I was reading about TBAC and I stumbled across some proposed theories that biblical "Eden" was an actual place somewhere in the Mediterranean that Semitic people's were violently driven from during the TBAC. I don't really buy that idea, but it sparked a hypothesis in my mind, that the whole "fallen world" concept originated from the stories illiterate peoples told to explain the TBAC.
This is a particularly strong with the Greek mythology of the forever lost "Age of Heroes." I've heard the Greek Dark Age as "a dark age so dark they didn't even know it had happened" due to the total and complete loss of literacy. But, at least during the earlier parts of that dark age, these newly illiterate people would have been living near the ruins of the old palaces. Homer's epics clearly show that the Greeks had at least some cultural memory of the palace culture and the social organization that existed in the past. So it seems really obvious that they would explain the fact that people in the past achieved inconceivable things by describing those people as demigods, and the change from that past to the much less glamorous present as a theological fall from one "age" to a lesser "age."
I don't know as much about where the Semitic peoples were and what they were doing before, during, and after TBAC. But the original sin story has explicit references to farming, and farming becoming harder: first with the image of a "garden," then with references to how humans had more or less natural "dominion" over animals, then with the punishment that Adam will have to earn these things "by the sweat of his brow."
This kind of myth is, to my knowledge, absent from ancient Egyptian culture. I find that very telling, because unlike the Greeks and Semitic peoples, the Egyptians retained literacy throughout TBAC. Some of their records about it survive today, but the Egyptians living immediately after TBAC almost certainly had access to much more detailed records about it, and thus less need to explain it in mythological terms.
To my knowledge, cultures that have "golden age" mythologies outside of the TBAC zone (Indian, Norse etc) tend to emphasize that there is at least one golden age in the future, at some point. I'm curious about cultures that have a golden age that they place irreparably in the past, who believe that the world is fallen rather than just going through a bad phase.
So my question is, does the primary source evidence support this idea? Is there evidence against it? Or is this hypothesis non-falsifiable?
I am afraid I cannot speak to the role of the Bronze Age collapse in the Greek conception of a passed Golden Age nor can I say much of the origin of the Biblical Eden. However I can say that the idea of a golden age does appear at least once in Sumerian mythology.
Tablet 29.16.422 in the Nippur collection dated from about 2000 BCE is part of an epic poem concerning Enmerkar king of Uruk sometime during the 4th millennium BCE and reads a follows
"In those days there was no snake, there was no scorpion, there was no hyena
There was no lion, there was no wild dog, no wolf,
There was no fear, no terror,
Man had no rival.
In those days the land Shubur (East), the place of plenty, of righteous decrees,
Harmony-tongued Sumer (South), the great land of the "decrees of princeship,"
Uri (North), the land having all that is needful,
The land Martu (West), resting in security,
The whole universe, the people in unison,
To Enlil in one tongue gave praise."
Though the tablet breaks off just a bit further on it seems that this state of affairs did not last and through the work of the god Enki man was scattered and split between speaking many languages. Rather reminiscent of the Tower of Babel isn't it?
"And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech." Genesis 11.1
The tablet seems to show that the Sumerians at least in one mythical tradition conceived of a time of ultimate peace and prosperity that was not to last. Whether this influenced later mythological tradition is tough to say but possible parallels between it and Genesis 11.1 are certainly there.
I hope this is permissible to ask: What is the book you mention having read on the Bronze Age Collapse? I'd be interested in hearing about a good book on the subject.
What does TBAC stand for here? Google is not helping.
I feel that a comment about the Biblical "Eden" is in order here.
The concept has its historical roots in Sumer's edin (phon. */eden/ ~ */edin/) (PDF), a place that pre-dates the Hebraic authorship by about 1500 years. In the Sumerian tongue, the word meant a grazing land between two rivers. It was also the name of the royal field, in the center of the city. There is little information we know about this original Eden or its function, but one can find immediate parallels. That edin was a word indicating a field between waterways is preserved in the legendary garden nestled between four rivers, two of which are believed to be the Tigris and Euphrates. The word and concept of Eden was borrowed separately into Semitic tongues (it was not loaned to Proto-Semitic, as the Akkadian and Hebrew lemmata betray a phonology that is not reconstruct-able to the PSemitic layer).
The evidence to support it is very strong and a lot of it is archaeological but Homer is a good source as well. Basically remember that there is no practical writing after the collapse and even during it was only really for records. Next realize that great, using that term loosely, Bronze age Greek kingdoms didn't disappear without evidence. Basically after a few generations very little can be remembered about these old great Kingdoms but they are surrounded by evidence of their existence.
Where Homer comes into play is that he explains some of these remnants in the Illiad incorrectly. Most notably his use of chariots in the Epic. There are remains which depict chariots and he includes them in his work however, he doesn't know how they are used so if you read it you'll see that Hector uses his Chariot to get to the battle but doesn't fight off of it.
That is certainly a contributing factor, as for their pessimistic world view I don't think anyone could make a strong primary source based argument for where it originates, its simply too big a question with too little available evidence. That being said the Greeks were in fact intesely pessimistic if the written evidence is to be taken as representative of the Greek worldview. This can be seen in their tragedies but also in their legends. Herodotus writes about Croesus, the king of a wealthy neighbor of Persia, and how a Greek friend told him to throw away a ring because his wealth would displease the gods. So Croesus threw the ring into the ocean but a week later a fisherman caught a huge fish and delivered it to Croesus. The ring fell out of the fish and the Greek friend cut off all ties because he knew Croesus was doomed due to his good fortune.
Follow up question: Didn't the Chinese also believe in a mythical golden age before the current age? My personal conjecture is that a lot of cultures have these "lost golden ages" as part of their mythology, and it generally refers to a vague cultural memory of when the people who were now farmers had been hunter-gatherers. At least, that's how I personally read the Garden of Eden and other stories. Don't know much about the bronze age collapse specifically.
Do Eden-like myths only exist in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East?