- Joined
- Jan 16, 2017
- Highlight
- #1
See if you can spot a pattern in the following:
--
The Akkadian Empire was the first recorded empire in history, lasting from about 2500BC to 2200BC. It arose in what is now widely regarded as the cradle of civilisation itself, the "Fertile Crescent" between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq. There is evidence that the first cities in mankind's history were built there as early as 6000BC. The Akkadian Empire was, without doubt, humanity's finest social, technological, military and economic achievement in history at that time, and for some time after.
The archaeological record for the Akkadian empire is thin, because it was such a mind-bogglingly long time ago and the cities were built over again and again by subsequent cultures. But there is evidence as to why Akkad fell:
1 - There seems to have been a warming of the climate, and subsequent food shortages. There is evidence that towards the end of the empire's life they were irrigating land that did not require irrigation before, suggesting that soil fertility was dropping alarmingly. Whole cities seem to have been abandoned to the encroaching desert.
2 - There is evidence of political strife, rebellion and civil war. Dig sites from the later Akkadian period show evidence of more military presence in areas in the centre of the empire than before, suggesting those soldiers were there to keep order and put down rebellions rather than defend the borders.
3 - Whilst the evidence is not overwhelming, there are indications that there may have been a plague of some kind before the end.
4 - We do know what caused the final fall, along with that of neighbouring Sumer. Nomadic peoples from the North, themselves facing the same food shortages as the Akkadians, changed from a nuisance at the border to an unstoppable horde. The weakened and divided Akkadian empire could not resist as they swept South, burning, killing, looting and pillaging until everything was gone.
--
The Ancient Egyptians rose to greatness about 1000 years after the Akkadians. The Archaeological record for the Egyptians is extensive, though not complete. Everyone knows that under the Pharaohs, Egypt achieved levels of technology, society and architecture that mankind had not come close to before. Ancient Egypt was the pinnacle of human achievement at its time.
The fall of Egypt was more gradual than that of Akkad. Its rulers were stronger and its armies more powerful, but by the reign of Rameses III (ruled 1186-1155BC) it was in terminal decline:
1 - A volcanic eruption in Iceland some time around 1200BC cooled the planet and dropped sunlight levels for decades causing famines all over Europe and the Mediterranean.
2 - The resulting crop failures caused the rations given to workers and soldiers to fall. This caused the workers to go on strike (for the first time in recorded history) and soldiers to desert and rebel.
3 - Egypt, despite its problems, still had the most wealth and food anywhere in the world at that time. This attracted the greedy eyes of not only neighbouring civilisations (notably the Assyrians, against whom the Egyptians fought a series of vicious and ruinous wars), but also nomadic peoples. First came desert raiders from Libya and points West, but the biggest threat were the "Sea Peoples". Nobody knows exactly who the "Sea Peoples" were or where they came from, other than that they were an alliance of different people who had banded together in a highly effective alliance to raid and pillage. The most logical explanation is that they were formerly settled people from all over the Mediterranean driven to piracy by hunger.
4 - Egypt was crippled by internal division. Aside from the aforementioned labour disputes and military desertion, there was constant plotting and infighting within the political elite. Rameses III, a brilliant general who won a series of key battles against the Assyrians and the Sea Peoples, was assassinated by an ambitious underling, and the empire never recovered from his death - too unstable and divided to put up a fight against its many enemies, it was picked apart by its neighbours until it eventually what was left of it became a vassal of the Greeks.
5 - The reign of Rameses III was marked by several plagues.
6 - The Egyptians owed much of their military superiority to plentiful supplies of copper and tin, the metals required to make Bronze, which made the best weapons and armour. If you didn't have access to Bronze, you were SOL and you were going to get conquered by someone who had. But around 1000BC, people worked out how to get furnaces hot enough to smelt Iron. Not only did Iron make better weapons than Bronze, Iron ore was found just about everywhere, and now even the scruffiest band of raiders could have the best weapons and armour in the world. The old powers (Egypt was not the only Bronze Age civilisation to fall around 1000BC, only the biggest) had no answer to this new democratization of warfare.
