the fact she was such an introvert. that is another reason why i think she probably kept her sexual orientation private. it would have been the last bit of privacy she might have had that she gave up and i think she had a zone of privacy there at the end that was very important for her. i think nasa -- i know nasa wanted her to get out there more. i told a story about the time sally refused to go on a bob hope special. nasa wasn't happy. >> why did they pick her as the first woman? >> because she was so good. >> even though she was an introvert? >> yes. exactly. i think we in overtime and unless there is something pressing i will say thank you to all of you and i hope you enjoy the book and thank you for coming.

[applause] >> our final author for today from the national book festival in washington, d.c. is "1177 b.c.: the year civilization collapsed" with eric cline. >> so, eric is the first person i have met with his own

wikipedia page. she is a specialist in biblical studies and has written her collaborated on 16 books and written nearly a hundred articles. he has been featured on a number of television presentations. his book, "1177 b.c.: the year civilization collapsed," is a fascinating read. the stories and conclusions are truly interesting. may we welcome dr. eric cline. >> thank you very much. wow. it is great up here. you can all hear me i hope? wonderful. this is an honor and exciting.

i thank you all for coming today. one thing i will to is illustrate with slides but i will explain to you if you cannot see where you are what we are doing. i want to present some of the findings from the book and show you why i think it is one of the most fascinating periods in the history. the end of the late bronze age, 3,000 years ago is wahat we are talking about and this is when everything collapses. most people think about the end of rome as the major collapse but i would argue this is just as significant, if not more significant, for us today. i will give you the background. princeton university press came down to gw and said i want you to write a book on the collapse and i said, well, sure, i can

write a book on the collapse, but you know, what is as interesting is what collapsed? so i said i will write a book about the collapse if you can allow me to write about what collapsed in a large part. it was internationally and globalized and that is why i think it collapsed partly. so the beginning of the become talks about a group that will i will go back and the end is about what might have caused the collapse because to be honest we still don't know. there are a number of possibilities out there and i can go through them and come up with what i think might be the most logical answers but this is 3,000 years ago and ancient history. we are not sure what happened. we came up with it, i wrote it,

and he said to me i want to make a book trailer. and i said what is that? and he said it is where you stand up in front of the camera and advertise it like it is a movie coming out. he said, no, no, i have in mind something over the top and this is -- so we got together with an ex-student of mine and we put together a minute long trailer that ran six months before the book came out. i have no idea if it had any affect on sales but it was a lot of fun to do. if you want i can show you but if not we can skip right through it. it will be projected here and hopefully the sound is up because the sound is everything. i will warn you right now, it is completely over the top. it is made tongue and cheek. it is supposed to be one of the

december block buster things. let's see if we can get this working. [video playing]

>> thank you. i will now take questions. how can you follow that seriously? anyway we had a lot of fun doing it and i thank rob for making us doing it and jesse for making it in the first place. if you see further book trailers out there like adrian myers did one for her amazon book so i think this maybe the way of the future. let me go back and see where we are. i cannot see my slides. we are dealing with 1700-1200 bc and this is an era that is intraconnected world. you have probably heard about some of these people. this is the time of this female

pharaoh and moses the third and the hirtic pharaoh, kings tut, rameses the second and the third and he is the man under whom everything collapses during the time of the catastophre as we call it. this is the battle of kadesh, the georgian war and the time of exodus. this is 1250-1200 bc. the end of the late bronze age here. it has been said for the most pa

part -- let me turn this a bit so i can catch a glimpse of which one it is. there we go. perfect. thank you. good. you can still see it. now i can see it, too. i know where i am. it has been said for about a hundred years or so that the sea peoples were the corporate. this is an explanation that was given. the egyptians talks about this group that in french it is the sea people and they are responsible for destroying the late bronze age. he came up with the theory of one inscription and a couple minor ones and before any of the

work was done and any site that was excavated and they found was dest dest destroyed they attributed it to the sea people. and they said they would come get you. and this changed over time. we wanted to say the people may not be entirely responsible for the collapse and i think they are symptom rather a cause and as much victims as they are oppressors. this is one thing i wanted to look at in the book. i will add in a couple other factors.

