Da Lazy Scholar: Sea peoples and the late Bronze age collapse

[Armonica_Templar]

I am a big fan of Graham Hancock's theory on the comet impact which up ended any and all civilizations progress around the times  of the thread.

Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Graham Hancock

Born
2 August 1950 (age 67)
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Nationality
British
Citizenship
British
Alma mater
Durham University
Occupation
Author
Known for
Author, The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, The Message of the Sphinx, Entangled, War God, Magicians of the Gods
Website
www.grahamhancock.com
Graham Hancock (/ˈhænkɒk/; born 2 August 1950) is a British writer and reporter. Hancock specialises in unscientific theories[1]involving ancient civilisations, stone monuments or megaliths, altered states of consciousness, ancient myths and astronomical and astrological data from the past.
One of the main themes running through many of his books is a posited global connection with a "mother culture" from which he believes all ancient historical civilisations sprang.[2] An example of pseudoarchaeology, his work has neither been peer reviewed nor published in academic journals.[1][3][4]

Contents
  [hide] 

• 1Early life
  
• 2Career
  
• 3Works
  
• 4Criticism
  
• 5Orion correlation theory
  
• 6BBC Horizon controversy
  
• 7TEDx talk
  
• 8Influence
  
• 9Books
  
• 10Videos
  
• 11See also
  
• 12References
  
• 13External links
  

Early life
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Hancock spent his formative years in India, where his father worked as a surgeon. Having returned to the UK, he graduated from Durham Universityin 1973, receiving a First Class Honours degree in sociology.[citation needed]

Career
As a journalist, Hancock worked for many British papers, such as The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, and The Guardian. He co-edited New Internationalistmagazine from 1976 to 1979, and served as the East Africa correspondent of The Economist from 1981 to 1983.
Works

Hancock describes himself as an "unconventional thinker who raises controversial questions about humanity’s past".[5] Prior to 1990 his works dealt mainly with problems of economic and social development. Since 1990 his works have focused mainly on speculative connections he makes between various archaeological, historical, and cross-cultural phenomena.

His books include Lords of Poverty, The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis (released in the US as Message of the Sphinx), The Mars Mystery, Heaven's Mirror (with wife Santha Faiia), Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization, and Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith (with co-author Robert Bauval). In 1996 he appeared in The Mysterious Origins of Man.[6] He also wrote and presented the documentaries Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age (2002) and Quest for the Lost Civilisation (1998)[7] shown on Channel 4.
In Hancock's book Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith,[8] co-authored with Robert Bauval, the two put forward what sociologist of religion David V. Barrett called "a version of the old Jewish-Masonic plot so beloved by ultra-right-wing conspiracy theorists."[9] They suggest a connection between the pillars of Solomon's Temple and the Twin Towers, and between the Star of David and The Pentagon.[10] A contemporary review of Talisman by David V. Barrett for The Independent pointed to a lack of originality as well as basic factual errors, concluding that it was "a mish-mash of badly-connected, half-argued theories".[11] In a 2008 piece for The Telegraph referencing Talisman, Damian Thompson described Hancock and Bauval as fantasists.[12]

Hancock's Supernatural: Meetings With the Ancient Teachers of Mankind, was published in the UK in October 2005 and in the US in 2006. In it, Hancock examines paleolithiccave art in the light of David Lewis-Williams' neuropsychological model, exploring its relation to the development of the fully modern human mind.

In 2015, his Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth’s Lost Civilization was published by St. Martin's Press.
His first novel, Entangled: The Eater of Souls, the first in a fantasy series, was published in the UK in April 2010 and in the US in October 2010.

The novel makes use of Hancock's prior research interests and as he has noted, "What was there to lose, I asked myself, when my critics already described my factual books as fiction?"

His books have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated to 27 languages.[citation needed][unreliable source?]

Criticism
Canadian author Heather Pringle has placed Graham Hancock within a particular pseudo-intellectual tradition going back at least to Heinrich Himmler's infamous research institute, the Ahnenerbe. She specifically links Hancock's book Fingerprints of the Gods to the work of Nazi archaeologist Edmund Kiss, a man described by mainstream scientists of the time as a "complete idiot".[13]
Orion correlation theory

Main article: Orion correlation theory

Representation of the central tenet of the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Correlation_Theory]OCT – the outline of the Giza pyramids superimposed over a photograph of the stars in Orion's Belt. To achieve this concordance the pyramids have been rotated and scaled to suit. The validity of this match has been called into question by Hancock's critics, as noted in the text.

One of the many recurring themes in several of Hancock's works has been an exposition on the "Orion correlation theory" (or OCT),[14][15]first put forward by Belgian writer Robert Bauval and then further expounded in collaborative works with Hancock, as well as in their separate publications.

BBC Horizon controversy
BBC Two's Horizon TV series broadcast a programme, Atlantis Reborn, on 4 November 1999 that challenged the ideas presented by Hancock. It detailed one of Hancock's claims that the arrangement of an ancient temple complex was designed to mirror astronomical features and attempted to demonstrate that the same thing could be done with perhaps equal justification using famous landmarks in New York. It also alleged that Hancock had selectively moved or ignored the locations of some of the temples to fit his own theories (see below).[16]
Hancock claimed he was misrepresented by the programme, and he and Robert Bauval made complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Commission against the way Horizon had portrayed them and their work. Eight points were raised by Hancock, two by Bauval (one of which duplicated a complaint of Hancock's).[17] These included the complaint that:

The programme had created the impression that he [Hancock] was an intellectual fraudster who had put forward half baked theories and ideas in bad faith, and that he was incompetent to defend his own arguments. Adjudication: [The Commission] finds no unfairness to Mr Hancock in these matters.[18]

The BSC dismissed all but one of the complaints. Overall, the BSC concluded that "the programme makers acted in good faith in their examination of the theories of Mr Hancock and Mr Bauval".[19] The complaint which was upheld was that

The programme unfairly omitted one of their arguments in rebuttal of a speaker who criticised the theory of a significant correlation between the Giza pyramids and the belt stars of the constellation Orion (the "correlation theory")

which the Commission did find to be unfair. That speaker was the astronomer Edwin Krupp. Krupp argued that Bauval had fudged the maps of Orion and the Pyramids by placing them upside down in terms of stellar directionality to make the theory work.[20] The BBC was not obligated to do more than broadcast an apology for the single point of unfairness but made a decision to modify the Orion sequence to demonstrate that the overall argument of the film remained intact.

In Atlantis Reborn Again, shown on 14 December 2000, Hancock and Bauval provided further rebuttals to Krupp and argued that the ancient Egyptians had made the Pyramids correlate with the three stars of Orion's Belt. However, the documentary as a whole continued to present serious doubts about Hancock's claims, demonstrating as an example how, by using his methods, the constellation of Leo may be 'discovered' among landmarks of modern Manhattan, concluding: 'As long as you have enough points and you don't need to make every point fit, you can find virtually any pattern you want.'[21]
TEDx talk

Hancock gave a TEDx lecture titled "The War on Consciousness", in which he described his use of ayahuasca, an amazonian brew containing a hallucinogenic and illegal compound DMT, and argued that adults should be allowed to responsibly use it for self-improvement and spiritual growth. At the recommendation of TED's Science Board, the lecture was removed from the TEDx YouTube channel and moved to TED's main website where it "can be framed to highlight both [Hancock's] provocative ideas and the factual problems with [his] arguments".[22]

Influence
In 2009, Roland Emmerich released his blockbuster disaster movie 2012, citing Fingerprints of the Gods in the credits as an inspiration for the film,[23] stating: "I always wanted to do a biblical flood movie, but I never felt I had the hook. I first read about the Earth's Crust Displacement Theory in Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods."[24] Also in 2009, author Geoff Stray released his best-selling book Beyond 2012: Catastrophe or Awakening? in which he cites Graham Hancock as one of his inspirations and as a guidepost to point others to do their own investigation into the wonder of ancient societies.[25]

I think  screwed up earlier and added an extra zero

Ancient stone carvings confirm how comet struck Earth in 10,950BC, sparking the rise of civilisations

Ancient stone carvings confirm that a comet struck the Earth around 11,000BC, a devastating event which wiped out woolly mammoths and sparked the rise of civilisations.

Experts at the University of Edinburgh analysed mysterious symbols carved onto stone pillars at Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey, to find out if they could be linked to constellations.

The markings suggest that a swarm of comet fragments hit Earth at the exact same time that a mini-ice age struck, changing the entire course of human history. 

Scientists have speculated for decades that a comet could be behind the sudden fall in temperature during a period known as the Younger Dryas. But recently the theory appeared to have been debunked by new dating of meteor craters in North America where the comet is thought to have struck. 

However, when engineers studied animal carvings made on a pillar – known as the vulture stone – at Gobekli Tepe they discovered that the creatures were actually astronomical symbols which represented constellations and the comet.

The idea had been originally put forward by author Graham Hancock in his book Magicians of the Gods. 



The Vulture Stone, at Gobekli Tepe CREDIT: ALISTAIR COOMBS
Using a computer programme to show where the constellations would have appeared above Turkey thousands of years ago, they were able to pinpoint the comet strike to 10,950BC, the exact time the Younger Dryas begins according to ice core data from Greenland.

The Younger Dryas is viewed as a crucial period for humanity, as it roughly coincides with the emergence of agriculture and the first Neolithic civilisations.

