Civilization #6: Elite Overproduction and the Bronze Age Collapse

Today we will discuss the Bronze Age Collapse. I want to paint you a picture of the world in about 1200 BC. In this world, the center of this world is what we call Mycenaean Greece. Across from Mycenaean Greece, across the Aegean Sea, is what we call Anatolia. Today we refer to Anatolia as Turkey. In Anatolia, the Hittite Empire rules Anatolia.

Further south is a place called Canaan. Canaan is important when we do the Bible because that is the birthplace of the Israelites. Canaan today is what we refer to as Lebanon, Syria and Israel. Canaan is a province of the Egyptian Empire. This is Egypt.

Over here is a place called Mesopotamia, and we today call Mesopotamia Iraq. Over here is today what we call Iran. Back then it was basically Persia. Over here is Afghanistan, and then next to Afghanistan is India. Of course, remember these are the steppes. For Mycenaean Greece, you also had the Mediterranean, and over here are the islands of Cyprus and Crete. Then over here is a place called Iberia, and over here is Britain.

This is a map of the world in 1200 BC. What's really important for you to recognize about this world is it's interconnected, meaning that they are trading and communicating with each other. This is what we call the Bronze Age. Why is it called the Bronze Age? Because they're trading basically bronze during this period. Back then bronze is like oil today. It is the basis for the economy, the very structure of their economy.

Bronze is an alloy made of copper and tin. Copper and tin you have to mine, and only a few places will have these resources.

• Tin is found in Britain, in Iberia, in Anatolia, in Afghanistan.
• Copper is mainly found in Cyprus and Crete and also in Anatolia.

What this means is, in order to make bronze, you basically have to trade with the entire world. The trading would go as far as from India to Britain. Even China over here was part of this world, but not to the degree as these other places.

Mining, manufacturing, trading and piracy

1. In this world there are different ways that you can profit or make money. The first way is mining, basically extracting resources to incorporate in order to make bronze. The second way is industry, manufacturing: making bronze from tin and copper and then turning bronze into weapons, into pottery, to be sold elsewhere.
2. The third way you can make money is by what? Trading. In this world, if you look at this map, who would make the most money from trading? This area, because it is the center of the world. You have to pass through this world in order to access everywhere else. This place over here, if you look at the map, becomes the center of the world because this place becomes the logistics hub of the world. To get to anywhere, you have to pass through this place, and so this place can basically collect tolls.
3. It's the toll gate of the world. You have to pass through this place in order to access other places; therefore this place is very wealthy. Can you guess what this place is called? Troy. Have you guys heard of the Trojan War? I want you to understand this place is called Troy, and because this place is so important, for centuries they've been fighting wars over this place because it's really the center of the universe. If you can control this place, you become very wealthy because everyone has to pass through you. You can collect tolls; you can trade.
4. What's the last way in which you can make a lot of money in this world? We can do it through mining, industry, trading. What else can you do to make money? Piracy. Steal. When we read the Odyssey, what you will discover is the Greeks who attacked Troy were basically pirates. Troy made a lot of money off trading, and pirates went to steal a lot of their resources and wealth.

The main point is that this world was interconnected. It was a globalized world. We call this globalization. But at the same time it was very chaotic. It was very dynamic. They traded with each other, but they also fought wars against each other. These places in the center of the universe, Mycenaean Greece, became very wealthy because they traded and they engaged in piracy. The Hittites became very wealthy. Egypt became very wealthy because they were the center of the universe.

The Bronze Age Collapse and the Sea Peoples

But a couple of decades later this entire world collapsed. This world disappeared, meaning that Mycenaean Greece was destroyed. It was completely burned down, and they lost about a quarter of their population. The Hittite Empire was destroyed. Canaan disappeared, and even though Egypt was not destroyed, it ceased to be a hegemon. It ceased to be a global power, and a few decades later they were conquered by outside powers. After 1200 BC, Egypt ceased to be a power.

