Navigating the precipice: Lessons on collapse from the Late Bronze Age.

Abstract

Around 1200 BCE, the societies of the Late Bronze Age (LBA) in the Eastern Mediterranean experienced a collective collapse, evident in the archeological remains of destroyed and abandoned cities. Following our prior explorations in this topic, we hypothesize that the network structure between the LBA societies amplified compounding threats, producing a cascade of failures that culminated in a precipitous broad systemic collapse. The network, so often seen as a conduit for prosperity, propagated the problems of individual nodes. Herein we discuss the findings of Linkov et al.'s (2024) network analysis of the LBA collapse and its implications regarding vulnerabilities in our current global context as our systems surpass carrying capacity in our pursuit of societal complexity.