Before the strike, vast areas of wild wheat and barley had allowed nomadic hunters in the Middle East to establish permanent base camps. But the difficult climate conditions following the impact forced communities to come together and work out new ways of maintaining the crops, through watering and selective breeding. Thus farming began, allowing the rise of the first towns. 

Edinburgh researchers said the carvings appear to have remained important to the people of Gobekli Tepe for millennia, suggesting that the event and cold climate that followed likely had a very serious impact.


Position of the sun and stars on the summer solstice of 10,950BC CREDIT:  MARTIN SWEATMAN AND STELLARIUM
Dr Martin Sweatman, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering, who led the research, said: "I think this research, along with the recent finding of a widespread platinum anomaly across the North American continent virtually seal the case in favour of (a Younger Dryas comet impact).

"Our work serves to reinforce that physical evidence. What is happening here is the process of paradigm change.

"It appears Göbekli Tepe was, among other things, an observatory for monitoring the night sky.

“One of its pillars seems to have served as a memorial to this devastating event – probably the worst day in history since the end of the ice age.”

Gobekli Tepe, is thought to be the world's oldest temple site, which dates from around 9,000BC, predating Stonehenge by around 6,000 years.  

Researchers believe the images were intended as a record of the cataclysmic event, and that a further carving showing a headless man may indicate human disaster and extensive loss of life.
'This is what universe used to look like'

01:41

Symbolism on the pillars also indicates that the long-term changes in Earth’s rotational axis was recorded at this time using an early form of writing, and that Gobekli Tepe was an observatory for meteors and comets.

The finding also supports a theory that Earth is likely to experience periods when comet strikes are more likely, owing to the planet’s orbit intersecting orbiting rings of comet fragments in space.

But despite the ancient age of the pillars, Dr Sweatman does not believe it is the earliest example of astronomy in the archaeological record.

"Many paleolithic cave paintings and artefacts with similar animal symbols and other repeated symbols suggest astronomy could be very ancient indeed," he said.

"If you consider that, according to astronomers, this giant comet probably arrived in the inner solar system some 20 to 30 thousand years ago, and it would have been a very visible and dominant feature of the night sky, it is hard to see how ancient people could have ignored this given the likely consequences."

The research is published in Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry.

It refers to 12000 bc

this late bronze age collapse is from 1200 bc

You however have added a dimension I will try to cover at the end

Over Black Swan falliacies and outliers


As for Mr. Graham Hancock, I hate how the academia waste time and resources. In reference to dealing wth him the main ones in power seem to suffer from this



this applies directly to the thread and sources of information

[Armonica_Templar]

Late Bronze age Collapse

Changes in warfare[edit]

Robert Drews argues[30] for the appearance of massed infantry, using newly developed weapons and armor, such as cast rather than forged spearheads and long swords, a revolutionising cut-and-thrust weapon,[31] and javelins. The appearance of bronze foundries suggests "that mass production of bronze artifacts was suddenly important in the Aegean". For example, Homer uses "spears" as a virtual synonym for "warriors".
Such new weaponry, in the hands of large numbers of "running skirmishers", who could swarm and cut down a chariot army, would destabilize states that were based upon the use of chariots by the ruling class. That would precipitate an abrupt social collapse as raiders began to conquer, loot and burn cities.[32][33][34]

This point leads directly off the end of the last Iron age point

Pretty much what this is evolving into

Comparison versus past points of history
create numbers
test against other historical points

All in a quest to go over each point

In the case of advancements in weapons

We have several wars we can use as a basis of the numbers

In fact they are among the best documented

The Civil war as mentioned earlier
porvides excellent numbers

The best part is that we have something that covers the same time period of the two recorded invasions, at least time wise

World War One and World war two

Both heavy with technological development


We also have something else that makes creating numbers for this part easy

We have the fall of the soviet union
the rise of Nazism between world wars

Then we can test it against
the fall of rome

again the easiest to test in my opinion

The numbers will point out a lot of things..
Might even give points of reference for locations

[Armonica_Templar]

[gordi]

Could you give us a bit more info AT?

[Mystic Wanderer]

Could you give us a bit more info AT?

 


Don't you all think this is one that belongs in our "FILES" forums?

[Armonica_Templar]

Could you give us a bit more info AT?

More on the way because you asked for it


Actually i am not finished with it..

[Armonica_Templar]

Could you give us a bit more info AT?

 


Don't you all think this is one that belongs in our "FILES" forums?

I havent had a chance to repsond to your pm..

I was curious over whats the difference between the two.. I was going to try and reach the ending point of the thread first..

Being bipolar it helps to set my eyes one one part then clean up other parts later

[Armonica_Templar]

Reading music



From original post

General systems collapse[edit]

A general systems collapse has been put forward as an explanation for the reversals in culture that occurred between the Urnfield culture of the 12th and 13th centuries BC and the rise of the Celtic Hallstatt culture in the 9th and 10th centuries BC.[35] General systems collapse theory, pioneered by Joseph Tainter,[36] hypothesises how social declines in response to complexity may lead to a collapse resulting in simpler forms of society.

In the specific context of the Middle East, a variety of factors, including population growth, soil degradation, drought, cast bronze weapon and iron production technologies, could have combined to push the relative price of weaponry (compared to arable land) to a level unsustainable for traditional warrior aristocracies. In complex societies that were increasingly fragile and less resilient, the combination of factors may have contributed to the collapse.

The growing complexity and specialization of the Late Bronze Age political, economic, and social organization in Carol Thomas and Craig Conant's phrase[37] together made the organization of civilization too intricate to reestablish piecewise when disrupted. That could explain why the collapse was so widespread and able to render the Bronze Age civilizations incapable of recovery. The critical flaws of the Late Bronze Age are its centralisation, specialisation, complexity, and top-heavy political structure. These flaws then were exposed by sociopolitical events (revolt of peasantry and defection of mercenaries), fragility of all kingdoms (Mycenaean, Hittite, Ugaritic, and Egyptian), demographic crises (overpopulation), and wars between states. Other factors that could have placed increasing pressure on the fragile kingdoms include interruption of maritime trade by piracy by the Sea Peoples, as well as drought, crop failure, famine, or the Dorian migration or invasion.[38]

Links should have been included to the idea

Had to go find one

Societal collapse

Societal collapse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Societal collapse is the fall or disintegration of complex human societies. Societal collapse broadly includes abrupt societal failures such as that of the Maya Civilization, as well as more extended gradual declines of cultures, institutions, or a civilization like the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The general subject arises in anthropology, history, sociology, politics and other fields, and more recently in complex systems science.

Contents
  [hide] 

• 1Causes of collapse
  • 1.1Foreign invasions
    
  • 1.2Sub-replacement fertility
    
  
  
• 2Changes occurring with collapse
  
• 3Population dynamics
  
• 4Theories
  • 4.1Linking social/environmental dynamics
    
  • 4.2Population pressure and mineral resource exhaustion
    
  • 4.3Energy return on energy invested theories
    
  • 4.4Models of societal response
    • 4.4.1Tainter's critique
      
    
    
  • 4.5Toynbee’s theory of decay
    
  • 4.6Systems science
    
  
  
• 5Examples of civilizations and societies that have collapsed
  • 5.1By reversion or simplification
    
  • 5.2By absorption
    
  • 5.3By extinction or evacuation
    
  
  
• 6See also
  
• 7References
  
• 8Further reading
  
• 9External links
  

Causes of collapse[edit]
Common factors that may contribute to societal collapse are economical, environmental, social and cultural, and disruptions in one domain sometimes cascade into others. In some cases a natural disaster (e.g. tsunami, earthquake, massive fire or climate change) may precipitate a collapse. Other factors such as a Malthusian catastrophe, overpopulation or resource depletion might be the proximate cause of collapse. Significant inequity may combine with lack of loyalty to established political institutions and result in an oppressed lower class rising up and seizing power from a smaller wealthy elite in a revolution. The diversity of forms that societies evolve corresponds to diversity in their failures. Jared Diamond suggests that societies have also collapsed through deforestation, loss of soil fertility, restrictions of trade and/or rising endemic violence.[1]

Foreign invasions[edit]
The decline of the Roman Empire is one of the events traditionally marking the end of Classical Antiquity and the beginning of the European Middle Ages. Throughout the 5th century, the Empire's territories in western Europe and northwestern Africa, including Italy, fell to various invading or indigenous peoples in what is sometimes called the Barbarian invasions, although the eastern half still survived with borders essentially intact for another two centuries (until the Arab expansion). This view of the collapse of the Roman Empire is challenged, however, by modern historians who see Rome as merely transforming from the Western Empire into barbarian kingdoms as the Western Emperors delegated themselves out of existence, and the East transforming into the Byzantine Empire, which only fell in 1453 AD.

