maybe it all want work called home of the Hittites.
Speaker 1: Love it and I like that is one word. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we um again we can we can say that
Speaker 1: there is a wealth of insightful and valuable literature and
Speaker 1: research into the ultimate identity of what is commonly called
Speaker 1: the Sea People's. The reason that everybody speaking English and
Speaker 1: French definitely has been using this phrase for so long
Speaker 1: is that it comes from a French egyptologist named Emmanuel
Speaker 1: de Rouge, who who kind of coined the term, and
Speaker 1: then someone else popularized it and it started circulating in
Speaker 1: the cannon because it answered a question a lot of
Speaker 1: scientists and unrelated fields had had for a long long time. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're also the explanation, they're one of the main explanations
Speaker 1: for that common disaster, soil. I guess we could call
Speaker 1: it disaster sentiment, right, the one groove of the historical
Speaker 1: record that is food bar as the acronym. Well that
Speaker 1: that showed clearly there was a massive fire here and
Speaker 1: bodies were just in streets and you know, in in
Speaker 1: houses in that same time. It's really disturbing stuff. So
Speaker 1: so we've kind of been looking at these things individually,
Speaker 1: is as causes, right, But as we know just throughout history,
Speaker 1: just because you're dealing with one disaster one bad thing,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean another one can't come up. Right, we're dealing
Speaker 1: with that right now. We've got a we've got three
Speaker 1: handfuls at least of disasters that are hitting the globe
Speaker 1: right now. And why would it be any different during
Speaker 1: the Bronze Age, right, Yeah, because we've been we've been
Speaker 1: perhaps a little uh uh, a little misleading where we're
Speaker 1: we're we're presenting these problems we said, natural disasters like
Speaker 1: ongoing drought, like earthquakes like volcanoes, human problems like war
Speaker 1: or the fact that humans are often just inherently greedy,
Speaker 1: bad people, or or you just what um unrest within cities,
Speaker 1: right yeah, and competing for things? Right? Why should why
Speaker 1: should my children die such that yours can live? You
Speaker 1: know that's not an even trade to me, says the
Speaker 1: other person with kids. Uh So, each of these explanations alone,
Speaker 1: taken by their themselves in a vacuum. They've all happened before, right,
Speaker 1: A lot of them are happening now, as you said, Matt,
Speaker 1: in the modern age, but these often were, These were
Speaker 1: happening in the Bronze Age, but they weren't all happening
Speaker 1: at once. Because these all happened, and these cultures, the
Speaker 1: world's first stable, long term international trade network survived, weathered
Speaker 1: every storm. But experts are arguing, I thing is very
Speaker 1: clever that what happened is humanity met a storm and
Speaker 1: had never seen before. It met a perfect storm. It
Speaker 1: met an insidious geopolitical domino effect that probably, yes, began
Speaker 1: with the natural world. I think we can determine that.
Speaker 1: But but when we see it, it's got spooky parallels. Right. So,
Speaker 1: climate change, whether it's an eruption, whether it's something abrupt
Speaker 1: like a natural disaster eruption, whether it's a slow cycle
Speaker 1: that maybe has nothing to do with humans, it leads
Speaker 1: to political instability that leads to a rise in crime.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why the historian Robert Drew's calls this
Speaker 1: the Late Bronze Age collapse. He calls it the worst
Speaker 1: disaster in ancient history, more calamitous than the collapse of
Speaker 1: the Western Roman Empire. And people are saying that, like
Speaker 1: the see people's didn't just you know, wake up and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I know, we usually fish, but what if
Speaker 1: we just sacked. What if we just or something like that.
Speaker 1: What if we guys, guys, what if we get into
Speaker 1: pilloging like in a big way and the other people
Speaker 1: on the boat didn't look around and just go yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe they did. I'm gonna start a gang. It's
Speaker 1: called the Sea Boys, and we're gonna sorry, I was
Speaker 1: just gonna, I was just gonna put forth. Why can't
Speaker 1: we just simplify and just call them the sea people,
Speaker 1: you know, the people from the sea. I just I
Speaker 1: think that's just a little more straightforward. The idea of
Speaker 1: the sea people's just makes it seem too too academic.
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's have some fun with him. But you're
Speaker 1: making Yes, you're making a great point, Ben. They didn't
Speaker 1: just decide to do it. It was because they were
Speaker 1: facing some kind of issue, likely from the natural world,
Speaker 1: like you're saying, like a drought, unable to feed their
Speaker 1: families on and they had to go and find something.
