Civilization #6: Elite Overproduction and the Bronze Age Collapse

Let's paint a picture of the world in about 1200 BC. The center of this world was what we call Mycenaean Greece. Across the Aegean Sea from Mycenaean Greece is Anatolia, which today we refer to as Turkey. In Anatolia, the Hittite Empire ruled. Further south was a place called Canaan, which is important because it is the birthplace of the Israelites. Canaan today is what we refer to as Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. Back then, Canaan was a province of the Egyptian Empire. To the south was Egypt.

To the east was a place called Mesopotamia, which we today call Iraq. Further east is modern-day Iran, which was basically Persia, then Afghanistan, and next to Afghanistan is India. And of course, to the north are the Steppes. In the Mediterranean, you also had the islands of Cyprus and Crete. Further west was a place called Iberia, and even further, Britain.

What's really important to recognize about this world is that it was interconnected, meaning they were trading and communicating with each other. This is what we call the Bronze Age. It's called the Bronze Age because they were trading bronze. During this period, bronze was like oil today; it was the basis for the economy.

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

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

This means that in order to make bronze, you basically had to trade with the entire world. The trading world went as far as from India to Britain. Even China was part of this world, but not to the degree of these other places.

In this world, there were different ways you could profit or make money:

1. Mining: Extracting resources to make bronze.
2. Industry/Manufacturing: Making bronze from tin and copper and then turning bronze into weapons or pottery to be sold elsewhere.
3. Trading: If you look at the map, the area in the center would profit the most from trading because it was the center of the world. You had to pass through this world to access everywhere else. This place became the logistics hub of the world. To get anywhere, you had to pass through this place, and so this place could basically collect tolls. It was the toll gate of the world. This place is called Troy. You may have heard of the Trojan War. Because this place was so important, for centuries they had been fighting wars over it. If you could control this place, you became very wealthy.
4. Piracy: What's the last way in which you can make a lot of money in this world? Piracy. Steal. When we read the Odyssey, you will discover that the Greeks who attacked Troy were basically pirates. Troy made a lot of money off trading, and pirates went to steal 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 and dynamic. They traded with each other, but they also fought wars against each other. Places in the center of the universe, like Mycenaean Greece, became very wealthy because they traded and engaged in piracy. The Hittites became very wealthy, and Egypt became very wealthy.

The Great Collapse

A couple of decades later, this entire world collapsed. This world disappeared. 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, a global power. 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 and 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.

What we know is that what caused this collapse were the so-called Sea Peoples. We know this 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 repulsing them. What we know is the Sea Peoples, whoever they were, didn't destroy Egypt, but they did destroy the Hittites and Mycenaean Greece.

We figure the Sea Peoples were basically a combination of pirates and refugees. These people attacked Egypt because Egypt was the breadbasket of the world; that's where all the food was. They were attacking Egypt for food. These were hungry people who joined pirates with ships. They were trying to take over Egypt. Together, they destroyed Mycenaean Greece and the Hittites, but they failed to destroy Egypt; they were stopped there.

So 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 and ideas have been proposed.

Traditional Theories for the Collapse

Before, we thought it must have been an invasion. The idea is that you had people from the north of Europe invade Mycenaean Greece, which drove them eastward. But we have not found any evidence that this is the case.

A second theory is 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 they started to move westwards and attack Egypt. There's more evidence for this.

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: We have archaeological evidence that there was a series of earthquakes in this region at this time, which destabilized the region.
• Climate Change: 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.
• Internal Revolt: 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 that what caused the Bronze Age Collapse was a perfect storm—basically, multiple factors which led to a systems collapse. I happen to disagree with this theory of the perfect storm, even though it is the scholarly consensus. I want to explain my theory of what happened.

A New Theory: Elite Overproduction

The first thing you need to understand is that this system's 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 to North America, to the Mayas, we find a similar pattern. The Maya civilization existed in Central America. In about 200 AD, their civilization started to explode. 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. In about 30 years, by 1200, their entire civilization had 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. It comes from a historian by the name of Peter Turchin. He's a Russian-American historian, and 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 that eventually, your society collapses because the people revolt. It is 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.

Peter Turchin says that's a really interesting theory, but if you look at the historical data, the problem isn't at the bottom. 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 a civil war among the elite. That's his theory. The problem with society isn't that there are too many poor people; the problem is there are too many rich people. That's the real problem, and that's why societies collapse.

The Mechanics of Elite Overproduction

In the world of 1200 BC, we have something called a permanent hereditary elite. Permanent just means they're always there. Hereditary means they pass on their status, privilege, and 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.

When you have a permanent hereditary elite, you have three advantages they give to society:

1. Organization: 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 of society, like irrigation.
2. Wealth: 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. Scale: Because you have organization and wealth, you also have scale. Your population can now move up. Before, in an egalitarian society, at most a society could reach about 10,000 people. But now, when you have a permanent elite, you can reach about a million people.

These are three major advantages to having an elite. But there's a problem with having an elite, and the problem is they engage in something called rent-seeking behavior. I want you to remember this term.

What does this mean? Think of a landlord. A landlord doesn't really do anything, but a landlord has land that they can rent to you, the farmer, and in exchange, you give them a share of your crops. They don't do anything, but because they have land, they can rent it out. It turns out the elite mainly make their money through rent-seeking behavior.