North Africa's populous and flourishing civilization collapsed after exhausting its resources in internal fighting and suffering devastation from the invasion of the Bedouin tribes of Banu Sulaym and Banu Hilal.[2] Ibn Khaldun noted that the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become completely arid desert.[3]

In the brutal pillaging that followed Mongol invasions, the invaders decimated the populations of China, Russia, the Middle East, and Islamic Central Asia. Later Mongol leaders, such as Timur, though he himself became a Muslim, destroyed many cities, slaughtered thousands of people and did irreparable damage to the ancient irrigation systems of Mesopotamia. These invasions transformed a civil society to a nomadic one.[4]

Encounters between European explorers and populations in the rest of the world often introduced local epidemics of extraordinary virulence. Smallpox ravaged Mexico in the 1520s, killing 150,000 in Tenochtitlán alone, including the emperor, and Peru in the 1530s, aiding the European conquerors.[5] Some believe that the death of up to 95% of the Native American population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases[6] although new research suggests seals and sea lions played a significant part.[7] Live smallpox was also included in the ship inventories of the Australian first settlement, and a smallpox epidemic spread across the continent 3 years after European settlement.
Societal collapse of many indigenous cultures has occurred as a result of European imperialism in various parts of the globe, particularly in areas where European settler communities took possession of land once held by native peoples, in Latin America and North America, and in Australasia. The effects of this dispossession are still evident in many of the problems confronting indigenous cultures, including alcoholism, high rates of incarceration, suicide rates and fraternal violence.

Sub-replacement fertility[edit]
The Greek historian Polybius largely blamed the decline of the Hellenistic world on low fertility rates,[8] writing in his work The Histories that:
“
"In our time all Greece was visited by a dearth of children and generally a decay of population, owing to which the cities were denuded of inhabitants, and a failure of productiveness resulted, though there were no long-continued wars or serious pestilences among us…. For this evil grew upon us rapidly, and without attracting attention, by our men becoming perverted to a passion for show and money and the pleasures of an idle life, and accordingly either not marrying at all, or, if they did marry, refusing to rear the children that were born, or at most one or two out of a great number, for the sake of leaving them well off or bringing them up in extravagant luxury."[9]
”
In a speech to Roman nobles, the Emperor Augustus commented on the low birthrates of the Roman elite:[10]
“
"How otherwise shall families continue? How can the commonwealth be preserved if we neither marry nor produce children? Surely you are not expecting some to spring up from the earth to succeed to your goods and to public affairs, as myths describe. It is neither pleasing to Heaven nor creditable that our race should cease and the name of Romans meet extinguishment in us, and the city be given up to foreigners,—Greek or even barbarians. We liberate slaves chiefly for the purpose of making out of them as many citizens as possible; we give our allies a share in the government that our numbers may increase: yet you, Romans of the original stock, including Quintii, Valerii, Iulli, are eager that your families and names at once shall perish with you."[11]
”
Upon the establishment of the Roman Empire, Emperor Augustus would introduce legislation to increase the birthrates of the Roman nobility.[12]

Changes occurring with collapse[edit]

This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
There are three main types of collapse:

Reversion/Simplification: A society's adaptive capacity may be reduced by either a rapid change in population or societal complexity, destabilizing its institutions and causing massive shifts in population and other social dynamics. In cases of collapse, civilizations tend to revert to less complex, less centralized socio-political forms using simpler technology. These are characteristics of a Dark Age. Examples of such societal collapse are: the Hittite Empire, the Mycenaean civilization, the Western Roman Empire, the Mauryan and Gupta Empires in India, the Mayas, the Angkor in Cambodia, and the Han and Tang dynasties in China.

Incorporation/Absorption: Alternately, a society may be gradually incorporated into a more dynamic, more complex inter-regional social structure. This happened in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Levantine cultures, the Mughal and Delhi Sultanates in India, Song China, the Aztec culture in Mesoamerica, the Inca culture in South America, and the modern civilizations of China, Japan, and India, as well as many modern states in the Middle East and Africa.

Obliteration: Vast numbers of people in the society die, or the birth rate plunges to a level that causes a dramatic depopulation.
Other changes that may accompany a collapse:

• Destratification: Complex societies stratified on the basis of class, gender, race or some other salient factor become much more homogeneous or horizontally structured. In many cases past social stratification slowly becomes irrelevant following collapse and societies become more egalitarian.
  
  
• Despecialization: One of the most characteristic features of complex civilizations (and in many cases the yardstick to measure complexity) is a high level of job specialization. The most complex societies are characterized by artisans and tradespeople who specialize intensely in a given task. Indeed, the rulers of many past societies were hyper-specialized priests or priestesses who were completely supported by the work of the lower classes. During societal collapse, the social institutions supporting such specialization are removed and people tend to become more generalized in their work and daily habits.
  
• Decentralization: As power becomes decentralized, people tend to be more self-regimented and have many more personal freedoms. In many instances of collapse, there is a slackening of social rules and etiquette. Geographically speaking, communities become more parochial or isolated. For example, following the collapse of the Maya civilization, many Maya returned to their traditional hamlets, moving away from the large cities that had dominated the political landscape.
  
• Destructuralization: Institutions, processes, and artifacts are all manifest in the archaeological record in abundance in large civilizations. After collapse, evidence of epiphenomena, institutions, and types of artifacts change dramatically as people are forced to adopt more self-sufficient lifestyles.
  
• Depopulation: Societal collapse is almost always associated with a population decline. In extreme cases, the collapse in population is so severe that the society disappears entirely, such as happened with the Greenland Vikings, or a number of Polynesian islands. In less extreme cases, populations are reduced until a demographic balance is re-established between human societies and the depleted natural environment. A classic example is the city of Rome, which had a population of about 1.5 million at the peak of the Roman Empire during the reign of Trajan in the early 2nd century AD, but in the Early Middle Ages the population had declined to only around 15,000 inhabitants by the 9th century.
  

Population dynamics[edit]
In the general study of cultural change and population dynamics, a whole system displays complex ecosystem changes.

Organizational adaptability relates importantly to organizational diversity.

Several key features of human societal collapse can be related to population dynamics[13]

Theories[edit]
The coupled breakdown of economic, cultural and social institutions with ecological relationships is perhaps the most common feature of collapse. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond proposes five interconnected causes of collapse that may reinforce each other: non-sustainable exploitation of resources, climate changes, diminishing support from friendly societies, hostile neighbors, and inappropriate attitudes for change.[14][15]

Joseph Tainter theorizes that collapsed societies essentially exhausted their own designs, and were unable to adapt to natural diminishing returns for what they knew as their method of survival.[16] It matches closely Toynbee's idea that "they find problems they can't solve".

Linking social/environmental dynamics[edit]
Modern social critics commonly interpret things like sedentary social behavior as symptomatic of societal decay, and link what appears to be laziness with the depletion of important non-renewable resources. However, many primitive cultures also have high degrees of leisure, so if that is a cause in one place it may not be in another—leisure or apparent laziness is then not a sufficient cause.

What produces modern sedentary life, unlike nomadic hunter-gatherers, is extraordinary modern economic productivity. Tainter argues that exceptional productivity is actually more the sign of hidden weakness, both because of a society's dependence on it, and its potential to undermine its own basis for success by not being self limiting as demonstrated in Western culture's ideal of perpetual growth.

As a population grows and technology makes it easier to exploit depleting resources, the environment's diminishing returns are hidden from view. Societal complexity is then potentially threatened if it develops beyond what is actually sustainable, and a disorderly reorganization were to follow. The scissors model of Malthusian collapse, where the population grows without limit and resources do not, is the idea of great opposing environmental forces cutting into each other.

For the modern world economy, for example, the growing conflict between food and fuel, depending on many of the same finite and diminishing resources, is visible in recent major commodity price shocks. It is one of the key relationships researchers, since the early studies of the Club of Rome, have been most concerned with.

Jared Diamond pursues these themes in his 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.[14]
Population pressure and mineral resource exhaustion[edit]

Georgescu-Roegen made dismal predictions

Romanian American economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, a progenitor in economics and the paradigm founder of ecological economics, has argued that the carrying capacity of Earth — that is, Earth's capacity to sustain human populations and consumption levels — is bound to decrease sometime in the future as Earth's finite stock of mineral resources is presently being extracted and put to use; and consequently, that the world economy as a whole is heading towards an inevitable future collapse, leading to the demise of human civilisation itself.[17]

Georgescu-Roegen is basing his pessimistic prediction on the two following considerations:

• According to his ecological view of 'entropy pessimism', matter and energy is neither created nor destroyed in man's economy, only transformed from states available for human purposes (valuable natural resources) to states unavailable for human purposes (valueless waste and pollution). In effect, all of man's technologies and activities are only speeding up the general march against a future planetary 'heat death' of degraded energy, exhausted natural resources and a deteriorated environment — a state of maximum entropy on Earth.
  
• According to his social theory of 'bioeconomics', man's economic struggle to work and earn a livelihood is largely a continuation and extension of the biological struggle to sustain life and survive. This struggle manifests itself as a permanent social conflict that can be eliminated neither by man's decision to do so nor by the social evolution of mankind. Consequently, we are biologically unable to restrain ourselves collectively on a permanent and voluntary basis for the benefit of unknown future generations; the pressure of population on Earth's resources will nothing but increase.
  

Taken together, the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the second half of the 18th century has unintentionally thrust man's economy into a long, never-to-return overshoot-and-collapse trajectory with regard to the Earth's mineral stock. The world economy will continue growing until its inevitable and final collapse in the future. From that point on, ever deepening scarcities will aggravate social conflict throughout the globe and ultimately spell the end of mankind itself, Georgescu-Roegen conjectures.

