1422-1423 Eric Cline – 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed

1177 book cover

It was a globalized world in the eastern Mediterranean, not unlike our modern globalized world. But the technology was Bronze Age technology, not the Information Age. Then, suddenly, everything went wrong and it all collapsed. When the dust settled and the Iron Age began, there was a new kingdom called Israel.

Israel is not the focus of this new book by Eric Cline: 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed. But the collapse that it describes creates the conditions out of which Israel emerges. The book is just out, and may soon be a best seller.

Eric Cline is a professor of classics and anthropology at George Washington University and is involved in excavations at Tel Megiddo and Tel Kabri. We’ve had him on the program before and in this 2-part interview he fills us in on perhaps the greatest collapse in ancient history.

UPDATE: We wrapped up the interview with a short discussion of the Tel Kabri excavation, where last year Cline and his team found the oldest and largest wine cellar of the ancient world. The Washington Post also ran a story on that discovery the other day.