Let me give you another example. All of you want to go to university. Why? 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 in order to access social mobility and wealth. 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." 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 because you're stuck paying the rent. You need the degree, so you don't have to actually learn 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 to get the degree so that you can access university and get that degree. And in all this process, all you're doing is paying rent.

This kind of sucks, but what keeps the system together is the idea of a social contract. The idea 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 is by giving back. In the past, the elite would organize public feasts and build public temples. In today's society, parks and schools are built by the government, but back then, the elites were responsible for these things. You need a social contract because if you don't have one and you just charge rent, people will leave. In this chaotic world, there were different places you could go. If you were in Egypt and you didn't like it, you could go to Mesopotamia. These cities were in competition with each other for people because people provided labor and resources.

Over time, this system will break down because of rent-seeking behavior.

• Debt: With rent-seeking behavior, you create debt. I'm a landlord, and you are paying me rent to use my land, usually a portion of your crops. But let's just say it's a bad year, it doesn't rain, and you don't have any crops to pay me. What do you do? You borrow. You basically go into debt. You promise to pay me double the next year. But you get unlucky, and for five years in a row, you are in debt. The problem with debt is something called compound interest. Over time, the debt becomes so large there's no way you can pay it off. If you can't pay it off, you become my slave. This is debt slavery. 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.
• Elite Overproduction: The other problem is elite overproduction. Everyone wants to be the renter; everyone wants to be the landlord. But there's only so much land. So 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 people at the bottom are very angry. At the same time, the number of elites goes up, but there's only a set amount of land, and therefore they have to fight over it. Eventually, the society goes into war as the elite fight each other for the right to charge rent.

The main message of elite overproduction is that 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.

Resolving Elite Overproduction

Historically, what can you do to control the number of the elite?

1. Land Redistribution: This is one mechanism. 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.
2. Civil War: The elite can fight amongst themselves, and whoever wins gets everything.
3. 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 of too many people. When you have too many elite, you have to resolve this issue through one of these three ways. But these three solutions by themselves are also unstable. 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 society will collapse.

A Modern Parallel: Capital vs. The Real Economy

There's a book called Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty, a French economist. In the book, he looked at the past 100 years of economic growth and discovered that over time, 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, this will happen to all societies. What this means is, let's just say you have a million dollars. You have different options to invest your money. You can start a factory, or you can put all your money into real estate or the stock market. Where should you put your money? In the stock market. Why? Because you make more money that way.

What's the problem with that? It's just a bubble. 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. No one's creating more wealth, and this eventually leads to social collapse.

Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction is that 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, a civil war, or you go invade other countries. But if you do that, that creates more instability. So over time, no matter how you structure your society, it will collapse. That's what happened during the Bronze Age Collapse. These societies—Mycenaean Greece, the Hittites, Egypt, Canaan—were fundamentally unstable because of rent-seeking behavior. Same thing with the Mayans. They were growing very fast, but eventually, they collapsed. All societies will do this at some point.

Applying the Theory to Mycenaean Greece

Mycenaean Greece and the Hittites were direct descendants of the Yamnaya, which was a warrior culture. These were warrior societies, meaning the warriors were in charge. They had a system called a palace economy. 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. You bring everything to the palace, and then the king redistributes everything to you, but obviously, he takes a cut. This is 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? Because 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, "We don't care the weather is bad; you still have to pay our cut." That creates strain on the people, and the people get very angry.

We have evidence that during the Bronze Age, there was an internal revolt in Mycenaean Greece. We can dig up 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 the things they were buried with were very expensive.

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. Resilience is the idea 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 they were unstable is you had too many elite people trying to charge rent on everyone else.

The Cyclical Nature of History

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 that it was not a unique event. It was not a revolution; it's just part of the natural cycle of history. 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 will discover this pattern repeats itself.

Can We Avoid This Cycle Today?

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?" The question then is, why would we want to live forever? Innovation happens when we die.

What's amazing about the Bronze Age Collapse is that because it collapsed, Mycenaean Greece changed into a new society that gave us Greek civilization, which then gave us Western Civilization. Because Canaan collapsed, a new society came into being called the Israelites. Israel gave us the Bible. The Greeks and the Bible are the two foundations of Western Civilization. We would not have Western Civilization if this society had not collapsed and new societies could not 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 would be no progress.

Think of a forest fire. 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? The resilience goes down. The ecosystem is less vibrant, there are fewer animals, and the trees are less strong. That's why it's important to burn down the forest now and then. If you don't, and 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 vs. Elite Societies

Before, we talked about egalitarian societies, how they were at most 10,000 people and they did have an elite, but this elite didn't own property. There was no private property. These societies were pretty stable. Usually, it was the women in charge, and women were good at controlling the population. It was very peaceful; people didn't really fight because there was nothing to fight over.

The problem with egalitarian societies are these three things: they're less organized, meaning they are 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 eventually they'll be conquered. If you are one of these empire societies, you must constantly expand in order to police the elite. Either you expand or you fight a civil war. So you take over egalitarian societies and make them into your society.

For most of human history, we were egalitarian, but that's because we didn't have that many people. Over time, as population increases, you become less egalitarian and more unequal. If you stay egalitarian, you will eventually be conquered by a non-egalitarian society. When we study Sumeria, which was many different city-states in Mesopotamia, we will discover that there were 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. To have these three things, you need a permanent hereditary elite because then they are more incentivized to work harder.

What makes this approach different is we are looking at the entire scope of human history. It's very important for you to not just 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 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.