This is what we call the Bronze Age Collapse. For decades scholars have been trying to figure out what happened. Why is it that in 1200 BC this world was wealthy, it was interconnected, and then a few decades later it all disappeared? It collapsed. That's a great mystery that no one has been able to solve.

Let me tell you what we know. We know that what caused this collapse was what we call the Sea Peoples. We know because Egypt has written records of battling the Sea Peoples. Basically, over the course of a few decades, people were coming in from the west and attacking Egypt. This was not one people. This was a series of different peoples attacking Egypt from the sea, and Egypt had to spend decades in order to repulse the Sea Peoples. What we know is the Sea Peoples, whoever they were, didn't destroy Egypt, but they did destroy the Hittites, and they did destroy Mycenaean Greece.

What we know is that the Sea Peoples were basically a combination of pirates and also refugees. These people attacked Egypt because Egypt was the breadbasket of the world. That's where all the food was, so they're attacking Egypt for the food. These are people who are hungry. They joined pirates who had ships. They were trying to take over Egypt. Together they destroyed Mycenaean Greece. They destroyed the Hittites. They were stopped in Egypt.

Another question then is, what was driving this population movement from west to east? That's a great mystery, and over the past few decades different solutions, different ideas have been proposed.

Invasion, natural disaster and a perfect storm

Before, we thought that it must have been an invasion. The idea is that you had people from the north of Europe invade Mycenaean Greece, which drove them westward. That's the first idea that we had, but we have not found any evidence this is the case. Even though this was one of the first theories, there's actually no evidence to support this.

The second theory that we had is basically a natural disaster. The idea is maybe there was a volcanic explosion somewhere, and this caused the weather to change. Now farmers could no longer feed themselves, so then they started to move westwards and attack Egypt. That's a second theory, and there's more evidence for this.

• But the theory that we have today is a perfect storm, or a systems collapse. The idea here is that it was not one thing in one year that caused this system to collapse. It was a series of events over decades. These three major events are natural disasters, basically earthquakes. We have archaeological evidence that there was a series of earthquakes in this region at this time which destabilized the region. Earthquakes happened.
• We also have evidence of climate change. The weather became cooler over the course of this period, which meant that it was harder to grow crops. We also have evidence of internal revolt, meaning that people rebelled against the elite, overthrew kings, and there was a lot of war and violence. The theory that we have today is what caused the Bronze Age Collapse was a perfect storm, basically multiple factors which led to systems collapse.

One thing that you may have noticed in this class is that I have a very different understanding of history than other people. I happen to disagree with this theory of the perfect storm, even though it is the scholarly consensus. I want to explain to you today my theory of what happened.

Elite overproduction

The first thing you need to understand is this systems collapse, even though it was traumatic for Europe, is not unique in human history. This sort of stuff has happened before. If we go over here to North America, to the Mayas, the Maya civilization existed in Central America, or Guatemala basically. We find a similar pattern where in about 200 AD, in the year 200, their civilization started to explode. It started to increase. It reached its peak in about 900 AD. In the year 900 its civilization was all over the place in Central America, but then after 900 it went all the way down. So, about 300 years' time: by 1200, basically their entire civilization almost collapsed. It's a very similar pattern to what was happening in the Bronze Age. The question then is, why does this happen?

To understand this, I'm going to present you with a new theory that we will use a lot in this class. I want you to understand this theory. It comes from a historian by the name of Peter Turchin, who's a historian. He's American, but he came over from Russia. He's basically Russian-American. He has a theory called elite overproduction. The theory is very interesting because it's arguing against the way we traditionally understand why societies collapse.

The way we usually understand why societies collapse, we get from Karl Marx. Basically what Karl Marx says is eventually your society collapses because the people revolt. Basically, people's rebellion. In other words, Karl Marx believes that society collapses because it is a bottom-up process. It's a bottom-up process. If you treat workers badly, they will stop working. If you force them to work, they will go on strike. If you force them to work again, they will fight against you. They will rebel. A worker revolution. That's what Karl Marx argues.