Georgescu-Roegen was the paradigm founder of ecological economics and is also considered the main intellectual figure influencing the degrowth movement. Consequently, much work in these fields is devoted to discussing the existential impossibility of distributing Earth's finite stock of mineral resources evenly among an unknown number of present and future generations. This number of generations is likely to remain unknown to us, as there is little way of knowing in advance if or when mankind will eventually face extinction. In effect, any conceivable intertemporal distribution of the stock will inevitably end up with universal economic decline at some future point.[18]:369–371 [19]:253–256 [20]:165[21]:168–171 [22]:150–153 [23]:106–109 [24]:546–549 [25]:142–145

Energy return on energy invested theories[edit]
A related economic model is proposed by Thomas Homer-Dixon[26] and by Charles Hall[27] in relation to our declining productivity of energy extraction, or energy return on energy invested (EROEI). This measures the amount of surplus energy a society gets from using energy to obtain energy.

There would be no surplus if EROEI approaches 1:1. What Hall showed is that the real cutoff is well above that, estimated to be 3:1 to sustain the essential overhead energy costs of a modern society. Part of the mental equation is that the EROEI of our generally preferred energy source, petroleum, has fallen in the past century from 100:1 to the range of 10:1 with clear evidence that the natural depletion curves all are downward decay curves. An EROEI of more than ~3, then, is what appears necessary to provide the energy for societally important tasks, such as maintaining government, legal and financial institutions, a transportation infrastructure, manufacturing, building construction and maintenance and the life styles of the rich and poor that a society depends on.

The EROEI figure also affects the number of people needed for sustainable food production. In the pre-modern world, it was often the case that 80% of the population was employed in agriculture to feed a population of 100%, with a low energy budget. In modern times, the use of cheap fossil fuels with an exceedingly high EROEI enabled 100% of the population to be fed with only 4% of the population employed in agriculture. Diminishing EROEI making fuel more expensive relative to other things may require food to be produced using less energy, and so increases the number of people employed in food production again.

Models of societal response[edit]
According to Joseph Tainter[28] (1990), too many scholars offer facile explanations of societal collapse by assuming one or more of the following three models in the face of collapse:

1. The Dinosaur, a large-scale society in which resources are being depleted at an exponential rate and yet nothing is done to rectify the problem because the ruling elite are unwilling or unable to adapt to those resources' reduced availability: In this type of society, rulers tend to oppose any solutions that diverge from their present course of action. They will favor intensification and commit an increasing number of resources to their present plans, projects, and social institutions.
   
2. The Runaway Train, a society whose continuing function depends on constant growth (cf. Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis): This type of society, based almost exclusively on acquisition (e.g., pillage or exploitation), cannot be sustained indefinitely. The Assyrian and Mongol Empires, for example, both fractured and collapsed when no new conquests could be achieved.Tainter argues that capitalism can be seen as an example of the Runaway Train model, in that generally accepted accounting practices require publicly traded companies, along with many privately held ones, to exhibit growth as measured at some fixed interval (often three months). Moreover, the ethos of consumerism on the demand side and the practice of planned obsolescence on the supply side encourage the purchase of an ever-increasing number of goods and services even when resource extraction and food production are unsustainable if continued at current levels.
   
3. The House of Cards, a society that has grown to be so large and include so many complex social institutions that it is inherently unstable and prone to collapse. This type of society has been seen with particular frequency among Eastern bloc and other communist nations, in which all social organizations are arms of the government or ruling party, such that the government must either stifle association wholesale (encouraging dissent and subversion) or exercise less authority than it asserts (undermining its legitimacy in the public eye).By contrast, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed, when voluntary and private associations are allowed to flourish and gain legitimacy at an institutional level, they complement and often even supplant governmental functions: They provide a "safety valve" for dissent, assist with resource allocation, provide for social experimentation without the need for governmental coercion, and enable the public to maintain confidence in society as a whole, even during periods of governmental weakness.
   

Tainter's critique[edit]
Tainter argues that these models, though superficially useful, cannot severally or jointly account for all instances of societal collapse. Often they are seen as interconnected occurrences that reinforce each other.

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahu_Tongariki]Ahu Tongariki near Rano Raraku, a 15-moai ahu excavated and restored in the 1990s

For example, the failure of Easter Island's leaders to remedy rapid ecological deterioration cannot be understood without reference to the other models above. The islanders, who erected large statues called moai as a form of religious reverence to their ancestors, used felled trees as rollers to transport them. Because the islanders firmly believed that their displays of reverence would lead to increased future prosperity, they had a deeply entrenched incentive to intensify moai production. Because Easter Island's geographic isolation made its resources hard to replenish and made the balance of its overall ecosystem very delicate ("House of Cards"), deforestation led to soil erosion and insufficient resources to build boats for fishing or tools for hunting. Competition for dwindling resources resulted in warfare and many casualties (an additional "Runaway Train" iteration). Together these events led to the collapse of the civilization, but no single factor above provides an adequate account.

Mainstream interpretations of the history of Easter Island also include the slave raiders who abducted a large proportion of the population and epidemics that killed most of the survivors (see Easter Island History#Destruction of society and population.) Again, no single point explains the collapse; only a complex and integrated view can do so.

Tainter's position is that social complexity is a recent and comparatively anomalous occurrence requiring constant support. He asserts that collapse is best understood by grasping four axioms. In his own words (p. 194):

1. human societies are problem-solving organizations;
   
   
2. sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance;
   
   
3. increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita; and
   
   
4. investment in sociopolitical complexity as a problem-solving response reaches a point of declining marginal returns.
   

With these facts in mind, collapse can simply be understood as a loss of the energy needed to maintain social complexity. Collapse is thus the sudden loss of social complexity, stratification, internal and external communication and exchange, and productivity.

TBC

[Armonica_Templar]

Continued

Toynbee’s theory of decay[edit]

The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, in his 12-volume magnum opus A Study of History (1961), theorized that all civilizations pass through several distinct stages: genesis, growth, time of troubles, universal state, and disintegration. (Carroll Quigley would expand on and refine this theory in his "The Evolution of Civilizations".[29])

Toynbee argues that the breakdown of civilizations is not caused by loss of control over the environment, over the human environment, or attacks from outside. Rather, societies that develop great expertise in problem solving become incapable of solving new problems by overdeveloping their structures for solving old ones.

The fixation on the old methods of the "Creative Minority" leads it to eventually cease to be creative and degenerates into merely a "dominant minority" (that forces the majority to obey without meriting obedience), failing to recognize new ways of thinking. He argues that creative minorities deteriorate due to a worship of their "former self," by which they become prideful, and fail to adequately address the next challenge they face.

He argues that the ultimate sign a civilization has broken down is when the dominant minority forms a Universal State, which stifles political creativity. He states:

First the Dominant Minority attempts to hold by force - against all right and reason - a position of inherited privilege which it has ceased to merit; and then the Proletariat repays injustice with resentment, fear with hate, and violence with violence when it executes its acts of secession. Yet the whole movement ends in positive acts of creation - and this on the part of all the actors in the tragedy of disintegration. The Dominant Minority creates a universal state, the Internal Proletariat a universal church, and the External Proletariat a bevy of barbarian war-bands.

He argues that, as civilizations decay, they form an "Internal Proletariat" and an "External Proletariat." The Internal proletariat is held in subjugation by the dominant minority inside the civilization, and grows bitter; the external proletariat exists outside the civilization in poverty and chaos, and grows envious. He argues that as civilizations decay, there is a "schism in the body social," whereby abandon and self-control together replace creativity, and truancy and martyrdom together replace discipleship by the creative minority.

He argues that in this environment, people resort to archaism (idealization of the past), futurism (idealization of the future), detachment (removal of oneself from the realities of a decaying world), and transcendence (meeting the challenges of the decaying civilization with new insight, as a Prophet). He argues that those who Transcend during a period of social decay give birth to a new Church with new and stronger spiritual insights, around which a subsequent civilization may begin to form after the old has died.

Toynbee's use of the word 'church' refers to the collective spiritual bond of a common worship, or the same unity found in some kind of social order.

The great irony expressed by these and others like them is that civilizations that seem ideally designed to creatively solve problems, find themselves doing so self-destructively.[citation needed]

Systems science[edit]
Researchers, as yet, have very little ability to identify internal structures of large distributed systems like human societies, which is an important scientific problem. Genuine structural collapse seems, in many cases, the only plausible explanation supporting the idea that such structures exist. However, until they can be concretely identified, scientific inquiry appears limited to the construction of scientific narratives,[30] using systems thinking for careful storytelling about systemic organization and change.

History includes many examples of the appearance and disappearance of human societies with no obvious explanation. The abrupt dissolution of the Soviet Union in the course of a few months, without any external attack, according to Johan Galtung was due to growing structural contradictions brought on by geopolitical overreach, which could not be resolved within the existing socio-political systems.
Although a societal collapse is generally an endpoint for the administration of a culture's social and economic life, societal collapse can also be seen as simply a change of administration within the same culture. Russian culture would seem to have outlived both the society of Imperial Russia and the society of the Soviet Union, for example. Frequently the societal collapse phenomenon is also a process of decentralization of authority after a 'classic' period of centralized social order, perhaps replaced by competing centers as the central authority weakens. Societal failure may also result in a degree of empowerment for the lower levels of a former climax society, who escape from the burden of onerous taxes and control by exploitative elites. For example, the black plague contributed to breaking the hold of European feudal society on its underclass in the 15th century.