Speaker 1: And when they couldn't trade or they couldn't find a
Speaker 1: viable way to do it peacefully, Doon, the option then
Speaker 1: was to take by force, or at least perhaps it
Speaker 1: was the thought that the only option was to take
Speaker 1: what they needed by force. Again, the parallels freaking me
Speaker 1: out a little bit exactly. I mean, think about it. So, uh,
Speaker 1: this the positive domino effect we mentioned earlier. Right, stable
Speaker 1: populations are creating more food, right, and so those they
Speaker 1: don't naturally want to go out into the wild. And
Speaker 1: I would hope if people are people are creatures of
Speaker 1: convenience and necessity, right, So it's it's relatively anomalous for
Speaker 1: a group to just to to just decide to kill
Speaker 1: people for fun rather than to kill them for resources
Speaker 1: or something like that. So these stable populations during the
Speaker 1: heyday of the Bronze Age, they are dependent on producing
Speaker 1: food or importing food for their own consumption and then
Speaker 1: possibly exporting it across trade networks for other things they
Speaker 1: can't get, And so when they can't grow crops, they
Speaker 1: cannot participate in that trade network, and most importantly, they
Speaker 1: cannot feed themselves. That's the whole reason they're living in
Speaker 1: this area, right, So they have to look for some
Speaker 1: other means of sustenance. But the problem is, unless they're
Speaker 1: the very first people who became these migrants and refugees,
Speaker 1: other people have already hit the road. Other people have
Speaker 1: been down these tracks before, been down this road before,
Speaker 1: if you're a Hank Williams senior fan, and they have
Speaker 1: done the same. And they already knew about these pre
Speaker 1: existing trade routes. They already knew where the ports were,
Speaker 1: they already knew where the cities were. The people who
Speaker 1: are already pushed into a nomadic existence are therefore either
Speaker 1: laying weight in established migration routes and waiting to pounce
Speaker 1: on merchants and families and refugees, or they hopped in
Speaker 1: their boats, perhaps driven by necessity, and decided to that
Speaker 1: they instead of waiting for something to be given to them,
Speaker 1: they would take it by any means necessary, and morality
Speaker 1: doesn't really enter the equation when you're talking about survival.
Speaker 1: And then think about it on a worldwide scale. Now,
Speaker 1: we think about cities and empires as individuals, right, we
Speaker 1: know that city states don't really have friends, Empires don't
Speaker 1: really have friends, they have alliances. So these entire, uh,
Speaker 1: these entire groups of people are shifting into militarism. They're
Speaker 1: already probably pretty militaristic, but but they're protecting their own defenses, right,
Speaker 1: their upper classes and their mid tiers from pillagers. And
Speaker 1: they're also trying to send out their military forces to
Speaker 1: wage wars, wars of acquisition of other resources, perhaps wars
Speaker 1: of protection against these mysterious see peoples who keep getting away.
Speaker 1: And it happens. This is the scariest part. It happens
Speaker 1: very very quickly, you know what I mean. Uh, these
Speaker 1: longstanding treaties thrown awake. Egypt retreats into itself, right because
Speaker 1: it needs to. It needs to tamp down domestic unrest.
Speaker 1: You have to fix your own house before you fix
Speaker 1: someone else's. Just think about what we're saying and describing here,
Speaker 1: just overlay it on. They started start in the late
Speaker 1: nineties and just like, oh God, during this time, someone
Speaker 1: figured out how to make iron. Oh there you go.
Speaker 1: I guess what. I guess what the military has. They've
Speaker 1: just come out. They're saying that they think fusion is
Speaker 1: definitely going to be a thing. Now. They're like just
Speaker 1: talking about it openly. Yeah, fusion, you know, for power,
Speaker 1: fusion for power. It's only gonna be for power. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be fine, Are you serious? Yeah, Uh, it's all good.