Peter Turchin says that's a really interesting theory, but if you look at the historical data, if you look at the evidence, if you look at why societies collapsed, it's not because the people rebelled. It's because there's infighting among the elite. There's civil war among the elite. That's his theory. The problem with society isn't that there's too many poor people. The problem is there are too many rich people. That's the real problem, and that's why societies collapse. Let me explain to you this theory slowly.

A permanent hereditary elite

In this world, about 1200 BC, we have something called a permanent hereditary elite. Permanent just means they're always there. Hereditary means they pass on their status and their privilege and their wealth to their children. This is new in human history because before there was an elite, but they were not permanent, meaning they could be changed over time, and they didn't pass their privileges on to their children. Everyone had to earn their privilege and power. The elite was constantly shifting in society, but now, in about the year 1200 BC, you had a permanent hereditary elite.

1. When you have that, you have three advantages. What the elite give to society are three major advantages. The first major advantage is the idea of organization. Basically, think of the elite as society's brain. They can help coordinate resources. That's good for war. You're fighting an enemy; you need an elite to lead you into battle. It's also good for public works. Think of the pyramids in Egypt and the Great Wall of China. You need an elite to organize your resources in order to create public works that benefit all society. The main thing here would be irrigation. You need an elite in order to have irrigation, so that's the first major benefit of having a permanent hereditary elite.
2. The second major advantage is because you have better organization, you have more wealth. Society becomes wealthier if you have a permanent elite. People work harder, and even though there's more inequality, inequality also forces people to work harder.
3. Because you have these two things, organization and wealth, you also have scale. What scale basically means is your population now can move up. Before, in the egalitarian society, when you didn't have a permanent elite, at most society could reach about 10,000 people. But now when you have a permanent elite, you can reach about a million people. Now you can scale up. These are three major advantages to having an elite.

Rent-seeking behavior

But there's a problem with having an elite. The problem is they engage in something called rent-seeking behavior. I want you guys to remember this term, rent-seeking behavior, which is very important for our class. What does this mean? Think of a landlord. A landlord doesn't really do anything, but a landlord has land that it can rent to you, the farmer. In exchange, you give me a share of your crops. I don't do anything, but because I have land, I can rent it out to you. It turns out the elite mainly make their money through rent-seeking behavior.

Let me give you another example of rent-seeking behavior. All of you want to go to university. Why do you want to go to university? What's your purpose? What's your purpose in going to university? Be honest. It's to get the degree. The degree is your ticket to success in society. You believe that when you go to university you are getting a ticket, the degree, in order to access social mobility, to access wealth in society. In other words, the universities are charging you rent. The degree is basically rent.

Now some of you may say, “Wait, that's wrong because I'm going to university to learn. It's about learning.” Well, guess what? When you actually go to university, you're going to discover they don't actually teach you that much. They don't have to teach you that much. The reason why is you're stuck paying the rent. You need the degree, so they don't have to actually teach you anything. You have to come to class anyway.

The same thing for this school. In order to get to university, you have to go through this high school, so you're here paying tuition, and you're paying rent. You're not here in school to learn. You're here in school to get the degree so that you can access university and get that degree. In all this process, all you're doing is paying rent. If you have a school, you can charge people rent, just as if you're a landlord, you can charge people rent for renting your room or real estate property. This is what we call rent-seeking behavior.

The social contract

Now you're like, “Well, this kind of sucks.” It does suck, but what keeps the system together is the idea of a social contract. Basically, the idea of a social contract is, yes, we the elite know we are charging you rent, and we know this sucks for you, the people, but we have a contract. As the elite, I'm obligated to help society. The way they help society is by giving back to society.

What the elite do throughout society in the past is they organize public feasts and also public temples. In today's society, the parks, the schools, they're built by the government. But back then they didn't have a government. The elites were responsible for building temples, for holding public feasts. This is the idea of a social contract.