Examples of civilizations and societies that have collapsed[edit]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
By reversion or simplification[edit]

• Akkadian Empire
  
• Hittite Empire
  
• Mycenaean Greece
  
• The Neo-Assyrian Empire
  
• Indus Valley Civilization
  
• Angkor civilization of the Khmer Empire
  
• Han and Tang Dynasty of China
  
• Anasazi (disputed)
  
• Western Roman Empire
  
• Izapa
  
• Maya, Classic Maya collapse
  
• Munhumutapa Empire
  
• Olmec
  

By absorption[edit]

• Sumer by the Akkadian Empire
  
• Ancient Egypt by the Libyans, Nubians, Assyria, Babylonia, Persian rule, Greece, Ptolemaic Dynasty, and the Roman Empire[31]
  
• Babylonia by the Hittites
  
• Etruscans by the Roman Republic
  
• Ancient Levant
  
• Classical Greece by the Roman Empire
  
• Dacians by the Roman Empire
  
• Eastern Roman Empire (Medieval Greek) of the Byzantines by the Arabs and Turks
  
• Modern North East Asian civilizations
  
• Qin, Song, Mongol and Qing China
  
• Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, ending with the Meiji Restoration
  
• Aztecs by the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire
  
• Incas by the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire
  

By extinction or evacuation[edit]

• Cahokia
  
• Original Rapa Nui civilization on Easter Island (disputed)
  
• Lost cities
  
• Norse colony on Greenland
  
• Original Polynesian civilization on Pitcairn Island
  
• Malden Island
  
• Flinders Island
  
• Aboriginal Tasmanians
  

See also[edit]

• Anarcho-primitivism
  
• Dystopian fiction
  
• Late Bronze Age collapse
  
• Survivalism
  

Malthusian and environmental collapse themes

• Behavioral sink – rat colony collapse
  
• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
  
• Earth 2100
  
• Ecological collapse
  
• Exploitation of natural resources
  
• Global catastrophic risk
  
• Malthusian catastrophe
  
• Medieval demography
  
• Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
  
• Overpopulation
  
• Overshoot (population)
  
• Peak oil
  

Cultural and institutional collapse themes:

• Decline
  
• Dependency ratio
  
• Economic collapse
  
• Failed state
  
• Fragile state
  
• Group cohesiveness
  
• Language death
  
• Progress trap
  
• Resource depletion
  
• Social contract
  
• Social cycle theory
  
• Social disintegration
  
• Sociocultural evolution
  
• Solidarity
  
• Sub-replacement fertility
  
• Urban decay
  

Systems science:

• Failure mode and effects analysis
  
• Fault tree analysis
  
• Hazard analysis
  
• Risk assessment
  
• Systems engineering
  
  

 This last parts give a good overview of events and ideas across a spectrum

[Armonica_Templar]

Arnold J. Toynbee

Arnold J. Toynbee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[/url]
This article is about the universal historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee. For his uncle, the economic historian, see Arnold Toynbee.
Arnold J. Toynbee
CH

Born
Arnold Joseph Toynbee
14 April 1889
London, England, UK
Died
22 October 1975 (aged 86)
York, England, UK
Nationality
British
Alma mater
Balliol College, Oxford
Occupation
Historian
Known for
Universal history
Notable work
A Study of History
Spouse(s)

• Rosalind Murray (m. 1913; div. 1946)
  
• Veronica M. Boulter (m. 1946)
  

Children

• Antony Toynbee
  
• Philip Toynbee
  
• Lawrence Toynbee
  

Relatives

• Arnold Toynbee (uncle)
  
• Jocelyn Toynbee (sister)
  

Somervell's abridgement of Toynbee's magnum opus

Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH (/ˈtɔɪnbi/; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was a British historian, philosopher of history, research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and the University of London and author of numerous books. Toynbee in the 1918–1950 period was a leading specialist on international affairs.
He is best known for his 12-volume A Study of History (1934–1961). With his prodigious output of papers, articles, speeches and presentations, and numerous books translated into many languages, Toynbee was a widely read and discussed scholar in the 1940sand 1950s.

Contents
  [hide] 

• 1Biography
  
• 2Academic and cultural influence
  
• 3Political influence in foreign policy
  • 3.1Meeting with Adolf Hitler
    
  • 3.2Russia
    
  • 3.3Greece and the Middle East
    
  • 3.4Dialogue with Daisaku Ikeda
    
  
  
• 4Challenge and response
  
• 5Toynbee Prize Foundation
  
• 6Allusions in popular culture
  
• 7Toynbee's works
  
• 8See also
  
• 9Notes
  
• 10References
  
• 11Further reading
  
• 12External links
  

Biography[edit]
Toynbee (born in London on 14 April 1889) was the son of Harry Valpy Toynbee (1861–1941), secretary of the Charity Organization Society, and his wife Sarah Edith Marshall (1859–1939); his sister Jocelyn Toynbee was an archaeologist and art historian. Toynbee was the grandson of Joseph Toynbee, nephew of the 19th-century economist Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) and descendant of prominent British intellectuals for several generations. He won scholarships to Winchester College and Balliol College, Oxford (Literae Humaniores, 1907-1911),[1] and studied briefly at the British School at Athens, an experience that influenced the genesis of his philosophy about the decline of civilizations. In 1912 he became a tutor and fellow in ancient history at Balliol College, and in 1915 he began working for the intelligence department of the British Foreign Office. After serving as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 he served as professor of Byzantine and modern Greek studies at the University of London. It was here that Toynbee was appointed to the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College, although he would ultimately resign following a controversial academic dispute with the professoriate of the College.[2][3] From 1921 to 1922 he was the Manchester Guardian correspondent during the Greco-Turkish War, an experience that resulted in the publication of The Western Question in Greece and Turkey.[4] In 1925 he became research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and director of studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.

His first marriage was to Rosalind Murray (1890–1967), daughter of Gilbert Murray, in 1913; they had three sons, of whom Philip Toynbeewas the second. They divorced in 1946; Toynbee then married his research assistant, Veronica M. Boulter (1893-1980), in the same year.[5] He died on 22 October 1975, age 86.

Academic and cultural influence[edit]

Toynbee on the front cover of Time magazine, 17 March 1947. [url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,793438,00.html]read theTime article

Michael Lang says that for much of the twentieth century:

Toynbee was perhaps the world’s most read, translated, and discussed living scholar. His output was enormous, hundreds of books, pamphlets, and articles. Of these, scores were translated into thirty different languages....the critical reaction to Toynbee constitutes a veritable intellectual history of the midcentury: we find a long list of the period’s most important historians, Beard, Braudel, Collingwood, and so on.[6]

In his best-known work, A Study of History, published 1934–1961, Toynbee:

...examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders.[7]

A Study of History was both a commercial and academic phenomenon. In the U.S. alone, more than seven thousand sets of the ten-volume edition had been sold by 1955. Most people, including scholars, relied on the very clear one-volume abridgement of the first six volumes by Somervell, which appeared in 1947; the abridgement sold over 300,000 copies in the U.S. The press printed innumerable discussions of Toynbee's work, not to mention there being countless lectures and seminars. Toynbee himself often participated. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1947, with an article describing his work as "the most provocative work of historical theory written in England since Karl Marx’s Capital”,[8] and was a regular commentator on BBC (examining the history of and reasons for the current hostility between east and west, and considering how non-westerners view the western world).[9][10]

Canadian historians were especially receptive to Toynbee's work in the late 1940s. The Canadian economic historian Harold Adams Innis(1894–1952) was a notable example. Following Toynbee and others (Spengler, Kroeber, Sorokin, Cochrane), Innis examined the flourishing of civilizations in terms of administration of empires and media of communication.[11]

Toynbee's overall theory was taken up by some scholars, for example, Ernst Robert Curtius, as a sort of paradigm in the post-war period. Curtius wrote as follows in the opening pages of European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1953 English translation), following close on Toynbee, as he sets the stage for his vast study of medieval Latin literature. Curtius wrote, "How do cultures, and the historical entities which are their media, arise, grow and decay? Only a comparative morphology with exact procedures can hope to answer these questions. It was Arnold J. Toynbee who undertook the task."[12]

After 1960, Toynbee's ideas faded both in academia and the media, to the point of seldom being cited today.[13][14] However, his work continued to be referenced by classical historians, at least, because "his training and surest touch is in the world of classical antiquity."[15] His roots in classical literature are also manifested by similarities between his approach and that of classical historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides.[16] Comparative history, by which his approach is often categorized, has been in the doldrums.[17]Yet, in Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed there are similarities between Toynbee's "Challenge and Response" theory and Diamond's analysis on how elites make decisions at critical moments. For example, Diamond writes in Collapse that if the elites are insulated from problems in society and not actively engaged, they are more apt to make mistakes. Thus, Diamond may be stating that elites can not mount effective responses to challenges if their knowledge, sympathy, or own self-interest is sufficiently the same as the broader society.[citation needed]

Political influence in foreign policy[edit]

While the writing of the Study was under way, Toynbee produced numerous smaller works and served as director of foreign research of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (1939–43) and director of the research department of the Foreign Office (1943–46); he also retained his position at the London School of Economics until his retirement in 1956.[7]

Toynbee worked for the Political Intelligence Department of the British Foreign Office during World War I and served as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He was director of studies at Chatham House, Balliol College, Oxford University, 1924–43. Chatham House conducted research for the British Foreign Office and was an important intellectual resource during World War II when it was transferred to London. With his research assistant, Veronica M. Boulter, Toynbee was co-editor of the RIIA's annual Survey of International Affairs, which became the "bible" for international specialists in Britain.[18][19]

