Author : Dan Carlin
Chapter 1 : Do tough times make for tougher people ?
Hard times makes people resilient and tough, easy times makes people more easy going
Chapter 2 : Suffer the children
Children suffered more before and it was more accepted
Chapter 3 : The end of the world as they knew it
What caused the collapse of the Bronze age ? Around 1200 BCE
Option 1 : The sea people
Piracy and movement of population around the mediteranean may have caused to some extent the collapse of some civilisations. Invasions and Raiding.
Option 2 : Famine / Climate change / Draught
There is evidence of famine at the end of the bronze age. The hitties are believed to have suffered famine before the destruction of the city. In Egypt people suffered from malnutrition and people from Libya raided and migrated to Egypt due to Hunger.
A draught and a famine could certainly have been the spark that set in motion chain reactions and led to migration etc..
Option 3 : Earthquakes / Volcanos / Tsunamis
Volcano of Thera (now Santorini) erupted in 1500 – 1630 BCE, it was one of the most powerful eruption in while history. This could cause huge waves that destroyed ships and cities around the meditteranean, Creta was believed tpo have been destroyed by this event. There was also a lot of earthquakes, this could be pone of the parameters of the equation.
Option 4 : Plagues
Smallpox, plagues, some rulers of the hitties died of it, Pericles in Athens as well.
Option 5 : Internecine warfare
In around 1237 BCE the Hitties were defeated by the Assyrians, there is a lot of death spiral that can be created in war. State treasury drained, manpower decimated, ressources lost, food shortage.. Barbarian tribes sacked some of the great powers, waiting for the right moment on the frindges of the empires.
Option 6 and 7 System collapse, multiple causes
Trade collapse -> famine. Migration or maybe collapse of the very bureaucratic and tax heavy structure of the palace culture of the Mediterranenan states.
Chapter 4 : Judgment of Nineveh
Nineveh was the heart of the Assyrian empire in northern Mesopotamia. Height of the empire : 650 BCE. Nineveh was a huge city, wonder of its age, with more than 150K inhabitants. It disapeared from the face of the world and was forgotten in 200 years.
Babylon (near actual Baghdad) was the capital city of the state of Babylonia and was “in competition” with the Assyrians.
200 years after the fall of Assyria, Xenophon, Greek general who wrote “Anibis” will stumble upon the ruins of Nineveh and will be astonished by the grandeur of the place
Assyria was a very old civilisation, unbroken, lasted nearly 1200-1500 years! Dating back to 2300 BCE, fall of Nineveh : 600 BCE.
The epic of Gilgamesh dates back to 2000 BCE at least.
Assyrians were very tough, very centralized, very efficient and very good warrios, they survived while ringed by powerful states and suffering from lack of natural frontiers.
The fall of Nineveh is probably one of the most significant geopolitical events in world history.
Assyrians were very cruel and punished rebels very very harshly. They even punished the ancestors and kidnaped the deity statues of vainquished foes.
When Ashurbanipal was done laying waste to the Elamites, his army brought back the Elamite king’s severed head, whish Ashurbanipal hung from one of the trees in his garden so he could look at it. This macabre scene itself was carved in stone and can be seen on a relief in the british museum.
With time the Assyrian army was less and less composed of Assyrians and more and more with people from vassal states (less loyal).
Problems of succession and bloody fights for power.
The Assyrian army was better trained and drilled than any army until Alexander’s the great. Huge with good supply and first real use of cavalry. Great chariots.
The Assyrians were military superior but had deep respect for Babylon’s culture (a little bit like the romans for the greeks). But the still destroyed Babylon at some point (even diverted a river to seal the deal !).
Assyria downfall : military overextension
They attacked and conquered Egypt, but holding the region was a nightmare. Main army was tied down there.
In the power vacum created by the smashing of Elamites, the Medes started to raise in western Iran. The king of medes reorganized the army and in 615 BCE he attacked Assyria, lost and came back the very next year.
He allied with the Babylonians and the Scythians (powerful horse tribes from the north). In 612 BCE they moved on Nineveh and destroyed it. 200 years later, when Xenophon was marching, everybody forgot about the marvelous city of Nineveh.
Chapter 5 : The barbarian Lifecyle
The fall of the roman empire (west) left existing states without money and command, people forgot how to maintain public baths and aqueduc..
The former Roman Empire (west) was fragmented and occupied by germanic tribes (vandals in north africa, visigoths in spain and part of France, the franks in France..).
Height of the roman empire : 100 CE, fall : 480 CE, creation : 27 BCE. Rome creation : 800 BCE
The roman army was formidable, trained, drilled, equiped by the state and well supplied. Against untrained troops they simply could not be defeated and even when they lost they inflicted very serious damages as they did not run away.
