Vanishing Acts
Early civilizations arose first in Lower Mesopotamia (3000 BC), followed by Egyptian civilization along the Nile River (3000 BC), the Harappan civilization in the Indus River Valley (in present-day India and Pakistan; 2500 BC), and Chinese civilization along the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers (2200 BC).
The Minoans and the Mycenaeans for instance, were two of the early civilizations that developed in Greece. The Minoans lived on the Greek islands and built a huge palace on the island of Crete. The Mycenaeans lived mostly on mainland Greece and were the first people to speak the Greek language.
The Minoans have an important place in world history, as building the first civilization to appear on European soil. Minoan civilization emerged around 2000 BC, and lasted until (1400 BC). The Minoans were famous for the magnificent palaces they built, above all at Knossos.
Evidence suggests that the Minoans disappeared so suddenly because of the massive volcanic eruption in the Santorini Islands. We know now that the Santorini eruption and the collapse of the volcanic cone into the sea caused tsunamis which devastated the coasts of Crete and other Minoan coastal towns.
Many years passed until the Minoan Civilization was completely destroyed. It is estimated that the palaces of the Minoan Civilization were destroyed almost 150 years after the volcanic eruption by the invasion of the Mycenaeans.
We get a glimpse of the fall of the Mycenaeans from a tablet found at the palace of Pylos. The palace was destroyed by an invasion from the sea. Most of the tablets recovered there describe preparations for the attack. The first attack involved attacks on the priests but no burning.
With the mysterious end of the Mycenaean civilization during the Bronze Age Collapse around (1200 BC) (possibly through earthquake, invasion or in-fighting) came the so-called Dark Ages and it would be many centuries before Greek culture would finally regain the heights of the late Bronze Age.
Similarly, after (c.1180 BC), during the Bronze Age collapse, the Hittite Empire supposedly did undergo the sa,e fate, then splintered into several independent "Neo-Hittite" city-states, some of which survived until the 8th century BC before succumbing to the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
The Hittites thus vanished from historical records, much of the territory being seized by Assyria. Alongside with these attacks, many internal issues also led to the end of the Hittites Era. The end of the Empire was part of the larger Bronze Age Collapse.
It’s easy to see how civilizations are shaped by conquests, nature's catastrophic events, and disease epidemics.
Cholera, bubonic plague, smallpox, and influenza have been some of the most brutal killers in human history. Outbreaks of these diseases across international borders, properly defined as pandemic, especially smallpox, has killed between 300-500 million people in its 12,000 year existence.
Ebola, and the non-lethal Zika virus, in the same chart as HIV/AIDS, or the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century, might seem a little frivolous, but the thing is, we still don’t know which epidemics are important until after the fact.
Zika, SARS, MERS, and Wuhan coronavirus, officially called 2019-nCoV, may or may not prove to be a serious threat, dependent on whether we come up with treatments or vaccines.
Are we any worse at looking after ourselves than before? Probably not. It’s just that, as we cure, or learn to manage, more and more life-threatening diseases, the only ones left are those we can’t cure, because we willingly inflict them on ourselves…
Food for thought!