Meeting with Adolf Hitler[edit]
While on a visit in Berlin in 1936 to address the Nazi Law Society, Toynbee was invited to have a private interview with Adolf Hitler, at Hitler's request.[20] Hitler emphasized his limited expansionist aim of building a greater German nation, and his desire for British understanding and cooperation. Toynbee believed that Hitler was sincere and endorsed Hitler's message in a confidential memorandum for the British prime minister and foreign secretary.[21]

Russia[edit]
Toynbee was troubled by the Russian Revolution, for he saw Russia as a non-Western society and the revolution as a threat to Western society.[22] However, in 1952 he argued that the Soviet Union had been a victim of Western aggression. He portrayed the Cold War as a religious competition that pitted a Marxist materialist heresy against the West's spiritual Christian heritage—a heritage that had already been foolishly rejected by a secularized West. A heated debate ensued; an editorial in the London Times promptly attacked Toynbee for treating communism as a "spiritual force."[23]

Greece and the Middle East[edit]
Toynbee was a leading analyst of developments in the Middle East. His support for Greece and hostility to the Turks during World War I had gained him an appointment to the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History at King's College, University of London.[2] However, after the war he changed to a pro-Turkish position, accusing Greece's military government in occupied Turkish territory of atrocities and massacres. This earned him the enmity of the wealthy Greeks who had endowed the chair, and in 1924 he was forced to resign the position.
His stance during World War I reflected less sympathy for the Arab cause and took a pro-Zionist outlook. He also expressed support for a Jewish State in Palestine, which he believed had "begun to recover its ancient prosperity" as a result. Toynbee investigated Zionism in 1915 at the Information Department of the Foreign Office, and in 1917 he published a memorandum with his colleague Lewis Namier which supported exclusive Jewish political rights in Palestine. In 1922, however, he was influenced by the Palestine Arab delegation which was visiting London, and began to adopt their views. His subsequent writings reveal his changing outlook on the subject, and by the late 1940s he had moved away from the Zionist cause and toward the Arab camp.

The views Toynbee expressed in the 1950s continued to oppose the formation of a Jewish state, partly out of his concern that it would increase the risk of a nuclear confrontation. However, as a result of Toynbee's debate in January 1961 with Dr. Yaakov Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to Canada, Toynbee softened his view and called on Israel to fulfill its special "mission to make contributions to worldwide efforts to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war."[24][25] In his article, "Jewish Rights in Palestine"[26], he challenged the views of the editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, historian and talmudic scholar, Solomon Zeitlin, who published his rebuke, "Jewish Rights in Eretz Israel (Palestine)"[27] in the same issue.[28] Toynbee maintained, among other contentions, that the Jewish people have neither historic nor legal claims to Palestine, stating that the Arab

"population’s human rights to their homes and property over-ride all other rights in cases where claims conflict.” He did concede that the Jews, “being the only surviving representatives of any of the pre-Arab inhabitants of Palestine, have a further claim to a national home in Palestine." But that claim, he held, is valid "only in so far as it can be implemented without injury to the rights and to the legitimate interests of the native Arab population of Palestine."[29]

Dialogue with Daisaku Ikeda[edit]
In 1972, Toynbee met with Daisaku Ikeda, president of Soka Gakkai International (SGI), who condemned the "demonic nature" of the use of nuclear weapons under any circumstances. Toynbee had the view that the atomic bomb was an invention that had caused warfare to escalate from a political scale to catastrophic proportions and threatened humanity's very existence. In his dialogue with Ikeda, Toynbee stated his worry that humankind would not be able to strengthen ethical behavior and achieve self-mastery "in spite of the widespread awareness that the price of failing to respond to the moral challenge of the atomic age may be the self-liquidation of our species."
The two men first met on 5 May 1972 in London. In May 1973, Ikeda again flew to London to meet with Toynbee for 40 hours over a period of 10 days. Their dialogue and ongoing correspondence culminated in the publication of Choose Life, a record of their views on critical issues confronting humanity. The book has been published in 24 languages to date.[30] Toynbee also wrote the foreword to the English edition of Ikeda's most well-known book, The Human Revolution, which has sold more than 7 million copies worldwide.[31]

An exhibition celebrating the 30th anniversary of Toynbee and Ikeda's first meeting was presented in SGI's centers around the world in 2005, showcasing contents of the dialogues between them, as well as Ikeda's discussions for peace with over 1,500 of the world's scholars, intellects, and activists. Original letters Toynbee and Ikeda exchanged were also displayed.[32]

In 1984 his granddaughter Polly Toynbee wrote a critical article for The Guardian on meeting Daisaku Ikeda.[33]

Challenge and response[edit]
With the civilizations as units identified, he presented the history of each in terms of challenge-and-response, sometimes referred to as theory about the law of challenge and response. Civilizations arose in response to some set of challenges of extreme difficulty, when "creative minorities" devised solutions that reoriented their entire society. Challenges and responses were physical, as when the Sumerians exploited the intractable swamps of southern Iraq by organizing the Neolithic inhabitants into a society capable of carrying out large-scale irrigation projects; or social, as when the Catholic Church resolved the chaos of post-Roman Europe by enrolling the new Germanic kingdoms in a single religious community. When a civilization responded to challenges, it grew. Civilizations disintegrate when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. According to an Editor's Note in an edition of Toynbee's A Study of History, Toynbee believed that societies always die from suicide or murder rather than from natural causes, and nearly always from suicide.[34] He sees the growth and decline of civilizations as a spiritual process, writing that "Man achieves civilization, not as a result of superior biological endowment or geographical environment, but as a response to a challenge in a situation of special difficulty which rouses him to make a hitherto unprecedented effort." [35][36]

Toynbee Prize Foundation[edit]

Named after Arnold J. Toynbee, the [Toynbee Prize] Foundation was chartered in 1987 'to contribute to the development of the social sciences, as defined from a broad historical view of human society and of human and social problems.' In addition to awarding the Toynbee Prize, the foundation sponsors scholarly engagement with global history through sponsorship of sessions at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, of international conferences, of the journal New Global Studies and of the Global History Forum.[37]

The Toynbee Prize is an honorary award, recognizing social scientists for significant academic and public contributions to humanity. Currently, it is awarded every other year for work that makes a significant contribution to the study of global history. The recipients have been Raymond Aron, Lord Kenneth Clark, Sir Ralf Dahrendorf, Natalie Zemon Davis, Albert Hirschman, George Kennan, Bruce Mazlish, John McNeill, William McNeill, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Barbara Ward, Lady Jackson, Sir Brian Urquhart, Michael Adas, Christopher Bayly, and Jürgen Osterhammel.[38]

Allusions in popular culture[edit]
Toynbee's ideas also feature in the Ray Bradbury short story named "The Toynbee Convector". He appears alongside T. E. Lawrence as a character in an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, dealing with the post-World War I treaty negotiations at Versailles. He also receives a brief mention in the Charles Harness classic, The Paradox Men (a working title was Toynbee 22). Frederick Buechner also mentions him in the 1957 novel The return of Ansel Gibbs. Most versions of the Civilization computer game refer to his work as a historian as well. Toynbee receives mention in Pat Frank's post-apocalyptic novel "Alas, Babylon". A character in the P. Schuyler Miller short story "As Never Was" adopts the name Toynbee "out of admiration for a historian of that name". He is also mentioned in the Tom Robbins novel, Another Roadside Attraction. "Toynbee" is also the title of a song by the modern rock group Manic Bloom from the album In Loving Memory, the lyrics of which refer to the inevitability of the fall of society given the opportunity at hand to reclaim the future.

The Toynbee tiles may be a reference to Toynbee.

Wow.. I have twelve volumes to find

[Armonica_Templar]

I think this thread is full..



I will give the conclusion

The great Bronze Age collapse

We have the technology to get the answers but sadly lack the political leadership to accomplish it
all it would be is numbers and about maybe six months to a year

The problem with the theories is that they may have occured in a particular order and maybe occured afterwards


The most we have on the sea peoples
six potential kingdoms in a confederation

What the problem is that the attacks stopped after the second wave onto Egypt during Ramses the third

_________________________________________________________________

My personal thoughts

Guohua may have been onto something
A list of pwers of the time period leaves the chinese kingdoms on the list

And they were more socially advanced
 If the Confederation was being used as a cats paw by the chinese to destablize the area
Or any other group

It would explain the disappearance of the Sea Peoples if they like today's people were being played for fools

LAck of evidence leaves us with one of the biases

Final thought
No numbers no answer

This is sovlable but outside my expertise
Well slightly..

I can see a way to do it as one man but.. S#$% the time involved


Decision
need more evidence and study
Hard work and a lot of man hours


PS thank you for those reading this
I hope this has been interesting and been worth your time

[Armonica_Templar]

The ancient Greek masterpiece etched on a tiny gemstone

By Katy Scott, CNN

Updated 10:24 AM ET, Fri January 26, 2018





[img=780x439]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAJAJEAAAAAAP///////wAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKlI+py+0Po5yUFQA7[/img]
Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king

More than 40 sealstones were found in the tomb. Others had less detailed designs featuring long-horned bulls and sometimes, human bull jumpers soaring over their horns.

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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
This 30-inch necklace, with two gold pendants decorated with ivy leaves, was found near the neck of the warrior-king's skeleton.

