Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each factor in the 1200 BCE collapse.
Groups: Well-evidenced contributor · Probably a symptom · Inadequate alone
- Earthquakes as the single cause
- Sea Peoples raiding the eastern Mediterranean
- Fragile long-distance tin supply chains
- Drought confirmed in the pollen record
Hints
- Every single-cause account fails on its own.
- The systems argument absorbs them all as compounding stresses.
Show the answer
Well-evidenced contributor: Drought confirmed in the pollen record, Fragile long-distance tin supply chains
Probably a symptom: Sea Peoples raiding the eastern Mediterranean
Inadequate alone: Earthquakes as the single cause
Why
Every monocausal account has been tried and each fails alone. The systems argument absorbs all of them: real stresses hitting a network with no redundancy left.
Practise The Bronze Age Aegean
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on The Bronze Age Aegean
- What makes the systems-collapse thesis persuasive?
- The Greek alphabet spread quickly into non-administrative use partly because it belonged to no institution.
- The Sea Peoples are best understood as the cause of the Late Bronze Age collapse.
- Complete the argument.
- Why was Ventris’s decipherment of Linear B as GREEK such a shock?
- Linear B tablets survive because a palace burned down. What does that accident tell us about what we can know?
- Linear B tablets are almost entirely inventories, sheep, wheel-rims, rations. Why is that mundane content so…