[Potemkin]

The invasions of the Sea Peoples cannot reasonably be compared to the current immigration crisis in Europe. An immigration crisis alone cannot precipitate the downfall of a civilisation; natural catastrophes coupled with repeated, massive invasions of barbarian tribes might do it.

[noemon]

Indeed they cannot, but 99% of the people watching this do not have the historical or reasoning capacity to avoid making the connection, don't ya think?

[fuser]

We are forgetting the real deal here, Sea People were nothing like ISIS, they were not even Greeks. They were in fact trans-dimensional aliens.

[noemon]

You sure do have a point there, fuser.

[layman]

The 'barbarianization' theory of the fall of the roman empire is often used in this context. To be fair, I think the theory is pretty old and goes back before the 20th century and the 20th centurys migration fears.

While the theory has gone out of fashion, I dont think it was specifically made to put across a political point. It just fitted well.

[noemon]

Your example is indeed an example that can be used, but the bible-thumpers take issue with that for obvious reasons(he would then have to say that the christians were ISIS instead) so he chose another era to appropriate and that was the era of the "Philistines" instead. Hehe.

The era of volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and floods. double hehe.

[Potemkin]

The 'barbarianization' theory of the fall of the roman empire is often used in this context. To be fair, I think the theory is pretty old and goes back before the 20th century and the 20th centurys migration fears.

It was mainly popularised by Edward Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

While the theory has gone out of fashion, I dont think it was specifically made to put across a political point. It just fitted well.

In 18th century Britain, the theory that barbarians had destroyed the Western Roman Empire suited the new ideology of imperialism - Britain saw itself as the cultural inheritor of the Roman Empire, with a duty to spread enlightenment and civilisation across a benighted, barbaric world. The fall of the Western Roman Empire was seen as a prime example of what could happen if barbarism was not proactively kept in check by the forces of civilisation. Basically, it was used as a justification for aggressive imperialism.

Nowadays, following the collapse of the European empires in the 20th century, the usefulness of this ideology has ended. We therefore now tend to see the collapse of the Western Roman Empire as having many causes, primarily internal ones, and that the pressure from the Germanic barbarian tribes was merely the straw which broke the camel's back.

However, some people now seem to be trying to resurrect this idea, but reinterpreted in terms of immigration and population migrations rather than actual full-scale invasions of entire tribes. I can see why they would want to do this, but it's intellectually rather dubious.

[Saeko]

Let me guess your author discovered that immigrants caused the collapse of the Bronze Age Civilizations, the Dorian descent in Greece, the Aegean descent in the Levant and so on and forth. The fact is that by 600 BCE we were in the Classical Age, you know the Age where the epitome of perfection were achieved, so if it takes a collapse and a rearrangement for classical perfection to be achieved then that can only be a positive for civilization in the long-run.

In other news serious historians also consider the eruption of the Thera volcano as conducive to the event.

That's like saying we should all try to get cancer because a cancer patient's grandkid became a millionaire.

[noemon]

It is indeed too stupid to consider 'cancer'(read immigration) as relevant to the losing or the winning of the lottery.

You are absolutely right.

Unless of course you want to argue that cancer is what caused the failure of the other grand-kids to win the lottery, like the bible-thumping OP for example.

[Potemkin]

That's like saying we should all try to get cancer because a cancer patient's grandkid became a millionaire.

I think noemon is making a valid point: that before a civilisation can make a 'Great Leap Forward' it often (though not always) had to undergo a preceding collapse, or at least a major existential crisis. After all, Europe in the Middle Ages had a very stable and prosperous civilisation. The medieval cathedrals were the largest building project since the Pyramids, and Dante had written the greatest poem of all time, the Divine Comedy. Why would that successful civilisation ever have given way to anything else? The reason is because the catastrophes of the 14th century triggered a catastrophic loss of self-confidence, a loss of faith in their own society and in their sense of its fundamental rightness. People had to find new ways of doing things, they had to think new thoughts and adapt themselves to new and more difficult conditions. It was this which led to the resurgence of interest in the ancient classical world, and to the general spirit of enquiry, innovation and exploration which we retrospectively call "the Renaissance".

Noemon is simply saying that something similar happened in Greece after the collapse of the Bronze Age, and in my opinion he's clearly right.