After 1177BC: The Survival of Civilizations: A Chat with Eric Cline

In today’s episode, I am joined by Eric H. Cline, an archaeologist and ancient historian at George Washington University. He speaks about the time of innovation and change that comes as the Bronze Age collapses and the Iron Age emerges in his book After 1177BC: The Survival of Civilizations.

At the end of the acclaimed history 1177 B.C., many of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean lay in ruins, undone by invasion, revolt, natural disasters, famine, and the demise of international trade. An interconnected world that had boasted major empires and societies, relative peace, robust commerce, and monumental architecture was lost and the so-called First Dark Age had begun.Now, in After 1177 B.C., Eric Cline tells the compelling story ofwhat happened next, over four centuries, across the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean world. It is a story of resilience, transformation, and success, as well as failures, in an age of chaos and reconfiguration. After 1177 B.C. tells how the collapse of powerful Late Bronze Age civilizations created new circumstances to which people and societies had to adapt. Those that failed to adjust disappeared from the world stage, while others transformed themselves, resulting in a new world order that included Phoenicians, Philistines, Israelites, Neo-Hittites, Neo-Assyrians, and Neo-Babylonians. Taking the story up to the resurgence of Greece marked by the first Olympic Games in 776 B.C., the book also describes how world-changing innovations such as the use of iron and the alphabet emerged amid the chaos.

Dr. Eric H. Cline is Professor of Classical and Ancient NearEastern Studies and Anthropology, the former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and the current Director of the GWUCapitol Archaeological Institute. He is a National Geographic Explorer, a two-time Fulbright scholar, an NEH Public Scholar, a Getty Scholar, and an award-winning teacher andauthor. In May 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctoral degree (honoris causa) from Muhlenberg College.

An archaeologist and ancient historian by training, Dr.Cline’s primary fields of study are biblical archaeology, the military history of the Mediterranean world from antiquity to present, and the international connections between Greece, Egypt, and the Near East during the Late Bronze Age (1700-1100 BCE). He is an experienced and active field archaeologist, with more than 30 seasons of excavation and survey to his credit since 1980 in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, and the United States. He is perhaps best known for his work on collapse and resilience in the ancient world, specifically at the end of the second millennium BCE and the early first millennium BCE in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, epitomized by the best-selling 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Princeton 2014; revised edition 2021).