--
The Han Dynasty was the second, and arguably the greatest, dynasty of imperial China, lasting from about 220BC to 220 AD, about the same timeframe as the Roman Empire. Under the Hans, Chinese civilisation was Rome's only rival in its technological, social, and economic accomplishments. But the Hans fell:
1 - The dynasty was ripped apart by rebellions and civil war. The empire was so big and so unwieldy to govern that unlanded princes, generals and local warlords could seize territory and rule it sometimes for decades before the Empire regained control.
2 - As a result, the Han Emperors became increasingly brutal and tyrannical to try to keep order. This in turn led to more rebellions and more brutality until the entire Empire was in a near-constant state of civil war, with pogroms and genocide a regular occurrence any time there was a rebellion, which was often.
3 - Plague and Famine tore through rural areas. The crop failures this time were largely man-made, as constant civil war, raids and incursions from without and the increasing tendencies of warring parties to engage in Scorched Earth tactics and genocide destroyed the empire's ability to feed itself or protect against disease.
4 - Then came the nomads. Mongols from the North and Turkic peoples from the West tore into the Empire and were so successful that the once-proud Han Empire became a vassal of illiterate, nomadic horse lords so primitive they didn't even cook their own meat. The Mongols carried out a policy of mass rape and extermination so extensive that the Han Chinese (despite what the CCP would tell you) no longer exist genetically.
--
The Roman Empire, and the fall thereof, is the most studied period in all of history save maybe WWII. The Romans held together the largest and most ethnically diverse empire the world had ever seen, and they held it together for 500 years. Under the Romans, humanity achieved levels of technology and civilisation never seen before, and not seen again for centuries after its fall. I could study for a dozen PhDs in the fall of the Roman Empire and still not know everything that is known about it, but the causes were roughly as follows:
1 - From about 150AD, the climate started to change, leading to food shortages and rebellions. Around 450AD there was an event known as the "Little Ice Age" that was instrumental in the final collapse, as starving nomadic peoples from every border of the Empire surged into it in search of food.
2 - The "Plague of Justinian" from 541AD (probably Bubonic Plague) was the first of a string of disease outbreaks that crippled the empire. The empire's advanced transportation infrastructure and communal water sources helped spread it on a level never before seen until it became endemic.
3 - In the last three centuries of its existence, the Empire was in a perpetual state of civil war. The state had become so weak that any two-bit regional governor or general figured that he had a chance of being Emperor, at least until the next guy came along. At one point there were five Emperors in a single year.
4 - Rome ran out of land to give its retired soldiers. For centuries the empire had rewarded its soldiers' loyalty with land on retirement. In the last few centuries this had to shrink, then cease, as there was no more land to give out. This created hundreds of thousands of disaffected former legionaries, hungry, angry and willing and able to fight, which fuelled the constant rebellions and sky-high violent crime.
5 - Rome's advanced technology contributed to its fall. As well as its plumbing and transportation spreading disease, it is possible that the lead pipes feeding its elites poisoned them and drove them insane.
6 - The conflict between traditional Hellenism and Christianity was another key factor in the instability and division.
7 - As so many times before, the nomads came. Goths, Visigoths, Huns, Franks and others, fleeing starvation, descended on the Empire and completely destroyed its Western half, leaving the Eastern half to limp on as the bankrupt, shrinking Byzantine empire that was finally put out of its misery in 1483 by the Seljuk Turks. Western Europe didn't reach the same levels of technology as the Romans for centuries after.
--
The descendents of the destroyers of Rome settled in its ruins and slowly built a Civilisation of their own - the West. The Franks became the French and the Germans, the Visigoths became the Spanish, the Angles and Saxons became the English, and so on. By about 1500AD the West became the most powerful and advanced civilisation that mankind had ever created. But look where we are now:
1 - We are at each other's throats. We haven't been this politically and religiously divided since the years immediately before WWII, which, if you consider the West to be a single, coherent civilisation, was more of a civil war over ideology and identity than a clash of civilisations. Ditto WWI, the Napoleonic wars and the centuries of conflict between different strains of Christianity. We have been fighting each other for centuries, each war more brutal and ruinous than the last.