The reason why you need a social contract is because if you don't have a social contract and you just charge rent, people will leave. In this world it's very chaotic, but there are different places, there are different social organizations you can go to. If you are in Egypt and you don't really like Egypt, guess what? You can go to Mesopotamia. These cities were in competition with each other for people because people provided labor and resources. This is how it usually works, but over time this system will break down. This system will break down, and it's because of rent-seeking behavior.

• The first issue is this: with rent-seeking behavior, you create something called debt. I'm a landlord, and you are paying me rent in order to use my land. That rent is usually a portion of your crops, maybe 10% of your crops. But let's just say, for example, it's a bad year. It doesn't rain, and you don't have any crops to pay me rent. What do you do? You're supposed to pay me rent, but you don't have the money, so what do you do? No, that comes later. What do you do first?
  
  The first thing that happens is borrowing. You basically go into debt. You promise to pay me double in the next year, and I'm like, “Fine.” But you get unlucky, and the next year it's also a bad year. For five years in a row, you are in debt. The problem with debt is there's something called compound interest, meaning over time the debt becomes so large there's no way you can pay it off. If you can't pay it off, what happens? What happens now?
  
  The idea is debt slavery. If you can't pay me back, you become my slave. You promise me that your children will work for me for free. Debt slavery becomes the natural product of rent-seeking behavior. Over time you're always going to have a percentage of your population who go into debt slavery, and this creates a lot of instability in society because obviously they either want to run away or they want to rebel.
• The other problem is elite overproduction. The idea here is everyone wants to be the renter. Everyone wants to be the landlord, but there's only so much land. Now people are competing for the power to charge rent. Over time in any society, as the population increases, the number of people who go into debt slavery increases, and therefore people at the bottom are very angry. But at the same time the elite, the number goes up, but there's only a set amount of land, and therefore they have to fight over the land.

Eventually what happens is the society goes into war as the elite fight each other for the right to charge rent. The main message of elite overproduction is unless you can control the number of the elite in your society, your society must collapse. It must collapse because you have too many people fighting for too little power. It must collapse.

Land redistribution, civil war and empire building

1. Historically, what are things you can do to control the number of the elite? Kill the elite? But then where does the property go? One possible thing you can do is the idea of land redistribution. Historically this is one mechanism you can use to control the growth of the elite, and this is how kings came into power. Most societies have an elite, and then one person from the elite said, “Listen, this society is not working. Let me redistribute the land and cancel debt in order for our society to keep on going.” This person became the king. That's one possible solution.
2. What's another possible solution? You can also have a civil war. The elite can fight amongst themselves, and whoever wins gets everything. That's a second possible solution. What's another possible solution? Empire building. In other words, let's not fight amongst ourselves. Let's go and conquer new territory.

Because you have a permanent hereditary elite, over time they're going to reach a mass, too many people. When you have too many elite, you have to resolve this issue through three ways. The first thing you can do is kill the elite and redistribute the land. That's what a king does. The second thing you can do is have a civil war. The third thing you can do is create an empire.

But these three solutions by themselves are also unstable because land redistribution is basically a revolution. Civil war is war. Empire building is also war. No matter how you do these things, you're always going to create instability, and eventually your empire, your society will collapse.

Capital and the real economy

Let me give you another example of how this works to clarify for you. There's a book called Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas. Thomas is a French economist, and this is a very famous book that's been recently published. In the book he looked at the past 100 years of economic growth. What he discovered over time is the financial economy grows faster than the real economy. Capital grows faster than manufacturing.

• Capital grows at 5%.
• The real economy grows at 2%.

If things stay stable over time, this will happen to all societies. Capital will grow faster than the real economy.

What this means is, let's just say you have a million dollars. I have a million dollars. I have different options to invest my money. I can start a factory, or I can put all my money into real estate or the stock market. Where should I put my money? I can open a factory, or I can put it in the stock market. Where should I put my money? If you have money today, you do not put your money into the factories. You do not open a new business. You put it in the stock market because you make more money that way.

