1177 B.C.

The Year Civilization Collapsed

By: Eric H. Cline

Narrated by: Andy Caploe

Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh’s army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C., which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. But the Sea Peoples alone could not have caused such widespread breakdown. How did it happen?

In this major new account of the causes of this "First Dark Ages", Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes. Bringing to life the vibrant multicultural world of these great civilizations, he draws a sweeping panorama of the empires and globalized peoples of the Late Bronze Age and shows that it was their very interdependence that hastened their dramatic collapse and ushered in a dark age that lasted centuries.

A compelling combination of narrative and the latest scholarship, 1177 B.C. sheds new light on the complex ties that gave rise to, and ultimately destroyed, the flourishing civilizations of the Late Bronze Age - and that set the stage for the emergence of classical Greece.

©2014 Eric H. Cline. Published by Princeton University Press. (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Lot's of Detail. Possibly Too Much

Is there anything you would change about this book?

Gets mired in the tiny details without stepping back to examine the broader picture until the final chapter. Each chapter links only loosely to the previous or subsequent chapters. Easy to get lost.

What could Eric H. Cline have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Focus on the narrative.

Spoiler alert: Nobody knows

The selling of this book is that it is going to lead us to an understanding of why the late Bronze Age collapsed suddenly in 1177 BC. It turns out that it didn’t, and why it ended (over time) is so much a matter of speculation that you might as well make up your own hypothesis right now.

There is some incoherent discussion of catastrophe theory bolted hopefully on the end, but this doesn’t help.

There is much interesting Bronze Age history here. It just doesn’t live up to the expectation that there is a logical end-point.

Excellent scholar: very readably written.

This is a wonderfully clear, well reasoned, and balanced view of what we know to date of the collapse of that Late Bronze Age civilisation. Very readable, understandable, and well read.

narrator's tone irritates me

great book but narrator sounds like he's speaking to children, like at a Disney ride. he seems to feel the need to inflect and 'color' the text instead of just reading it, as though he doesn't think it's interesting otherwise

Exquisitley Detailed

This text, and the audible version as well, give a blow by blow account of the late Bronze Age decline and fall. The author argues, with great merit in my opinion, that the Sea Peoples were only one aspect of the grand events of the age and not the sole cause as they are often portrayed. Highly recommend this book to all students of ancient Mediterranean history as well as Egyptian and Hittite relationships with coastal Europe.

Really interesting stuff, but perhaps better left in text form

I really enjoyed the content of the book, and I was exposed to a large part of ancient world history that I had never before encountered.

Cline is able to explain very well the numerous archaeological terms and conventions he uses, and so even without much previous knowledge of the subject I was able to understand the narratives he was weaving and how archaeologists had pieced them together.

That being said, the book makes heavy use of headings and subheadings, as well as frequent hopping from one geographical location to another. While this is perfectly readable in text form, I sometimes had difficulty following the centuries-long story that Cline was telling. Perhaps this is a problem that only I have, and others will have no trouble whatsoever.

Caploe gives a great reading, engaging and with a good flow. I gave both his performance and the book itself five stars - as I said, my only complaint (and it's not really a complaint, more of a failure on my part) is the difficulty I had with following the leaps and bounds from one part of the ancient world to another.

Great Book

Excellent overview of the Late Bronze Age collapse. Information is presented in an easy to follow manner.

Poor narration kills the experience

This didn't seem like a bad book. The subject matter is fascinating. Cline's prose wasn't particularly imaginative. He didn't seem to providing a unique or create synthesis of the available evidence - really he just reviewed a few hypotheses and used a middle-ground "they're all true" sort of construction. That's not a terrible structure for a popular audience book aimed at lay people. In fact, it may even be the ideal lay-audience structure.

The real problem with this book was the narration. Oh my god is Caploe terrible. He reads like he's performing story time to the preschool crowd at the local public library, with all sorts of over exaggerated tonal inflections. In an expository reading like this one, it's completely distracting and nearly impossible to follow the prose. I nearly gave up 10 minutes into the book. I stuck through it because the topic is really cool, but I probably absorbed less than half of the material.

I may listen to another Cline book at some point. I will never buy another book narrated by Caploe.

Good topic, lukewarm delivery

First off, this narrator should not do historical nonfiction, or he should save his wacky voices for the cartoon acting.

This book had very interesting subject matter--the seemingly simultaneous fall of many Mediterranean/Mesopotamian civilizations in the 12th century BC. However, the book is not well organized; it could probably be cut down by a third if it were. Lots of repetition.

I really like historical nonfiction that weaves a narrative into its retelling of historical facts. I think most people do outside of academia. This book doesn't do that. The author's aim isn't really to tell a story, to be fair, it's to examine and dispute current and past theories about the 12th century collapse. He jumps back in forth in time as he examines various civilizations, events, and theories, so it might be difficult to maintain a chronologically sound narrative. But still, there is a good story to be told here and a superior author might've presented his argument amidst narration of this story.

That thud is the listener...

When you listen to hours of recitation of scanty evidence and find out the answer is: "Nobody knows why Bronze age civilization collapsed" but there are lots of theories. And new evidence is being discovered, or re-discovered, or translated, or pieced together or... Basically the book is a laundry list of evidence with anecdotes about discredited or reinterpreted evidence.

The evidence is interesting but not conclusive. The question that is being addressed is whether it is all the fault of the 'sea peoples' and who were they? The answer is not here. It does posit the theory that a series of calamities caused the system to fail, where it could have survived single events. There is the hint that a combination of climate change (drought), earthquakes, and social upheaval could have destabilized the trading inter-dependencies of the bronze age kingdoms but the author doesn't think the story is complete yet.

Ultimately the listener has to be familiar with lots of place names and the names of the players to follow what is being discussed. Without an annotated map, we are literally at sea.

Oh, and do skip the first two chapters. They are marketing material not relevant to the topic. The third chapter is an introduction so the book doesn't start til the 4th chapter.

As for the reader, sorry, I'm not a fan of Andy Caploe when he reads fiction. For non-fiction he is a really bad choice. For instance, he is very snide when reading that a pharaoh was married to his sister. Since it was the common practice of the time and culture, it is Not appropriate for him to color his reading that way. Then there is the way he pronounces 'elite' with a long a, and then... Well, if your annoyance threshold is low this is a book to avoid.