2 - Our internal politics are unstable. Four US presidents have been assassinated in office, with many other unsuccessful plots. The last president caused rioting in the streets just by being elected. Congress has attempted to impeach 3 of the last 4 presidents for obviously ideological reasons. Supporters of the last president nearly overthrew the government by accident because they mistrusted the result of the election so much they rebelled. American cities are burning. The authorities are literally losing control of them, and local governments, criminal gangs and militia groups are effectively seceding from the US over ideological differences or just to grab power and wealth.
3 - We have just been hit by the most devastating disease outbreak in a century, aided in its spread by our advanced transportation technology. Even if we recover from this, there's nothing to stop it happening again and just like the other great civilisations before it, it has deepened divisions and mistrust, and led some to violence.
4 - The response by our governments has been oppression and brutality. Soldiers in the streets in the US, armed rebels being grabbed off the streets by unmarked vans. Most of Western Europe is almost a police state. Previously genteel and quiet places like the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands are murdering their own politicians, who as a result are becoming more secluded and remote from the people they govern. Most major policies are not subject to democratic control any more.
The present doesn't look good. But the future looks worse:
1 - Most estimates suggest that we will run out of fertile topsoil in about 80-90 years. A famine is coming that will make the Holomodor or the Great Leap Forward look like a child whining for ice cream.
2 - We will also most likely run out of economic fossil fuels around this time, and no alternative energy source can yet take its place. We need electricity for everything. Without air conditioning the warmer parts of the world are now uninhabitable. Without heating the cold ones are as well. In the UK and EU, the sale of internal combustion and diesel vehicles will be banned from 2030, making Europe's transportation infrastructure entirely dependent on its creaking power grid. All our information and knowledge is stored in devices that need power. We may look and laugh at the Ancient Egyptians for storing all their knowledge in the Great Library of Alexandria and losing it all when barbarians torched it, but we have been just as foolish. We cannot communicate without power. We cannot grow or distribute food without power. Our armed forces cannot wage war without power. If the grid goes down, the West falls. Bear in mind that in the last 12 months, Texas' power grid failed because it was too cold, and now the PNW/SW Canada's grid is failing because it is too hot.
3 - Speaking of heat, the climate is getting warmer. There's no denying it now. Whether humans caused it or not, it doesn't matter. It's gonna get real fucking hot. So much so that the warmer parts of the world (Africa, India, Central America) are going to become uninhabitable. Never mind crop failures, the temperatures may become unsafe for human life. In a couple of centuries, everything between the tropics will become like the Sahara, and the Sahara will become a scorched hellscape straight out of a Science Fiction novel. Low-lying areas will flood. In the UK, we used to get one catastrophic flood a century. Now we get one every year.
4 - This will force literally billions of people from their homes in search of food. You think immigration is bad now? This ain't shit. A few hundred thousand a year will become hundreds of millions. And these people will not be looking for jobs or benefits. They will be looking for food, and they will be desperate enough to take it by force, like their forebears going back 4500 years. Every single great empire in human history was destroyed by starving nomads created by climate change, disease and famine, and the West will fall to the same cycle. Nomadic hordes are like viruses. They cannot sustain themselves, they have to live by destroying. All the great nomadic conquests either burn themselves out when they run out of civilisation to destroy (Genghis Khan, the Huns, the Timurids) or when they settle and form their own civilisations in the ruins of the ones they destroyed (The Hittites, the Franks, The Vikings).
--
I'm not a professional historian. I'm just someone who can spot patterns. Food shortages, disease outbreaks, corrupt leaders and rebellions weaken empires until they are over-run by homeless, starving hordes. The West will go the same way as the Akkadians, the Egyptians, the Han, the Romans, and others. Forget Left or Right, no change of policy or leader is going to prevent this. Maybe Trans women really are women. Maybe the Jews run Hollywood. Who cares. We're arguing about videogames when annihilation is staring us in the face. I think the end will be about 100 years from now. Whether it's an abrupt end like the Akkadians and the Han, or a slow death like the Egyptians or the Romans, I don't know. But it's coming.