What's the problem with that? It's just a bubble, guys. Why is it a bubble? Because money isn't real. Capital isn't real. It's a fiction. In other words, you don't work anymore. You're just renting now. You're engaging in rent-seeking behavior. When you have too many people doing that, you have a society where nobody works. Nobody does any work because all the wealth is being put into rent-seeking behavior. It's being put into speculation, so no one's doing any more work. No one's creating more wealth, and this eventually leads to social collapse at some point.

Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction is because the number of rich people can only go up over time, your society must collapse at some point unless you choose to have a revolution, or you have a civil war, or you go invade other countries. Those are your three options. But if you did that, that creates more instability. Over time, no matter how you structure your society, it will collapse.

That's what happened during the Bronze Age Collapse, where these societies, Mycenaean Greece, the Hittites, Egypt, Canaan, were fundamentally unstable because of rent-seeking behavior. Same thing with the Mayans, where they were growing very fast, but eventually they collapsed. All societies will do this at some point. No society is stable. The reason why is you have an elite in charge who help society grow, but over time they will just engage in rent-seeking behavior, which will eventually lead to collapse of society. This is a pattern that we'll see over and over again in human history.

Mycenaean Greece and the palace economy

Let's look at a very specific example of rent-seeking behavior: Mycenaean Greece. Last class we talked about the Yamnaya. They conquered Europe. Mycenaean Greece and the Hittites are direct descendants of the Yamnaya, and as you remember this is a warrior culture. These societies are warrior societies, meaning the warriors are in charge. They have a system called a palace economy. A palace economy is basically the palace is at the center of society, and everyone brings their wealth to the palace to be redistributed to everyone else.

The idea here is we're all farmers. Maybe you have 100 bushels of wheat, maybe 20 bushels of corn. Everyone brings everything to the palace, and then the king redistributes everything to you. But obviously he takes a cut. This is called rent-seeking behavior, where you're basically paying taxes.

This is fine when things are good, but if the weather becomes bad, the system starts to collapse. Why? If the weather is bad, things start to become chaotic. Why? The reason why is the elite still want their cut. It's not like, “Oh, this year the weather's bad, so let's just suffer together. Let's make sacrifices together.” No, it's like, “No, we don't care the weather is bad. You still have to pay our cut. You still have to pay your taxes.” That creates strain on the people. The people get very angry.

We have evidence that during the Bronze Age there was an internal revolt in Mycenaean Greece. The reason why is we can dig up Mycenaean Greece, the palace, and what we see is the palace is burnt down, but the surrounding houses are fine. We also have written records from Mycenaean Greece that show how the palace economy worked. We can also dig up the graves of the kings and show that over time they became wealthier and wealthier because, when they were buried, the things they were buried with were very expensive.

A lot of scholars believe that the Bronze Age Collapse was a unique event in European history. What I'm trying to show you is it was not a unique event. It was not a revolution. It's just part of the natural cycle of history because when you have an elite who engage in rent-seeking behavior, eventually this society will collapse because you have too many elite who want their cut. When we look at other societies, you would discover this pattern repeats itself. This is Peter Turchin, his theory of elite overproduction.

Let me clarify about Mycenaean Greece. The problem is that you have too many rich people who want to charge rent, and that creates pressure on society. This instability means that your society is no longer resilient. The idea of resilience is that it survives disasters. Think of a tower that's about to collapse. It will not collapse on its own. Something must hit it for it to collapse, but this one thing could be anything. It could be the people get angry and they riot. It could be the weather turns bad. It could be there's an earthquake. It could be there's an invasion.

These different societies, Mycenaean Greece, the Hittites, the Canaanites, collapsed for different reasons, but the fundamental reason is because their societies were unstable. The reason why they were unstable is you had too many elite people trying to charge rent on everyone else.

Can you avoid the cycle in today's society?

