[marking-time]

The study of the LBAC is compelling these days because of the similarities to our present day situation. Other commenters have noted the the possibility of AI driven collapse, but another possibility is our dependence on oil.

Bronze is the combination copper+tin. Copper is common in earths composition, but tin is much more scarce. The scarcity of tin necessitated the expansive trade networks to acquire the resource. To my way of thinking this correlates to our dependency on oil which while not exactly scarce, is not evenly distributed across the world. Our global supply chain for oil is fragile in the same way that the supply chain for tin was to the bronze age empires.

As for the article: I found the authors use of dating systems inconsistent and confusing. Some references are listed with the BC/AD nomenclature while others omit it entirely leaving the reader confused as which era he is referring to. Also, the use of the BC/AD has been supplanted by the use of the BCE/CE nomenclature in scientific references for 20+ years. This could simply be due to the fact that the author is a historian, but one would think a PhD would know better. All of this made me wonder if perhaps the author relies too heavily on AI.

[upfrog]

The author has been an established blogger since well before the modern AI boom. It is of course not impossible that their writing technique has changed, and they now use AI heavily, but preferring BC/AD over the alternative/not always clarifying which strikes me as incredibly weak evidence.

[marking-time]

The lack of consistency in the usage is also telling. Also, perhaps the author simply a christian apologist. I am an archaeologist with 10+ years of experience, so now you know my bias.

[arrrg]

Lack of consistency seems entirely normal to me for a blog post.

At a certain point the information is simply redundant. The meaning of the naked number can and will easily be inferred from context. You don’t even notice it. Both while writing and also while reading. A proper proof reading will catch that (maybe, though I myself am actually hilariously bad at proof reading and miss obvious stuff all the time, so being able to properly proof read and catch things always seemed like a super power to me) but I don’t think this blog author does that (and I don’t really expect it? It’s fine …)

It totally get that there are people who will be endlessly annoyed by that – I’m also annoyed by people using quotation marks the wrong way. But it doesn’t really impact readability of the context is clear enough (as it obviously is in this case).

[Jap2-0]

Consistency: the only case where he used BCE is in an image caption. The description on Wikimedia Commons uses BCE, so my guess is that he defaults to writing BC but reading that subconsciously put him in the frame of mind to write BCE. From a skim, he never uses CE or AD in this article.

Omission: this confused me at first, but really the entire article is set 3000 years ago, so it's not particularly ambiguous. If you think in the context of "lecture on the bronze age" you wouldn't expect him to specify every time.

[131012]

Typos are frequent (including in this blog post), and have been for a while. Bret is not an AI bot.

[marking-time]

A PhD that did not use a spell checker? How would you describe that?

[andrewflnr]

I'd call him a little bit sloppy, in need of proofreading. Certainly not an overuser of AI. He writes at least one of these monster posts a week on top of (IIRC) teaching in college, so it's understandable if he's in a rush.

And yeah, it's not the best, but it's really not worth discounting his writing more than he himself already does at the end. Lots of smart people have imperfect language skills.

[0xffff2]

I would describe it as entirely normal. My experience working in a research organization where the majority of my colleagues hold Phds is that education level has a strong inverse correlation with ability/willingness to care about such mundane chores as spelling, grammar and arithmetic.

[131012]

A blogger.

[whall6]

I'm very curious what part of the article you're drawing on to suggest that their reliance on copper and tin was the cause of the collapse. The article that I read seemed to suggest it was climate related.

I have no idea where you're from, but oil is not what it once was, especially in the United States. In fact, we have a very recent case study substantiating this claim: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait sees 20% of the entire world's supply transit through when under normal conditions. Yet after being completely closed (then slightly reopened, and now almost completely closed again), the world is functioning relatively normally and is much less impacted than it would have likely been even 20 years ago.

My conclusion from the article is entirely different: collapse doesn't necessarily occur all at once. And given that, maybe to someone living through this collapse, they wouldn't have even recognized it.

[marking-time]

As mentioned by the other commenter,it is called the _bronze age_, so the components of the bronze alloy are part of the discussion. My point is that extended supply chains are vulnerable. And yes, in my view climate was a proximate trigger. However, once triggered, the collapse became more impactful because of the extended supply chains.

> I have no idea where you're from

I'm from the US and looking out my window to the street below I notice that that more than 90% of the vehicles are still running on petroleum. The impact of high petroleum prices seems obvious to me.

An unrelated question, but why do you think petroleum prices are not correlating with with the straight closure. If, as you opine, the world has changed then why did prices rise in the first place? Was it market speculation based on an outdated worldview, or was it something else? I do not know.

[edit:corrected my formatting error]

[whall6]

I don’t think we’re disagreeing. I am saying the prime mover was probably climate change and you’re saying the disruption of supply chains exacerbated the collapse. Both can be true. I was focused on the cause.

To follow the red herring about crude oil, you’re making my point for me: you’re looking down at a busy road full of petroleum-fueled automobiles when 20% of the world’s oil supply has been completely eliminated.

To be more specific, the difference between now and 20 years ago is the United States is a net exporter of oil. Horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing and other nearly unbelievable technological leaps have turned the United States into an oil superpower within less than 2 decades. Aside from all of that, I truly believe that in 10 years everyone with a home (rented or owned) and a daily commute will be driving an EV. Consumer demand is far less than transportation/travel/industrial demand for oil, but it is the tail that wags the dog.

[marking-time]

We are definitely disagreeing. How much more completely can I express that without being disagreeable. I have no further use for this conversation. Go to sleep.

[scared_together]

The article mentions bronze production (thus indirectly mentioning copper and tin) not as a root cause, but rather a factor that spread the crisis from one region to another:

> What is clear is that once the collapse started, it was contagious, likely for two reasons: first that collapsing areas produced invading forces and refugee flows that destabilized their neighbors and second because as you will recall above, these states are interlinked and their rulers rely on trade to furnish the key military resource (bronze) as well as to acquire key prestige goods necessary to maintain the loyalty of the aristocracy.

[whall6]

Yep, agree. I was mostly focused on the cause, but supply chain disruption certainly seems to have exacerbated the collapse.

I think the supply chain was probably disrupted mostly because as the empires contracted inwards, there may have been a lack of policing throughout the hinterlands. So, getting from state to state would have been more dangerous.

In today’s terms, this might have implications for the policing of the world’s physical trade corridors: the oceans. What might happen if the world’s global oceanic police force (the United States) decides to no longer spend the trillions of dollars required to police these vast stretches of ocean?

[suddenlybananas]

There's nothing wrong with using AD/BC instead of CE/BCE. They're identical and one even saves a character!