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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
Four solid-gold rings were found in the tomb -- more than have been found at any single burial site elsewhere in Greece, according to the archaeologists. This one depicts a Cretan bull running scene.

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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
Six ivory combs formed part of the treasure trove, challenging some older ideas around gender, says Stocker.
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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king

Stocker deems the discovery "one of the most magnificent displays of prehistoric wealth discovered in mainland Greece in the past 65 years."

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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
"We were not looking for tombs in the first place and finding an unlooted tomb is so extremely rare," she says. "This is truly phenomenal."

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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
An intricate engraving on an ancient gem has been deemed one of the greatest prehistoric Greek artworks ever discovered.
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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
The sealstone was one of many treasures discovered in the 3,500-year-old tomb of a Bronze Age warrior. Archaeologist Sharon Stocker from the University of Cincinnati led the dig in southwest Greece in 2015.

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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
The sealstone was covered in limestone when it was first discovered. Measuring just 1.4 inches in length, it was initially mistaken for a bead.

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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
Experts are stunned by the engraving's detailed representation of the human body and the understanding of bodily movement, says Stocker.

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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
"The amount of skill that was required to execute such an intricate design on such a small surface is unbelievable," Stocker tells CNN.

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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
More than 40 sealstones were found in the tomb. Others had less detailed designs featuring long-horned bulls and sometimes, human bull jumpers soaring over their horns.

Hide Caption
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[img=780x439]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAJAJEAAAAAAP///////wAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKlI+py+0Po5yUFQA7[/img]
Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
This 30-inch necklace, with two gold pendants decorated with ivy leaves, was found near the neck of the warrior-king's skeleton.

Hide Caption
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[img=780x439]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAJAJEAAAAAAP///////wAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKlI+py+0Po5yUFQA7[/img]
Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
Four solid-gold rings were found in the tomb -- more than have been found at any single burial site elsewhere in Greece, according to the archaeologists. This one depicts a Cretan bull running scene.

Hide Caption
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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
Six ivory combs formed part of the treasure trove, challenging some older ideas around gender, says Stocker.

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[img=780x439]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAJAJEAAAAAAP///////wAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKlI+py+0Po5yUFQA7[/img]
Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
Stocker deems the discovery "one of the most magnificent displays of prehistoric wealth discovered in mainland Greece in the past 65 years."

Hide Caption
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[img=780x439]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAJAJEAAAAAAP///////wAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKlI+py+0Po5yUFQA7[/img]
Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
"We were not looking for tombs in the first place and finding an unlooted tomb is so extremely rare," she says. "This is truly phenomenal."

Hide Caption
11 of 11

Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
An intricate engraving on an ancient gem has been deemed one of the greatest prehistoric Greek artworks ever discovered.

Hide Caption
1 of 11
[img=780x439]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAJAJEAAAAAAP///////wAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKlI+py+0Po5yUFQA7[/img]
Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
The sealstone was one of many treasures discovered in the 3,500-year-old tomb of a Bronze Age warrior. Archaeologist Sharon Stocker from the University of Cincinnati led the dig in southwest Greece in 2015.

Hide Caption
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[img=780x439]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAJAJEAAAAAAP///////wAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKlI+py+0Po5yUFQA7[/img]
Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
The sealstone was covered in limestone when it was first discovered. Measuring just 1.4 inches in length, it was initially mistaken for a bead.

Hide Caption
3 of 11
[img=780x439]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAJAJEAAAAAAP///////wAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKlI+py+0Po5yUFQA7[/img]
Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
Experts are stunned by the engraving's detailed representation of the human body and the understanding of bodily movement, says Stocker.

Hide Caption
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[img=780x439]data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAJAJEAAAAAAP///////wAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKlI+py+0Po5yUFQA7[/img]
Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
"The amount of skill that was required to execute such an intricate design on such a small surface is unbelievable," Stocker tells CNN.

Hide Caption
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Photos: Treasure trove unearthed from tomb of Greek warrior-king
More than 40 sealstones were found in the tomb. Others had less detailed designs featuring long-horned bulls and sometimes, human bull jumpers soaring over their horns.

Hide Caption
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(CNN)A miniature gemstone discovered in a 3,500-year-old tomb is challenging our understanding of ancient Greek art. Now, nearly three years after it was originally discovered, experts are still trying to fathom how it was crafted.

The limestone-encrusted gem was one of 1,400 treasures found buried alongside a mysterious Bronze Age man -- dubbed the Griffin Warrior -- in Pylos, southwest Greece.

Husband-and-wife team Jack Davis and Sharon Stocker from the University of Cincinnati led the excavation near the ancient Palace of Nestor -- a site mentioned in Homer's epic poems -- in 2015.
[img=780x0]http://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180119140747-sharon-stocker-greece-exlarge-169.jpg[/img]
Sharon Stocker stands in the warrior's tomb.
Today experts are still pouring over the jewels, weapons and armor, searching for clues about the ancient world at the dawn of European civilization.

One tiny object measuring just 3.6 centimeters (1.4 inches) was initially overlooked and mistaken for a bead. But, beneath the limestone was a meticulously carved gemstone, now considered one of the greatest prehistoric Greek artworks ever discovered.

It is so tiny that a microscope is needed to fully appreciate the mastery of the engraving, as some details are just half a millimeter (0.0197 inches) in size.

However, no such magnifying tool is known to have existed in the ancient Greek world.

"The amount of skill that was required to execute such an intricate design on such a small surface is unbelievable," Stocker tells CNN.

It shows detailed understanding of the human body and movement which, until now, was thought far beyond the ability of Bronze Age artisans, she says.
[img=780x0]http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180119164010-sealstone-pylos-super-169.jpg[/img][img=780x0]http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180119160725-agate-sealstone-drawing-super-169.jpg[/img]


Devil in the detail

This particular gem -- called the Pylos Combat Agate -- is one of 11,000 known sealstones from the Minoan and Mycenean civilizations (2,600 -- 1,100 B.C.).

Sealstones could be stamped into clay or wax as a means of marking identity. Some were even attached to bands and worn as bracelets.

"They're used to mark ownership in what is not totally a preliterate society, but not a fully literate society," Davis tells CNN.

The Pylos Combat Agate depicts a dramatic scene of a near-naked warrior driving a sword into his opponent, while a third warrior lies on the ground.

"We think it references some narrative that was circulating in this period," says Davis.

"It evokes Homer to us," adds Stocker, referring to his epic works "Iliad" and "Odyssey," which scholars believe were written down in the 8th century B.C. -- hundreds of years after the sealstone was crafted.

While it is impossible know for sure, one theory presented by scholars speculates that the warrior image stems from earlier oral versions of Homer's works, explains Davis.
[img=780x0]http://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180119170133-fallen-warrior-sealstone-exlarge-169.jpg[/img]
Up-close photo of the fallen warrior.

Reproducing a miniature masterpiece

Goldsmith Akis Goumas is currently attempting to replicate the stone in hard wax or burnt clay to understand the movements, shape and size of the handheld tools used.

In tracing the tool marks on the sealstone, Goumas speculates that the craftsman may have used a rotating wooden lathe with a sharp edge to engrave the stone.

He thinks one artisan did the basic, three-dimensional engraving while another completed the secondary work.

"It isn't one craftsman's work because we can see different qualities of dexterity in the synthesis," he told CNN over email.
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Photos: Ancient finds
Nodosaurs were herbivores who walked on four legs and were covered in tank-like armor and dotted with spikes for protection. But this recently unveiled 110 million-year-old fossil is the most well-preserved of the armored dinosaurs ever unearthed.

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Photos: Ancient finds
Microfossils found in China have revealed what could be our earliest known ancestor on the tree of life. Saccorhytus was a tiny, bag-like sea creature that lived 540 million years ago.

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Photos: Ancient finds
In 2016, researchers discovered ancient collagen and protein remains preserved in the ribs of a dinosaur that walked the Earth 195 million years ago.

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Photos: Ancient finds
By studying the skeleton of this medieval pilgrim, researchers have been able to genotype leprosy. They also discovered that leprosy-causing bacteria have changed little over hundreds of years, possibly explaining the decline in the disease after it peaked in medieval Europe as humans developed resistance.

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Photos: Ancient finds
The discovery of a species that lived 6.6 million years ago in southwestern China suggests that ancient ottershad "wolf-like" proportions, and weighed roughly 100 Ibs. The creature -- whose skull was excavated in Yunnan province -- would have been twice the size of today's otters.

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Photos: Ancient finds
The tail of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur was found entombed in amber in 2016, an unprecedented discovery that has blown away scientists. The amber adds to fossil evidence that many dinosaurs sported feathers rather than scales.

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Photos: Ancient finds
The oldest known sample of the smallpox-causing variola virus was found within the DNA of a 17th century child mummy in 2016. The mummy was found in a crypt beneath a Lithuanian church. The finding shortens the timeline for how long smallpox may have afflicted humans.

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Photos: Ancient finds
For the first time, researchers discovered genomic evidence of malaria in 2,000-year-old human remainsfrom the Roman Empire. The discovery was made in 2016.

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Photos: Ancient finds
Researchers found the first preserved dinosaur brain in history in 2016. They believe it was preserved due to the dinosaur dying in a swamp-like environment which mixed low levels of oxygen -- known to slow decay -- and acidity which can preserve soft tissue for long periods. It is 130 million years old.

