5 Quotes by Eric H. Cline

But what factor, or combination of factors, may have caused the famine(s) in the Eastern Mediterranean during these decades remains uncertain. Elements that might be considered include war and plagues of insects, but climate change accompanied by drought is more likely to have turned a once-verdant land into an arid semidesert.

We must now turn to the idea of a systems collapse, a systemic failure with both a domino and multiplier effect, from which even such a globalized international, vibrant, intersocietal network as was present during the Late Bronze Age could not recover.

. . . "a town partly destroyed by fire and deserted in haste." Here, sometime around or after 1200 BCE, "loose objects were left abandoned in the courtyards and valuables were hidden in the ground. Bronze arrowheads - one of them found stuck in the side of a building - and numerous lead sling bullets scattered all over the place are eloquent proof of war.

Unfortunately, identifying Ramses II as the pharaoh of the Exodus, which is the identification most frequently found in both scholarly and popular books, does not work if one also wishes to follow the chronology presented in the Bible.

In a complex system such as our world today, this is all it might take for the overall system to become destabilized, leading to a collapse.