i don't think it is just drought. there is drought. i will show you that. but i think it is other things. we know there are earthquakes and other invaders and so on and so forth. i think it is multitude of factors and hopefully i will be able to show that. what i want to talk to you today and write in the book is ask what happened. i started out going through some of the evidence that we have. for instance, let me give you this as a fun and interesting example. we are in the bronze age. the bronze age starts about 3,000 bc. this the late bronze age at this time. 90 percent copper and 10 percent tin will make bronze. the copper comes from a number of places but the main wan one

is cypress at the time. the tin is mostly coming from afghanistan. some from turkey and cornwall but the vast majority is coming from modern day afghanistan. some of the scholars that study this have shown this in the written tablets. this a is a tablet from maury and they say 1/3 of aminea to the interpret so someone was bilingual back then. if they are cut on the way over you are in a lot of trouble. so for instance, one of my

colleagues, carol bell in e england has said the acquisition of tin and bronze was as concerning to the egyptian pharaoh as the acquisition of oil is today to the united states president and all of us. some of you remember the gas lines back in the 1970s, right? i remember those. and that is what would have happened at the time if the trade roots had fallen and you could not get tin anymore. iron is going to take every and that is what happened what happens when you get something that is necessary and it is gone and something else comes in and takes its place. we have evidence for international trade routes and i think you will agree that getting from afghanistan and all the way to crete was pretty amazing back then. the stories of the ancient world

come to life and here we have them saying they are importing weapons made from gold and minoian still and sent over. a pair of leather shoes, probably sandals, were brought to the king of babylon and they were returned by him. why was he returning these shoes? did they not? too last season? they were not that different from us. some of the other things that i could show. i could go on for hours but

other people need the stage so let me whiz through a couple of theories to give ow -- these to give you an example. and then i will go to the end with the cause of had collapse. you are looking at the famous female pharaoh and the fill military was interested in trading embassy and this is a depiction of her sending an expedition down. the one problem is we don't know where the point is. it has been suggested to be in yemen. but recently they looked at mummies from baboons and said we

this happening -- think -- it is ethopia. the two paintings inside the egyption noble's tombs are better. this is a trade embassy coming from greece. the people carrying this we are not sure where they are but the way they are addressing and the objects they are holding are coming all the way over to egypt from far. we have people with bulls head here so we know trade is going on. this is the 15th century bc and 300 years before everything collapse but you need to go back

to three centuries to understand what collapsed. this is my favorite guys. how many have seen these in person? 60 feet tall and guarding the front of a temple that is now again because it robbed out by later pharaohs. most people don't know that inside, where the temple used to be, are slightly than larger statues. they have a list of names of foreign places and i will give you one as an example. this is known as the ageeian list. it is a list of places from greece. one one side you have greek and

crete on the other. running along the side of the place with places that belonged to the two groups. if you go to those actual sites you will find objects that belonged to the king or his wife. this list isn't a random list, i think it is a record of an embassy or voyage. it is basically how you get to greece from egypt and back again. and we have blacks with his name on it and we have items with his name or his wife's name. this isn't quite usual. if we plop this on a map it looks like you are going from egypt, to crete, to mainland

greece and back down to crete and back to egypt again. this is one of the first and last ones appearing. i see this as a bathroom stop. are we there yet? you are going from egypt and what will you do when you get to crete and then you can stop and it the last stop before 23 more miles or whatever it is we have on the new jersey turnpike. i think this is a record of a geographical itinerary. we do have evidence of ships making journeys then. this is a well-known shipwreck that sank off the coast of turkey in 1300 bc. it has been excavated by texas a&m. they went diving in the '80s and '90s and on the ship are remains

from seven different cultures. it shows the international nature at the time. mostly it had 300 pounds of copper and tin and raw things from else where. in the ancient records from about this time we have one guy, the king of cypress, who apologizes and says i am only sending you 200 talon of copper. we have 300 on this ship. so he is not writing about this ship but another one. this is ancient tin. some in raw form and some used form of plates and other things. and then class -- ancient, raw glass. covered with cobalt and ivory and various other things.

all kinds of material including resin. and unused vessels that would have been given or for sale. we are not sure if this ship belong today a private merchant or was a gift from a king. i can tell you when it went down that somebody lost a fortune. and they had insurers so i hope this degioia was insured. other things we have from here -- there is a letter from the sight of the north coast of syria and this letter says the king exempts a man from tax basically. his grain, his beer, his olive oil -- his ship is exempt.

so you have tax cuts for the wealthy back then. things don't change. the collapse. all of this. everything i painted a picture and i had great fun writing what i consider to be stories. we have a glossary and you can impress your friends and neighbors by memorizing those. but it all goes away by 1200 or a little after and that is what i spend the last couple chapters togging about. one of the things we have is letters governor and you can see it is a little red circle on the north coast of turkey, of syria, and we have a number of archives from houses, mostly upper level people working for the king or queen and one of the letters, and i know it is too small to see so let me read it outloud.

