The Vulnerability of Mycenaeans and Minoans: Internal Decay and Collapse AUTHOR NAME: Eric Cline BOOK TITLE: After 1177 BC, The Survival of Civilizations The Minoans and Mycenaeans are considered examples of societies that failed to survive the catastroph
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John Batchelor
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🗓️ 12 October 2025
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Summary
The Vulnerability of Mycenaeans and Minoans: Internal Decay and Collapse
BOOK TITLE: After 1177 BC, The Survival of Civilizations
The Minoans and Mycenaeans are considered examples of societies that failed to survive the catastrophe. Though seemingly vibrant, they may have been vulnerable and rotted internally, collapsing when stressors hit, possibly due to overextension on ambitious construction projects. Writing from the era (Linear B) is purely administrative, providing no records of the reasons for their demise or leadership quality. Their societies vanish completely by the 11th century BC.
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| 0:17.9 | Visit sumup.co.uk to learn more. |
| 0:24.0 | I'm John Bachelor with Professor Eric Klein. The book is after 1177, lessons learned about how you |
| 0:30.1 | cope with, how you survive, how you don't. What resilience is when the world has met a catastrophe that wipes out crops, |
| 0:40.3 | wipes out people, reduces populations by up to 70, 80, 90 percent. |
| 0:45.3 | And we come now to the Minoans, which we know as Crete, |
| 0:50.3 | and the Mycenaeans, which we know as not the mainland, a series of islands that are attached, the Peloponnese, the mainland where Athens is, but this is early on. |
| 1:02.0 | And so the question is, how did they survive or did they? |
| 1:06.0 | And here in, Professor, I divide into the Mycinans and the Minoans on Crete. |
| 1:13.0 | The Minoans were builders. |
| 1:15.0 | The Mycenaans were okay builders, but they inherited it a lot, if I read this correctly. |
| 1:21.3 | The Minowans were building huge operations, sort of like Belt and Road Initiative. |
| 1:27.3 | Why that looked to be a creation of genuine superiority? |
| 1:33.5 | Why did it fall apart? |
| 1:35.8 | Well, these are good questions. |
| 1:38.9 | But what we've got basically in the late Bronze Age, |
| 1:42.9 | we've got the Mnowans on Crete, and Sir Arthur Evans excavated the site of Canalsas. |
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