Speaker 1: The first round of fusion bombs, we just gotta wait
Speaker 1: for that. That's that's somebody making the first iron and going, oh,
Speaker 1: those are those are fusion bombs for peace. But then
Speaker 1: we get some who who gets them? You know, who
Speaker 1: gets the fusion bombs got? I don't know. It's the
Speaker 1: same with like these weapons. You know, it's all about
Speaker 1: who who figured it out first, and then you know,
Speaker 1: people backwards engineer things. I'm sure both sides of these,
Speaker 1: uh these conflicts had similar weapons, but maybe the upper
Speaker 1: hand goes to the ones that figured it out a
Speaker 1: little better. I don't know. Yeah, and then they get
Speaker 1: all the oil and you know, last until it all
Speaker 1: burns out and the yeah, yeah, and this is uh there,
Speaker 1: this is the the Spook is part of this story
Speaker 1: now if we want to give it a little bit
Speaker 1: of an epilogue. Yes, the area entered dark age. You know,
Speaker 1: the closest thing we had to global civilization full stop collapsed. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, Noel, you raised the point earlier about
Speaker 1: the collapse and education literacy bottomed out, right? Who has
Speaker 1: time to learn to read? I am trying to avoid
Speaker 1: these pillagers impossible cannibals. I just threw cannibals in there,
Speaker 1: and now it's who has time to read? I'm being
Speaker 1: distracted by these cat videos. I mean, I was joking
Speaker 1: at the top of the show about this maybe being
Speaker 1: the new dark I don't know. It makes me think
Speaker 1: of that movie Idiocracy, which is all about a breakdown
Speaker 1: in education, a breakdown and intelligence leading to a breakdown
Speaker 1: in civilization and society as we know it because people
Speaker 1: can't solve problems anymore. People don't think about how to
Speaker 1: fix these, you know, existential threats that face them. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's when really hits the fan. And this is
Speaker 1: our denue mole, right, there is our epilogue. Eventually, the
Speaker 1: seasonal reigns return, and experts believe that this eventually again
Speaker 1: lead the descendants of some of those uprooted groups we
Speaker 1: talked about to settle down once again. But make no mistake,
Speaker 1: history was forever and permanently stunted by this collapse. We
Speaker 1: have no idea where the world would be if this
Speaker 1: had not occurred, right, Like, part of the reason we
Speaker 1: are making this podcast now, part of the reason podcast
Speaker 1: exists is because thousands of years ago, the world as
Speaker 1: we knew it burned the down Like. That's true. And
Speaker 1: most importantly, we can't mistake this from some for some
Speaker 1: like long ago story from some dusty tome or I
Speaker 1: guess some dusty time before books, some dusty tablets or hieroglyph.
Speaker 1: We we should, and I think we must take this
Speaker 1: as a parable. It's a warning about the fragility inherent
Speaker 1: to all human civilization. Civilization is a covenant. It is
Speaker 1: an agreement, and it only works so long as the
Speaker 1: majority of people agree that it works. Otherwise it's just
Speaker 1: like a thing we thought was a good idea at
Speaker 1: the time, like, uh, you know, police Academy for it?
Speaker 1: Has anyone? Has anyone been watching the new season of
Speaker 1: Fargo It just started the other night? Oh no, I
Speaker 1: can't wait. Well, I'm gonna This isn't really a spoiler,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of about warring groups, warring factions, and
Speaker 1: they have this ritual and this agreement where they essentially
Speaker 1: one faction whether it's the Italians and the Irish or
Speaker 1: African American gang comes in in the present day of
Speaker 1: the show, which is like the fifties versus the Italians,
Speaker 1: and they have this ritual where in order to kind
Speaker 1: of make peace quote unquote, they exchange the youngest child
Speaker 1: and and each of them raised the other's youngest child.
Speaker 1: And again there's ritual involved in that, and it's an
Speaker 1: inherent like agreement and a compact. But do you know
Speaker 1: people don't always hold up there into the bargain and
Speaker 1: and otherwise if they did, you wouldn't have a show. Um,
Speaker 1: that's the same with history. You know, people often you know,
Speaker 1: make these agreements and then decide, you know, and actually,
Speaker 1: I think we're just gonna kill all of you. And
Speaker 1: to this, like what we're talking about when we talk
Speaker 1: about this dissolution of society is, uh, we're proposing essentially
Speaker 1: what's what's called a general systems collapse. The argument is
Speaker 1: that we made so much progress as a species during
Speaker 1: the Bronze Age, that we built a system that was
Speaker 1: too intricate to fix, like we didn't know how to
Speaker 1: fix it when parts of it started breaking. If it
Speaker 1: was if it was disrupted, then we didn't have anybody
Speaker 1: with the vantage point to say, okay, look, what we
Speaker 1: need to do is to first off, maintain the trade routes.
Speaker 1: Let's let's do that. Everybody was panicking because the building
Speaker 1: was on fire and we had built everything except for
Speaker 1: a fire escape basically socio politically, and so now we
Speaker 1: see that the things that happened in the order in
Speaker 1: which they occurred, they exposed existing flaws in the system.
Speaker 1: The reason that is important is because it can happen
Speaker 1: again right. One of the questions that I think I
Speaker 1: think we'd have to ask is do you think experts
Speaker 1: are missing another explanation for the bizarre story of the
Speaker 1: late Bronze Age collapse, this weird murder mystery of a civilization?
Speaker 1: And what do you think we can learn about it
Speaker 1: in the modern day? Like what what can we do?
Speaker 1: We are The easy argument that a lot of people
Speaker 1: would make is that we are somehow better armed because
Speaker 1: we have vastly uh more sophisticated information uh technology and dissemination.
