Is "1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed" a good source?

by HerostratusTHEJERK

Is this book considered relevant by today's historians? or is it bunk?

rosemary85

Yep, definitely. Eric Cline is a very good scholar on the Late Bronze Age. He's not without his flaws -- for example, he's a firm believer in a historical Trojan War, something for which no evidence exists until 500 years later, and by pure coincidence at a time when the Greeks were busily colonising the Troad and experiencing ethnic conflicts with the pre-existing local community/ies -- but flaws like that are very much moot points and open to genuine debate. He's an excellent scholar. Strongly recommended.

Just don't believe the blurb or the title. The book itself says things that are quite different from what the blurb says (some examples: though he gives a lot of attention to the Sea Peoples, Cline's argument is, quite correctly, that there's no evidence they had anything at all to do with the collapse of the Hittite Empire; he quite openly admits that the year 1177 BCE is pretty much an arbitrary choice; and of course "civilization" did not "collapse", even if we just limit ourselves to talking about the eastern Mediterranean, since the Egyptian and Assyrian empires continued on quite happily after that date).

As a matter of interest, Cline did an AMA back in May that focused mainly on the book. It doesn't add anything new, but it sure adds a human touch.

TL;DR: Cline is a Good Egg, but the PR may be rather misleading.