Quotes from Eric H. Cline

Unfortunately, identifying Ramses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus, which is the identification most frequently found in both scholarly and popular books, does not work if one also wishes to follow the chronology presented in the Bible.

In a complex system such as our world today, this is all it might take for the overall system to become destabilized, leading to a collapse.

But what factor, or combination of factors, may have caused the famine(s) in the Eastern Mediterranean during these decades remains uncertain. Elements that might be considered include war and plagues of insects, but climate change accompanied by drought is more likely to have turned a once-verdant land into an arid semidesert.

We must now turn to the idea of a systems collapse, a systemic failure with both a domino and multiplier effect, from which even such a globalized international, vibrant, intersocietal network as was present during the Late Bronze Age could not recover.

seismic disasters known as earthquake storms,

a town partly destroyed by fire and deserted in haste." Here, sometime around or after 1200 BCE, "loose objects were left abandoned in the courtyards and valuables were hidden in the ground. Bronze arrowheads - one of them found stuck in the side of a building - and numerous lead sling bullets scattered all over the place are eloquent proof of war.

Renfrew noted the general features of systems collapse, itemizing them as follows: (1) the collapse of the central administrative organization; (2) the disappearance of the traditional elite class; (3) a collapse of the centralized economy; and (4) a settlement shift and population decline.

Monroe's words might serve as something of a warning for us today, for his description of the Late Bronze Age, especially in terms of its economy and interactions, could well apply to our current globalized society, which is also feeling the effects of climate change.

According to Ramses's inscriptions, no country was able to oppose this invading mass of humanity. Resistance was futile. The great powers of the day—the Hittites, the Mycenaeans, the Canaanites, the Cypriots, and others—fell one by one. Some

more than the drought and climate change that may have been ravaging these areas during this period, what we see are the results of a systems collapse that brought down the flourishing cultures and peoples of the Bronze Age.6

Hatshepsut began to wear the traditional Pharaonic false beard and other accoutrements of office, and men's clothing with body armor to conceal her breasts and other female attributes, as can be seen in statues created at Deir el-Bahari, her mortuary temple. She also changed her name, giving it a masculine rather than a feminine ending, and became "His Majesty, Hatshepsu." In other words, she ruled as a man, a male pharaoh, not simply as regent.

it does not really matter where the Sea Peoples came from, or even who they were or what they did. Far more important is the sociopolitical and economic change that they represent, from a predominantly palatial-controlled economy to one in which private merchants and smaller entities had considerably more economic freedom.

Sometimes it takes a large-scale wildfire to help renew the ecosystem of an old-growth forest and allow it to thrive afresh.

we should be aware that no society is invulnerable and that every society in the history of the world has ultimately collapsed. The

we are, in fact, more susceptible than we might wish to think. At

In any event, this rather unbelievable story is known as a "foundation myth," commonly used in antiquity to describe and explain the rise of someone unexpected to the throne of a country or the leadership of a people. The

Renfrew noted the general features of systems collapse, itemizing them as follows: (1) the collapse of the central administrative organization; (2) the disappearance of the traditional elite class; (3) a collapse of the centralized economy; and (4) a settlement shift and population decline. It might take as much as a century for all aspects of the collapse to be completed, he said, and noted that there is no single, obvious cause for the collapse.