Speaker 1: But how much of an advantage is that really? Like
Speaker 1: to your point about cat videos, Noll, how much UH
Speaker 1: does knowing? Does the potential of knowing almost everything mean
Speaker 1: that it will be applied in a useful way? I
Speaker 1: think that's a logical miss up. Yeah, absolutely is. I
Speaker 1: think we've seen that too much information leads people to
Speaker 1: silo their education and and and and you do what
Speaker 1: only seek out what only suits them as opposed to
Speaker 1: you know, because you have do you used to have
Speaker 1: to work for knowledge, You used to have to work
Speaker 1: for you know, this access to it was a very
Speaker 1: exclusive thing, and now everyone has it and nobody appreciates it.
Speaker 1: So what do you guys think is is the safest
Speaker 1: way to ensure your family's survival in uh any coming
Speaker 1: disaster or collapse of our society? UH? Is the safest
Speaker 1: way to become a nuclear fusion engineer? Maybe we're just
Speaker 1: play play the video games superliminal, Like right now, everybody,
Speaker 1: go play the video games superliminal and start thinking the
Speaker 1: way that game forces you to think. And then I
Speaker 1: think we'll all get to a place where we can
Speaker 1: solve any problem that's ever presented to us. I haven't
Speaker 1: heard of Superliminal. Well, if you haven't heard of it,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not getting paid to tell you this,
Speaker 1: but you should play it for sure. It is a
Speaker 1: puzzle game and it's it's it forces you to change
Speaker 1: your perspective literally and figuratively, which is why I think
Speaker 1: it would it's important. It could be a Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why you could be applied here because you know, to
Speaker 1: to find find answers to some of these major problems
Speaker 1: that we face, as in, you know, a global civilization
Speaker 1: right now. We just have to think about things differently,
Speaker 1: and it's very difficult for humans to do that. And
Speaker 1: what are your coping mechanisms, folks? What are your heuristics
Speaker 1: for what has sometimes been called the end of history?
Speaker 1: I think, well, I think we'll soldier on because I
Speaker 1: have to. But but let it let us know. What
Speaker 1: do you think we can learn from the Bronze Age collapse?
Speaker 1: Do you think something like this could slash would happen now?
Speaker 1: And if so, how would it play out? We would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can find us on
Speaker 1: the internet as long as that thing is still around.
Speaker 1: Hopefully We're on Instagram, We're on Facebook, We're on Twitter,
Speaker 1: we recommend here's where it gets crazy, just joined up
Speaker 1: by saying, uh, typing in Knowle's name or Matt's name,
Speaker 1: super producer, code name, Doc Holiday or superproducer mission control,
Speaker 1: my name, dropped me upon something that makes me laugh, um,
Speaker 1: or just you know, in a witty way, illustrates the
Speaker 1: darkness of civilization. Yeah. And and in the event that
Speaker 1: we do have some sort of like escape from l
Speaker 1: a esque situation where you know, the Internet disappears and
Speaker 1: all electronics, uh, this is well, this wouldn't really work. Um,
Speaker 1: never mind forget to work through the landline. Okay, there
Speaker 1: you go. That's what I was getting at. Ben, Thank
Speaker 1: you for rescuing me. You can give us a call
Speaker 1: on a landline, presuming that that infrastructure hasn't been never
Speaker 1: that's just too depressing. One three three st d W
Speaker 1: I t K is that number? UM, reach out to us.
Speaker 1: You can leave us a voicemail. Well that part won't
Speaker 1: never oicemail won't work in but you know what this
Speaker 1: is all just we're just spitballing here. Everything's fine for now.
Speaker 1: Leave us a voicemail. Keep it roughly around three minutes
Speaker 1: so that we can have a nice concise story we
Speaker 1: can use on one of our weekly listener mail episodes.
Speaker 1: And be sure and let us know if it's okay
Speaker 1: to use your story and play your actual voice on
Speaker 1: the show. And if you want us to call you
Speaker 1: something specific or not use your name or be anonymous,
Speaker 1: We're all about that. UM. Love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: And if you happen to enjoy looking at faces while
Speaker 1: you hear voices talk to you, you can head over
Speaker 1: to YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff. Don't look at
Speaker 1: Ben's face right now if you're if you're hearing the
Speaker 1: don't oh oh hants? Why do I get that it
Speaker 1: was that specific face? Um? Yeah, but YouTube dot YouTube
Speaker 1: dot com slash conspiracy Stuff. That's our channel. Subscribe, Tell
Speaker 1: your friends we're going to be putting these up there,
Speaker 1: these conversations, and there will be other things on the
Speaker 1: way to you as soon as we can get them
Speaker 1: to you. Just be prepared. And if none of the
Speaker 1: at quite bags your badgers or collapses your bronze age,
Speaker 1: as long as the as long as the electricity is
Speaker 1: moving and the great sky net and the sky stays there,
Speaker 1: you can always contact us through a good old fashioned
Speaker 1: email address where we are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
Speaker 1: of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart radio,
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