| Epilogue In the Prologue I have set out the aims of this research and the motives which have brought me to do it. The results are in the book. The conclusions are frightening. It started out as a research to find the roots of an old and very well documented conflict. At the end it turned out that the conflict is a by-product of a climatic change which occurred about 11000 years ago. We are still suffering from the results of that climatic change, overpopulation, environmental disasters and the conflict itself. Now, at the end of the road, I reached a conclusion that the conflict does exist, and it will continue to exist, as there seems to be no possible solution in sight. It will also cause untold pains and sufferings to its participants and victims, but its importance is being dwarfed by other problems that have to be solved, if humanity is to survive. In the chapter: Tour de Horizon, I attempted to draw a picture of the present state of the world, in order to provide an anchor point to the research. Since writing that, nearly a year ago, I read the daily newspapers, and now and then watched the TV news as well. If I combine both, the perspective of a year ago and the developments since, I feel that humanity is about to slide into an abyss. There is, however, a great degree of confusion. On one hand, there is a feeling, a near conviction, that human history is one-directional. Our last episode started with a random climatic accident, which gave humanity the poisoned apple. It continued on its prescribed path and is nearing its inevitable end. When I write inevitable, it means that neither I nor anyone else can know the bearing capacity of our planet. The demographic explosion is continuing, together with the spread of the ecological damage. It is only a question of time, if it has not happened already, that there will be somewhere a system breakdown causing a general collapse in a domino fashion. There are daily signs that such a general collapse is a real possibility; the symptoms are printed in newspaper headlines and shown on TV screens. On the other hand there are the professional Dr. Panglosses who comfort the world with soothing words and profound wisdom. According to them, global prosperity is just around the corner, followed by peace and love to all. World peace can be assured by eating Big Mac, as no country that had MacDonald outlets ever went to war with another country with the same brand. It is an extremely thoughtful observation. As 80 % of the world's population earns less than $1,000 yearly, spending $3 for a greasy piece of meat is an unattainable dream. So, if everybody will be rich and contented, there will be no more wars. Very profound indeed. So where is the truth? There are periodical soothing remarks about global prosperity, wired community and the brotherhood of men. But every day another country is joining the spreading darkness on the map, and frightening news of wars, starvation and climatic disasters are daily events. Icebergs are dropping into the sea, melting and raising the sea level. The climate is behaving with unwonted capriciousness all over the world. Rain in dry season, drought in rainy season, and so on. In the last 15 years there were the warmest 13 years in recorded history; it seems that this year will add to the record and so next year. And Dr. Pangloss is still out there, writing his articles and pontificating in TV talk shows. He has even included the climate among his subjects, and decided that global warming is a boon to humanity. Undoubtedly, the Maldive Islanders, and the people from the Delta of the Nile, and those from Bangladesh, who will be the first victims of the rising seas, will take heart from his encouragement. As a historian I have a strong feeling of deja vu. According to Robert Drews,the expert in the subject of the end of the Bronze Age, in the twelth century BC there was a collapse of the Mycenaean civilization and the end of the Bronze Age in the Aegean. That collapse was comparable to that of the Roman Empire 1,600 years later. That was the time of the sack of Troy, the raids by the Sea Peoples and the Dorian invasion. The reasons for that collapse are not known. There are some historians who attribute it to the Dorians, who started the whole avalanche of peoples, yet others saw an internal collapse, and the Dorians as squatters in empty territories and not conquerors. There are others who think that barbarian people who were living around the urban centers destroyed the Aegean civilization. It is true that 47 Aegean, Levantine and Syrian towns were destroyed and burnt, without new people settling in them. This is a suitable activity for people who wish to loot and destroy, and not to conquer. About the collapse of the Roman Empire we know rather more. It is true that there were barbarian raids but the number of the barbarians was minuscule compared to the population of the Empire. Rome was not destroyed from outside, it collapsed from within. The symptoms were all there. Moral collapse, birthrate below sustaining level, people who wanted to enjoy the good life and left the army to the internal and the external proletariat. The barbarians did not have to conquer Rome. They only had to fill the vacuum. After the collapse of the Mycaenean civilization there were a few hundred years of Dark Ages, then slowly the known world was organized again, until a new world empire was reorganized under Rome's control. Not with the same center as before, but to the north as befits the general south-north direction of desiccation, agriculture and civilization. After the collapse of Rome, the same sequence of events as after Mycenae.First a few hundred years of dark ages, then a slow recovery and finally a new world empire. Not with the same center as before but to the north as befits the general south-north direction of desiccation, agriculture and civilization. Sounds familiar? The Aegean civilization was not the first to collapse. Before the Aegean civilization there was the original cradle of civilization, meaning Sumer, Egypt and the Indus Valley towns. Those civilizations were destroyed about 1600 years before the collapse of the Aegean