Collapse is a Recurrent Phenomenon in Societies

The Roman Empire's dramatic collapse (followed by many centuries of population decline, economic deterioration, intellectual regression, and the disappearance of literacy) is well known, but it was not the rst rise-and-collapse cycle in Europe. Prior to the rise of Classical Greco- Roman civilization, both the Minoan and Mycenaean Civilizations had each risen, reached very advanced levels of civilization, and then collapsed virtually completely [Morris, 2006; Redman, 1999]. The history of Mes...

 The Weakness of the Library of Alexandria

Both the work of research and the work of dissemination went on under serious handicaps. One of these was the great social gap that {152}separated the philosopher, who was a gentleman, from the trader and the artisan. There were glass workers and metal workers in abundance in those days, but they were not in mental contact with the thinkers. The glass worker was making the most beautifully coloured beads and phials and so forth, but he never made a Florentine flask or a lens. Clear glass does...

 Utnapashtim Origin of the Story of Noah's Ark

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest stories ever written. Older than the legends of the Greeks or the Jews, it is the ancient heroic myth of the Sumerian civilization, which flourished in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago. Gilgamesh was the great hero king of Sumerian myth - a bit like King Arthur in British legends, in that nobody knows whether he actually existed, but lots of stories were told about him. Like the Greek hero Odysseus (Ulysses) and the Arabian he...