That's a great question, and the answer is no. It is impossible to build a society that is stable over a long period of time. In fact, you can make the argument that it is good for societies to rise and fall. It's really the same question as, is it possible for us to live forever? Is it possible for us to live forever? Then the question is, why would we want to live forever? Innovation happens when we die.

What's amazing about the Bronze Age Collapse is because the Bronze Age collapsed, Mycenaean Greece changed into a new society that gave us Greek civilization, which then gave us Western civilization. In other words, if Mycenaean Greece had not collapsed, we would not have today. Also because Canaan collapsed, a new society came into being called the Israelites, Israel. Israel gave us what? You guys know the Bible. Guess what, guys? The Greeks and the Bible, the two foundations of Western civilization.

We would not have Western civilization if this society had not collapsed and new societies could come into being. You can make the argument that innovation and progress are driven by death and collapse. If we did not die, if societies did not collapse, there'd be no progress. People have been debating this question for a long time, but I think the answer is it is impossible to build a society that lives forever, even though people have tried. Also, we shouldn't even try because collapse is good.

Also think of a forest fire. Have you studied forest fires in school, in science class? Forest fires, guys, each time there's a forest fire, the forest burns down. That's good because it allows the forest to regenerate and become stronger. What happens if you don't have a forest fire? Do you guys know? The resilience goes down, and also the ecosystem is less vibrant. There are fewer animals. The trees are less strong.

That's why it's important to burn down the forest now and then. If you don't burn down the forest, then it's less resilient. If there's a big forest fire, it will just spread and destroy the entire forest. It's good for societies to constantly change over time.

Egalitarian societies and competition

Before, we talked about egalitarian societies, how they were at most 10,000 people, and they did have an elite. They had an elite. They had people in charge, but this elite didn't own the property. There's no private property. It's egalitarian, and these societies were pretty stable. The reason why is usually it was the women in charge, and women were good at controlling population because as a woman you have control over your body, so you could choose not to have children or have fewer children. It was very peaceful. People didn't really fight because there's nothing to fight over. Everything was owned by everyone else.

The problem with these societies is these three things. They're less organized, meaning they are less willing or less able to create public projects. They have less wealth, and therefore they have less scale. You can have at most 10,000 people, which means what? Which means eventually they'll be conquered. Because if you are one of these societies, you're an empire, you must constantly expand in order to police the elite, basically. Either you expand or you fight a civil war, and so you take over egalitarian societies, and you make them into your society.

For most of human history we're egalitarian, but that's because we didn't have that many people. Over time as population increases, then you are less egalitarian. You become more unequal. If you stay egalitarian, you will eventually be conquered by a non-egalitarian society. For most of human history we're egalitarian, but once we start to develop elite societies, kingdoms, then they could easily conquer egalitarian societies.

When we do Sumeria, which is basically many different city-states in Iraq, Mesopotamia, what we will discover is that there are different social structures. There are different social structures, including societies that were egalitarian. But when you're in competition with each other, societies that are more organized, more wealthy, and have bigger populations will always win out over other societies. To have these three things, you need a permanent hereditary elite because then they are more incentivized to work harder.

The question then is, why is that true? This is true because for societies to become wealthier, you don't need everyone to work hard. You just need a certain number of people to work hard. You just need a small group of people to work hard. Think of China, how China became wealthier these past 30, 40 years. The reason why is you had a small number of entrepreneurs who worked really, really hard. Not everyone worked hard, but because you have these people who did work really hard, China became wealthier.

What makes this class different from other classes is we are looking at the entire scope of human history. It's very important for you to not remember the facts. I don't need you to remember the facts. I don't need you to remember Mycenaean Greece or the Sea Peoples, but I do need you to remember the concepts and the ideas, how world history is constantly in competition with each other and why it is that some ideas win out over other ideas.

I'm not saying this is the best idea. I'm not saying a permanent hereditary elite is a really good idea. I don't think it's a good idea. But I'm showing you why it wins out and how it impacts human history and the development of civilization.