civilization. There were immediate reasons, invasions of the Aryans and the Semites, but they were really irrelevant. The real reason was the south-north movement of desiccation that always caused the center to move to the north. Now, about 1600 years after the demise of the Western Roman Empire, which followed the destruction of the Aegean world, and those of the earliest civilizations of the river valleys, we display the same symptoms as the Romans. Moral crisis, low birthrate, constant infiltration of barbarians and a general tiredness of maintaining the Empire. In Rome they became occupied with matters of aesthetic beauty, in the subtle points of Greek philosophy, both in pagan as well as Christian circles, and having a generally good life on country estates. In our times the occupations differ. Instead of circuses, we have T.V. Instead of gladiator shows we have violent spectator sports. We are still occupied with matters of aesthetic beauty, do not really care about Greek philosophy, but we are involved in matters of social justice, saving the whale and the spotted owl. We create erudite wisdom out of the consumption of scorched meat stuffed in a bun (see the parable of the Big Mac) and political movements based upon gender and sexual preferences. We do not deify dead Emperors, after all we are modern people, we only deify dead Princesses. We are well aware that weapons and armies build empires. We do enjoy the fruits garnered by those arms, but we are contrite about it and looking for ways to undo it, of course, without relinquishing the material benefits. So we can look at the pictures of bloated children and starving people and say: - It is really too bad, but at least they have their freedom. When we ruled them , they were second-rate citizens in the colonies and had to live in apartheid. It is true that they did not starve then, but now they have freedom and no apartheid. And Dr. Pangloss, who always supports freedom and brotherhood amongst people, selectively of course, and was instrumental in decolonization and in the struggle against apartheid, gently nods. Freedom and justice have triumphed. It is true that although the faithful followers and readers of Dr. Pangloss have unlimited faith in his soothing words, somehow they still prefer to live in gated communities and guarded high-rises. The rich among them build their own Shangri-Las in Patagonia, hoping that the deluge will miss them. Judging from the science fiction films of recent years, this is exactly what people are waiting for. There was a time, until about 50 years ago, when science fiction showed an optimistic future. People solving all problems and diseases, expanding to the stars; a rosy future indeed. Then suddenly the trend changed. We had 'Soylent Green', 'Blade Runner' and the 'Mad Max' series. They were all cannibalistic pictures; 'Soylent Green' cannibalized human bodies, 'Blade Runner' cannibalized science and the 'Mad Max' films cannibalized technology. None of these films and others of the same ilk showed any hope for the future. What do you do after there is nothing left to cannibalize? For the Romans it was something similar. They knew that people like Scipio, Marius, Sulla and Julius Caesar built the Empire. They were the ones who built the Empire and provided the good life for their descendants. When the descendants had to struggle to keep their good life, they failed. Edward Gibbon claimed that Christianity weakened Rome and caused its downfall. Gibbon was wrong. Maybe Christianity was one of the results but not the prime cause. Instead of the Iliad Rome had The Golden Ass. It is a well-known fact that there is a pre-determined route between the creation of wealth and the time when it is lost, primarily because of weakness caused by the wealth itself. It seems to be a permanent factor in the lives of civilizations, countries and individual families. For individual families, the route lasts 4 - 5 generations, for countries it is a few centuries, and for civilizations, the empirical data points to about 1600 years. I wrote that I have a feeling of deja vu, and I know that I am not the first who remarked on it. Hopefully, I am also not the last, and there will be clearer and more powerful voices than mine. Nietzsche wrote his predictions and so did Spengler and many others. They all saw the weakness in the social fabric of western society and the historical imperative. They reconciled themselves to the fact that it all happened before, it will all happen again. I only wish to add a few remarks: - When the original civilizations, Sumer, Egypt and the Indus Valley were in decline, there were candidates for the primacy in the north, in Crete, Greece, Anatolia and the Levant. - When the Aegean civilization was failing, the globe was still nearly empty, and there were candidates for the primacy in Italy and the Balkans. They might not have been ready then, but in time they learned. - When Rome collapsed the same happened. There were people in the north who were not ready then, so the Dark Ages came and eventually someone learned. - Now, the globe is full and the environment is crumbling. If the nerve of the presently ruling civilization will fail, as it did at Mycenae and Rome, it will leave a ruined globe to its followers. In addition, there is another problem. When the Aegean civilization failed, there were successors to the north. When Rome failed, it was the same. Where will the strong, unspoiled barbarians to succeed this civilization come from? There is a famous poem, written in 1904 by an Alexandrian Greek poet, Constantine P. Cavafy. The title of the poem is: Waiting for the Barbarians.It is about a people who are tired of their life and waiting for the barbarians to come and take over. The people, the Emperor and the consuls are waiting all day long and the barbarians fail to arrive. Cavafy ends the poem: "Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come, And some who have just returned from the border say there are no barbarians any longer. And now, what's going happen to us without barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution." It seems that Cafavy had a poetic insight into the future. |