The romans conquered somewhere there was always another tribe hidden behind the defeated one, always a menace on the empire.
The most famouse of the “tribes factory” is the Altai region in eastern mongolia. Scythians, Sarmathians, Huns, Avars, Turks, Mongols are believed to have originated from there.
War with Germanic tribes
First big encounter with german tribes occured when the enormous Cimbri and Teuton tribes started to migrate south. The Cimbric war in around 113 BCE
Those tribes destroyed the roman legions sent to fight them, then were distracted and went to France and Spain for a bit, offering the time to rome to prepare.
In 104 BCE when they came back Gaius Marius, picked as the leadewr of rome to solve this problem, first destroyed the Teutons and then the Cimbri in 2 separate battles.
From there on the frontier was always subject to altercation between the germanic tribes and the romans. The romans beating the germans usually.
In 9 CE, the roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus was ambushed in the Teutoburg forest and got 3 legions destroyed (mist + rain + ambush due to some scouts army guys being in reality germans that led them into the trap). It was a turning point of some sorts. There were more battles but the romans did not deem it profitable to invest in conquering and defeating for good the germanic tribes.
Material aspect of the Romano-Germanic relationship
The common border created exchanges (culture, goods) between both sides, romanizing the nearby tribes and germanizing the roman army.
The conditions of life improved in Germanic tribes which led to a big increase in populatipon as well.
Fourth Century Germania was way more developed and dangerous than first century Germania.
376 CE the huns started pushing Ostrogoths and Visigoths against the danube. The goths, starved and tired took shelter in roman territory and had to sell their childrens into slavery to buy food and survive. This led to the Gothic war (376-382 CE). At the battle of Adrianople (378 CE) the goths spanked the romans. It was hot, the romans were tired by the walk prior to the battle, the goths also set the grass on fire and the gothic cavalry charged into the flank of the romans (east empire), 2/3 of the army was destroyed.
It was then difficult and expensive for romans to raise new armies, and it was mostly mercenaries who fought rome’s battles.
Social disconten within the Roman empire may have been merging with and found an outlet in barbarian activities. The problems faced by the roman empire in the 5th century were huge and their armies far weaker and with a bad leadership.
The roman then moved the tribes and give them state of foederati, like vassals, with autonomous morceling of the empire.
The visigoths sacked rome in 410 CE
The vandals sacked more brutally rome in 455 CE
The last roman emperor was dismissed in 476 CE by a germanic foederati.
Start of the dark ages, raise of church and local groups, warlords and kings.
The franks united under Clovis 1er (466-511 CE), badass kind of the franks. Clovis converted to christianity in 496 which is quite important. The church helped them to transition in a few generation from violent barbarians to pious medieval christians and franks added muscled to the church. Creating the Merovingian dynasty.
Later the Carolingian dynasty took over with Charlemagne (the father of europe). In 768 he was crowned king of the franks. in 800 crowned emperor of rome as well by the church.
Charlemagne fought the saxons in the forests and killed everybody who refused to be baptized. Armed evangelizing. He finally cut the sacred tree they venerated in Verden in 782. Irminsul in the teutoburg forest.
After the saxons came the Danes, the next tribe in line, fought on every cost of northern europe..
Chapter 6 : A pandemic prologue
Plague of Athens (430 BCE) during the Peloponnesian war when the city was under siege by Sparta. Quarter of the population died including the general and statesman Pericles. Likely Typhoid fever.
541 CE : Plague of Justinian. 50 million dead, plague bacillus Yersinia pestis. Spread by fleas and rats.
A day moderate fever would be followed by a week of delirium. Buboes would appear under the arms, in the groin, behind the ears and grow the size of melons to burst with pus.
Got into ships departing from Alexandria.
1340 CE : The black death. Human populatipon level had reached a critical mass. More effective transportation increased the spread of the plague and its persistance.
75 million died, total population of western europe at that time : 150 millions. entire cities and towns just disapeared.
People replacing the dead clergy weren’t necessariy as comitted or as educated. Corruption began to creep in, the clery reputation diminished, dissatisfaction led to the development of the many complaints that the german theologian Martin Luther nailed to the door of the church at Wittenberg Castle.
1918 : The spanish Flu (tens of millions)
Smallpox samples still detained by USA and Russia just in case .
Chapter 7 : The quick and the dead
1945 Nuclear bomb by USA, 1949 by URSS.
Friederic Nietzsche : “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby became a monster”
Bertrand Russel (british philosopher) : You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tighrope safely for ten minutes, it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for 200 years.
Robert Oppenheimer (lead Manhattan project) : Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”