--
The Akkadian Empire was the first recorded empire in history, lasting from about 2500BC to 2200BC. It arose in what is now widely regarded as the cradle of civilisation itself, the "Fertile Crescent" between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq. There is evidence that the first cities in mankind's history were built there as early as 6000BC. The Akkadian Empire was, without doubt, humanity's finest social, technological, military and economic achievement in history at that time, and for some time after.
The archaeological record for the Akkadian empire is thin, because it was such a mind-bogglingly long time ago and the cities were built over again and again by subsequent cultures. But there is evidence as to why Akkad fell:
1 - There seems to have been a warming of the climate, and subsequent food shortages. There is evidence that towards the end of the empire's life they were irrigating land that did not require irrigation before, suggesting that soil fertility was dropping alarmingly. Whole cities seem to have been abandoned to the encroaching desert.
2 - There is evidence of political strife, rebellion and civil war. Dig sites from the later Akkadian period show evidence of more military presence in areas in the centre of the empire than before, suggesting those soldiers were there to keep order and put down rebellions rather than defend the borders.
3 - Whilst the evidence is not overwhelming, there are indications that there may have been a plague of some kind before the end.
4 - We do know what caused the final fall, along with that of neighbouring Sumer. Nomadic peoples from the North, themselves facing the same food shortages as the Akkadians, changed from a nuisance at the border to an unstoppable horde. The weakened and divided Akkadian empire could not resist as they swept South, burning, killing, looting and pillaging until everything was gone.
--
The Ancient Egyptians rose to greatness about 1000 years after the Akkadians. The Archaeological record for the Egyptians is extensive, though not complete. Everyone knows that under the Pharaohs, Egypt achieved levels of technology, society and architecture that mankind had not come close to before. Ancient Egypt was the pinnacle of human achievement at its time.
The fall of Egypt was more gradual than that of Akkad. Its rulers were stronger and its armies more powerful, but by the reign of Rameses III (ruled 1186-1155BC) it was in terminal decline:
1 - A volcanic eruption in Iceland some time around 1200BC cooled the planet and dropped sunlight levels for decades causing famines all over Europe and the Mediterranean.
2 - The resulting crop failures caused the rations given to workers and soldiers to fall. This caused the workers to go on strike (for the first time in recorded history) and soldiers to desert and rebel.
3 - Egypt, despite its problems, still had the most wealth and food anywhere in the world at that time. This attracted the greedy eyes of not only neighbouring civilisations (notably the Assyrians, against whom the Egyptians fought a series of vicious and ruinous wars), but also nomadic peoples. First came desert raiders from Libya and points West, but the biggest threat were the "Sea Peoples". Nobody knows exactly who the "Sea Peoples" were or where they came from, other than that they were an alliance of different people who had banded together in a highly effective alliance to raid and pillage. The most logical explanation is that they were formerly settled people from all over the Mediterranean driven to piracy by hunger.
4 - Egypt was crippled by internal division. Aside from the aforementioned labour disputes and military desertion, there was constant plotting and infighting within the political elite. Rameses III, a brilliant general who won a series of key battles against the Assyrians and the Sea Peoples, was assassinated by an ambitious underling, and the empire never recovered from his death - too unstable and divided to put up a fight against its many enemies, it was picked apart by its neighbours until it eventually what was left of it became a vassal of the Greeks.
5 - The reign of Rameses III was marked by several plagues.
6 - The Egyptians owed much of their military superiority to plentiful supplies of copper and tin, the metals required to make Bronze, which made the best weapons and armour. If you didn't have access to Bronze, you were SOL and you were going to get conquered by someone who had. But around 1000BC, people worked out how to get furnaces hot enough to smelt Iron. Not only did Iron make better weapons than Bronze, Iron ore was found just about everywhere, and now even the scruffiest band of raiders could have the best weapons and armour in the world. The old powers (Egypt was not the only Bronze Age civilisation to fall around 1000BC, only the biggest) had no answer to this new democratization of warfare.