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Photos: Ancient finds
An investigation of skeletons buried during the 1665 Great Plague of London revealed the DNA of the bacteria responsible for the disease in 2016.

The skeletons were discovered in an ancient burial site during construction of London's Crossrail train line.

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Photos: Ancient finds
Scientists reconstructed the genome of an ancient plague in 2016, which may shed new light on how certain diseases can either mysteriously disappear or continue to evolve and spread. An adult woman's skeleton (on left) and adult man's skeleton (on right) tested positive for the presence of Y. pestis, what researchers believe caused the Justinian Plague.

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Photos: Ancient finds
The earliest modern human fossil ever found outside of Africa has been recovered in Israel. This suggests that modern humans left Africa at least 50,000 years earlier than previously believed. The upper jawbone, including several teeth, was recovered in a prehistoric cave site.

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Photos: Ancient finds
This is an excavated structure at the northern edge of the Grand Plaza at Teposcolula-Yucundaa in Oaxaca, Mexico. Researchers investigated a "pestilence" cemetery associated with a devastating 1545-1550 epidemic. New analysis suggests that salmonella caused a typhoid fever epidemic.

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Photos: Ancient finds
Standing about 4 feet tall, early human ancestor Paranthropus boisei had a small brain and a wide, dish-like face. It is most well-known for having big teeth and hefty chewing muscles.

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Photos: Ancient finds
A grand grave of a great Viking warrior excavated during the 1880s has been found to be that of a woman. She was also buried with a gaming board and pieces, hierarchically associated with officers to use for battle strategy and tactics. The drawing is a reconstruction of how the grave with the woman originally may have looked.

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Photos: Ancient finds
An illustration shows the dodo on Mauritius near the Mare aux Songes, where many dodo skeletons have been recovered.

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Photos: Ancient finds
A 5,000-year-old dog skull found in Germany underwent whole genome sequencing. It was found to be very similar to the genome of modern dogs, suggesting that all modern dogs are direct ancestors of the domesticated dogs that lived in the world's earliest farming communities in Europe.

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Photos: Ancient finds
Razanandrongobe sakalavae, or "Razana," was one of the top predators of the Jurassic period in Madagascar 170 million years ago. Although it looks different from modern-day crocodiles and had teeth similar to a T. rex's, Razana was not a dinosaur but a crocodile relative with a deep skull.

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Photos: Ancient finds
An artist's reconstruction shows Macrauchenia patachonica, which roamed South America thousands of years ago. Combining a range of odd characteristics from llamas and camels to rhinos and antelopes,Macrauchenia defied clarification until now and has been added to the tree of life. It belongs to a sister group of Perissodactyla, which includes horses, rhinos and tapirs.

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Photos: Ancient finds
This prosthetic device was made for a priest's daughter who had to have her right big toe amputated 3,000 years ago. This surprisingly lifelike toe was made to look natural by a skilled artisan who wanted to maintain the aesthetic as well as mobility during the Early Iron Age. It was designed to be worn with sandals, the footwear of choice at the time.

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Photos: Ancient finds
The oldest fossil remains of Homo sapiens, dating back 300,000 years, were found at a site in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco. This is 100,000 years older than previously discovered fossils of Homo sapiens that have been securely dated. The fossils, including a partial skull and a lower jaw, belong to five different individuals including three young adults, an adolescent and a child estimated to be 8 years old.

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Photos: Ancient finds
Nodosaurs were herbivores who walked on four legs and were covered in tank-like armor and dotted with spikes for protection. But this recently unveiled 110 million-year-old fossil is the most well-preserved of the armored dinosaurs ever unearthed.

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Photos: Ancient finds
Microfossils found in China have revealed what could be our earliest known ancestor on the tree of life. Saccorhytus was a tiny, bag-like sea creature that lived 540 million years ago.

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Photos: Ancient finds
In 2016, researchers discovered ancient collagen and protein remains preserved in the ribs of a dinosaur that walked the Earth 195 million years ago.

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Photos: Ancient finds
By studying the skeleton of this medieval pilgrim, researchers have been able to genotype leprosy. They also discovered that leprosy-causing bacteria have changed little over hundreds of years, possibly explaining the decline in the disease after it peaked in medieval Europe as humans developed resistance.

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Photos: Ancient finds
The discovery of a species that lived 6.6 million years ago in southwestern China suggests that ancient ottershad "wolf-like" proportions, and weighed roughly 100 Ibs. The creature -- whose skull was excavated in Yunnan province -- would have been twice the size of today's otters.

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Photos: Ancient finds
The tail of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur was found entombed in amber in 2016, an unprecedented discovery that has blown away scientists. The amber adds to fossil evidence that many dinosaurs sported feathers rather than scales.

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Photos: Ancient finds
The oldest known sample of the smallpox-causing variola virus was found within the DNA of a 17th century child mummy in 2016. The mummy was found in a crypt beneath a Lithuanian church. The finding shortens the timeline for how long smallpox may have afflicted humans.

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Photos: Ancient finds
For the first time, researchers discovered genomic evidence of malaria in 2,000-year-old human remainsfrom the Roman Empire. The discovery was made in 2016.

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Photos: Ancient finds
Researchers found the first preserved dinosaur brain in history in 2016. They believe it was preserved due to the dinosaur dying in a swamp-like environment which mixed low levels of oxygen -- known to slow decay -- and acidity which can preserve soft tissue for long periods. It is 130 million years old.

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Photos: Ancient finds
An investigation of skeletons buried during the 1665 Great Plague of London revealed the DNA of the bacteria responsible for the disease in 2016. The skeletons were discovered in an ancient burial site during construction of London's Crossrail train line.

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Photos: Ancient finds
Scientists reconstructed the genome of an ancient plague in 2016, which may shed new light on how certain diseases can either mysteriously disappear or continue to evolve and spread. An adult woman's skeleton (on left) and adult man's skeleton (on right) tested positive for the presence of Y. pestis, what researchers believe caused the Justinian Plague.

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Photos: Ancient finds
The earliest modern human fossil ever found outside of Africa has been recovered in Israel. This suggests that modern humans left Africa at least 50,000 years earlier than previously believed. The upper jawbone, including several teeth, was recovered in a prehistoric cave site.

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Photos: Ancient finds
This is an excavated structure at the northern edge of the Grand Plaza at Teposcolula-Yucundaa in Oaxaca, Mexico. Researchers investigated a "pestilence" cemetery associated with a devastating 1545-1550 epidemic. New analysis suggests that salmonella caused a typhoid fever epidemic.

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Photos: Ancient finds
Standing about 4 feet tall, early human ancestor Paranthropus boisei had a small brain and a wide, dish-like face. It is most well-known for having big teeth and hefty chewing muscles.

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Photos: Ancient finds
A grand grave of a great Viking warrior excavated during the 1880s has been found to be that of a woman. She was also buried with a gaming board and pieces, hierarchically associated with officers to use for battle strategy and tactics. The drawing is a reconstruction of how the grave with the woman originally may have looked.

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Photos: Ancient finds
An illustration shows the dodo on Mauritius near the Mare aux Songes, where many dodo skeletons have been recovered.

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Photos: Ancient finds
A 5,000-year-old dog skull found in Germany underwent whole genome sequencing. It was found to be very similar to the genome of modern dogs, suggesting that all modern dogs are direct ancestors of the domesticated dogs that lived in the world's earliest farming communities in Europe.

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Photos: Ancient finds
Razanandrongobe sakalavae, or "Razana," was one of the top predators of the Jurassic period in Madagascar 170 million years ago. Although it looks different from modern-day crocodiles and had teeth similar to a T. rex's, Razana was not a dinosaur but a crocodile relative with a deep skull.

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Photos: Ancient finds
An artist's reconstruction shows Macrauchenia patachonica, which roamed South America thousands of years ago. Combining a range of odd characteristics from llamas and camels to rhinos and antelopes,Macrauchenia defied clarification until now and has been added to the tree of life. It belongs to a sister group of Perissodactyla, which includes horses, rhinos and tapirs.

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Photos: Ancient finds
This prosthetic device was made for a priest's daughter who had to have her right big toe amputated 3,000 years ago. This surprisingly lifelike toe was made to look natural by a skilled artisan who wanted to maintain the aesthetic as well as mobility during the Early Iron Age. It was designed to be worn with sandals, the footwear of choice at the time.

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Photos: Ancient finds
The oldest fossil remains of Homo sapiens, dating back 300,000 years, were found at a site in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco. This is 100,000 years older than previously discovered fossils of Homo sapiens that have been securely dated. The fossils, including a partial skull and a lower jaw, belong to five different individuals including three young adults, an adolescent and a child estimated to be 8 years old.

Hide Caption
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Photos: Ancient finds
Nodosaurs were herbivores who walked on four legs and were covered in tank-like armor and dotted with spikes for protection. But this recently unveiled 110 million-year-old fossil is the most well-preserved of the armored dinosaurs ever unearthed.

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While Goumas may soon have answers as to how it was fashioned 3,500 years ago, Stocker says we will probably never know how it came into the Griffin Warrior's possession.

"We don't have a firm date for the grave and the creation of the sealstone," says Stocker, adding that the gem may have been created before the Griffin Warrior was born.

"But we believe that he certainly would have identified with the image that's represented on the stone."

This little update is interesting

It shows we had several technologies in prehistory
This is the entropy of history and data loss

[guohua]

WOW,,, Very interesting.