[davidmanheim]

Thanks for trying to provide feedback, but I think all you're doing is harping on non-universal definitions and noting debated historical points, most of which I'm familiar with but didn't think were worth extended discussion in this brief post, not substantively disagreeing. If that's not the case, maybe you can expand on why these lead you to disagree with the overall points made?

[UncleMeat]

If it doesn't matter to the overall point whether various historical claims are true or false, then why include them? All it does is make the piece feel amateurish and contribute to a common problem of taking historical research flippantly and ignoring the community of experts.

[davidmanheim]

It certainly matters that Mesopotamian agriculture had a collapse in ca. 2,200 BCE, but it doesn't matter whether you point out that it was the Akkadian empire founded by Sargon which collapsed, as the OP wanted to correct me about, or that, in fact, the agricultural collapse wasn't specific to the Akkadian empire, and affected areas outside of Mesopotamia. Similarly, it matters that the Roman empire fell, whether it was a gradual collapse or a sudden one - a point which the short post didn't discuss, despite the OP's complaint about inaccuracy.

And claiming that I was "ignoring the community of experts" is making unwarranted assumptions. I spent time getting feedback on the early draft of the paper which this was taken from from several people who do academic research on ancient cultures and collapse, and got minor notes about some of the points raised, as well as many more. But given the topic of the post, I didn't think that anyone needed a digression about the fascinating debate I took notes about regarding the timing of the collapse of the Akkadian empire compared to data about the broader climatic collapse from cores GeoB 5836-2 and M5-422, and other data from Buca della Renella and Soreq Cave in Israel.