--
The Han Dynasty was the second, and arguably the greatest, dynasty of imperial China, lasting from about 220BC to 220 AD, about the same timeframe as the Roman Empire. Under the Hans, Chinese civilisation was Rome's only rival in its technological, social, and economic accomplishments. But the Hans fell:
1 - The dynasty was ripped apart by rebellions and civil war. The empire was so big and so unwieldy to govern that unlanded princes, generals and local warlords could seize territory and rule it sometimes for decades before the Empire regained control.
2 - As a result, the Han Emperors became increasingly brutal and tyrannical to try to keep order. This in turn led to more rebellions and more brutality until the entire Empire was in a near-constant state of civil war, with pogroms and genocide a regular occurrence any time there was a rebellion, which was often.
3 - Plague and Famine tore through rural areas. The crop failures this time were largely man-made, as constant civil war, raids and incursions from without and the increasing tendencies of warring parties to engage in Scorched Earth tactics and genocide destroyed the empire's ability to feed itself or protect against disease.
4 - Then came the nomads. Mongols from the North and Turkic peoples from the West tore into the Empire and were so successful that the once-proud Han Empire became a vassal of illiterate, nomadic horse lords so primitive they didn't even cook their own meat. The Mongols carried out a policy of mass rape and extermination so extensive that the Han Chinese (despite what the CCP would tell you) no longer exist genetically.
--
The Roman Empire, and the fall thereof, is the most studied period in all of history save maybe WWII. The Romans held together the largest and most ethnically diverse empire the world had ever seen, and they held it together for 500 years. Under the Romans, humanity achieved levels of technology and civilisation never seen before, and not seen again for centuries after its fall. I could study for a dozen PhDs in the fall of the Roman Empire and still not know everything that is known about it, but the causes were roughly as follows:
1 - From about 150AD, the climate started to change, leading to food shortages and rebellions. Around 450AD there was an event known as the "Little Ice Age" that was instrumental in the final collapse, as starving nomadic peoples from every border of the Empire surged into it in search of food.
2 - The "Plague of Justinian" from 541AD (probably Bubonic Plague) was the first of a string of disease outbreaks that crippled the empire. The empire's advanced transportation infrastructure and communal water sources helped spread it on a level never before seen until it became endemic.
3 - In the last three centuries of its existence, the Empire was in a perpetual state of civil war. The state had become so weak that any two-bit regional governor or general figured that he had a chance of being Emperor, at least until the next guy came along. At one point there were five Emperors in a single year.
4 - Rome ran out of land to give its retired soldiers. For centuries the empire had rewarded its soldiers' loyalty with land on retirement. In the last few centuries this had to shrink, then cease, as there was no more land to give out. This created hundreds of thousands of disaffected former legionaries, hungry, angry and willing and able to fight, which fuelled the constant rebellions and sky-high violent crime.
5 - Rome's advanced technology contributed to its fall. As well as its plumbing and transportation spreading disease, it is possible that the lead pipes feeding its elites poisoned them and drove them insane.
6 - The conflict between traditional Hellenism and Christianity was another key factor in the instability and division.
7 - As so many times before, the nomads came. Goths, Visigoths, Huns, Franks and others, fleeing starvation, descended on the Empire and completely destroyed its Western half, leaving the Eastern half to limp on as the bankrupt, shrinking Byzantine empire that was finally put out of its misery in 1483 by the Seljuk Turks. Western Europe didn't reach the same levels of technology as the Romans for centuries after.
--
The descendents of the destroyers of Rome settled in its ruins and slowly built a Civilisation of their own - the West. The Franks became the French and the Germans, the Visigoths became the Spanish, the Angles and Saxons became the English, and so on. By about 1500AD the West became the most powerful and advanced civilisation that mankind had ever created. But look where we are now:
1 - We are at each other's throats. We haven't been this politically and religiously divided since the years immediately before WWII, which, if you consider the West to be a single, coherent civilisation, was more of a civil war over ideology and identity than a clash of civilisations. Ditto WWI, the Napoleonic wars and the centuries of conflict between different strains of Christianity. We have been fighting each other for centuries, each war more brutal and ruinous than the last.
2 - Our internal politics are unstable. Four US presidents have been assassinated in office, with many other unsuccessful plots. The last president caused rioting in the streets just by being elected. Congress has attempted to impeach 3 of the last 4 presidents for obviously ideological reasons. Supporters of the last president nearly overthrew the government by accident because they mistrusted the result of the election so much they rebelled. American cities are burning. The authorities are literally losing control of them, and local governments, criminal gangs and militia groups are effectively seceding from the US over ideological differences or just to grab power and wealth.
3 - We have just been hit by the most devastating disease outbreak in a century, aided in its spread by our advanced transportation technology. Even if we recover from this, there's nothing to stop it happening again and just like the other great civilisations before it, it has deepened divisions and mistrust, and led some to violence.
4 - The response by our governments has been oppression and brutality. Soldiers in the streets in the US, armed rebels being grabbed off the streets by unmarked vans. Most of Western Europe is almost a police state. Previously genteel and quiet places like the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands are murdering their own politicians, who as a result are becoming more secluded and remote from the people they govern. Most major policies are not subject to democratic control any more.
The present doesn't look good. But the future looks worse:
1 - Most estimates suggest that we will run out of fertile topsoil in about 80-90 years. A famine is coming that will make the Holomodor or the Great Leap Forward look like a child whining for ice cream.
2 - We will also most likely run out of economic fossil fuels around this time, and no alternative energy source can yet take its place. We need electricity for everything. Without air conditioning the warmer parts of the world are now uninhabitable. Without heating the cold ones are as well. In the UK and EU, the sale of internal combustion and diesel vehicles will be banned from 2030, making Europe's transportation infrastructure entirely dependent on its creaking power grid. All our information and knowledge is stored in devices that need power. We may look and laugh at the Ancient Egyptians for storing all their knowledge in the Great Library of Alexandria and losing it all when barbarians torched it, but we have been just as foolish. We cannot communicate without power. We cannot grow or distribute food without power. Our armed forces cannot wage war without power. If the grid goes down, the West falls. Bear in mind that in the last 12 months, Texas' power grid failed because it was too cold, and now the PNW/SW Canada's grid is failing because it is too hot.
3 - Speaking of heat, the climate is getting warmer. There's no denying it now. Whether humans caused it or not, it doesn't matter. It's gonna get real fucking hot. So much so that the warmer parts of the world (Africa, India, Central America) are going to become uninhabitable. Never mind crop failures, the temperatures may become unsafe for human life. In a couple of centuries, everything between the tropics will become like the Sahara, and the Sahara will become a scorched hellscape straight out of a Science Fiction novel. Low-lying areas will flood. In the UK, we used to get one catastrophic flood a century. Now we get one every year.
4 - This will force literally billions of people from their homes in search of food. You think immigration is bad now? This ain't shit. A few hundred thousand a year will become hundreds of millions. And these people will not be looking for jobs or benefits. They will be looking for food, and they will be desperate enough to take it by force, like their forebears going back 4500 years. Every single great empire in human history was destroyed by starving nomads created by climate change, disease and famine, and the West will fall to the same cycle. Nomadic hordes are like viruses. They cannot sustain themselves, they have to live by destroying. All the great nomadic conquests either burn themselves out when they run out of civilisation to destroy (Genghis Khan, the Huns, the Timurids) or when they settle and form their own civilisations in the ruins of the ones they destroyed (The Hittites, the Franks, The Vikings).
--
I'm not a professional historian. I'm just someone who can spot patterns. Food shortages, disease outbreaks, corrupt leaders and rebellions weaken empires until they are over-run by homeless, starving hordes. The West will go the same way as the Akkadians, the Egyptians, the Han, the Romans, and others. Forget Left or Right, no change of policy or leader is going to prevent this. Maybe Trans women really are women. Maybe the Jews run Hollywood. Who cares. We're arguing about videogames when annihilation is staring us in the face. I think the end will be about 100 years from now. Whether it's an abrupt end like the Akkadians and the Han, or a slow death like the Egyptians or the Romans, I don't know. But it's coming.
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