my father, the ships of the enemy have come. they have been setting fire to my cities and done harm to the land. all of my items are stored in turkey. the land is under attack and they are not back yet. the evis n seven ships of the enemy have come. if others are coming send a report. it was reported this was found in a spot and the city was destroyed before it was sent. new evidence shows it was in a basket and this is a copy of a

letter that was in fact sent. the question is to whom do the ships belong? we cannot be sure. most people said they were the sea people's but the question is who are the sea people. this the one relief got. this is the temple of ramsey the third and he tells us with pictures and text and says as follows the foreign countries made a conspiracy in their lands. no lands could stand behind their arms. being cut off at one time. he is describeing the sea people that are coming in and he names them. he said the federation was the

trojectory and our problem is we don't know where most of the people come from or where they go to. and the inscription keeps going and he has pictures of them and this is what they look like and in the end we don't know where they come from. there is no city you can point to where they came from or they ended up. so people have played lingustic games with. they came up with saying this name sounds like sicily so that is maybe where they came from. you can see they are guessing. we have the philistines and the bible said they came from crete and that would work but we are not sure where the people go or where they come from.

it is possible that rather when coming from sardenia that is where they went. we are not sure about many of these people. the one group would be the philisti philistines and then we have found remains up and down the coast esspecially in what is modern day israel. it isn't like vikings. they are not coming in just raiding. they are a movement of people. part of the drawings that he left us on the walls he showed us and said they are coming in oxcarts. this is a migration. not just a raid. i don't think they alone could have caused the collapse of everything. there have been lots of raids and activity in the middle east

and usually people survive in the end. i think it more than just the sea people and in fact i think maybe they are part of what is happening but not necessarily the cause. there is evidence for drought now. thus has been a theory that has been around for 60 years and suggested that maybe the bronze age ended because of drought but he was never able to prove it. in the last three years alone there have been four separate studies that have shown there were droughts starts in 1250 bc and climate change back then. it isn't manmade and they are not driving suvs and i am well aware of that. but you don't need humans to have climate changes. climate change happens again and again but the question is can

you survive it? well in their case i don't think they could. we had one steady on north syria and they were doing pollen analysis and showed the climate getting drier and aired. similar study on cypress that it was affected at this time. lee drake did a story with four parts showing the surface of the mediterranean sea is changing and resulting in less rain on the greek mainland and they would end up with drought. and the most recent was done by israel's researchers who were working in israel by the dead sea and they came up with proof there was a drought there for about 100-150 years. so i think drought is definitely one of the factors.

and of course, the media took this and ran with it. you have the "la times" climate change might have caused demise of the bronze civilization. and the "new york times" printing it, too. i don't think that was all there was. mif you cannot get enough to eat because the plants are dead. we know from evidence that there was famine. this is as a letter that dates to about 1185. it is sent by a city in syria and they say there is famine in our house and we will all die of hunger. if you don't arrive here we will die of hunger. you will not see a living soul from your land. to me it seems clear there was a

famine going on here. and we have a letter from the king, again on the north coast of syria. he is sending it to an unidentified person. and this is another letter. do you know not know there is famine in the midst of my line. it is matter of life or death. we have evidence again. and we have evidence of the cutting of trade roots at this time. i was saying if the trade root for tin was cut off they would be in a great deal of trouble. here, one of the last letters, says when your messenger arrived the sit army was humil aahumili

the city was sacked. we have evidence for invaders, and there is a site that was excavated in north syria and there they have found arrow head in the walls and it is obvious this city was destroyed by warfare. people would say was the sea people and i would say there is no evidence for sure it is them.

we don't always know what caused this. in some cases it is clear. when you have a sight destroyed by an earthquake you know it. if the whole city is destroyed and you don't have arrow heads it is obvious it is nature that destroyed it. if you overlay this on top of the map where earthquakesnd you can see they are in the zones.

if you had earthquakes now you had them back then. so some might say destruction is caused by mother nature. and the fault lines lie right through here. it maybe that a number of earthquakes occurred here. in fact we do see that there are a number of destructions between 1225-1175 where the sight seems to be destroy by earthquakes. this happens where the fault unzips. if an earthquake doesn't release all of the attention another one happens and you will get the fault line unzipping usually in a 50 year period.

i would suggest you had an earthquake storm become then as well. frequently it is easy to tell these are fallen drums. that is what happens if you get an earthquake. this is build on an earthquake fault and that was where i thought wait a minute. why would anyone build their city directly on top of the fault line and i thought wait a minute, san francisco. okay. there are dead bodies from this time period where this poor woman was killed by rock handing on her head. we have various bodies here and we have at troy, at the time of the trojan war we have blocks thrown over we have back in north syria you can see the wall isn't supposed to look like that. it isn't supposed to be that

wavy. i think we have then got earthquakes at this time. now, if we sum up with all of this, what i think we have is as follows: we have a number of separate civilizations that are flourish during the late bronze age and that is down to 1200 bc and they include people that are from all others from the late bronze age. they are independent but interacting with each other specially through international trade roots. it is clear many of the cities are destroyed and civilization came to an end in 1177. that is the year that ramsey's the third records the sea people coming through. in fact, the collapse takes about a century overall.

but 1177 is a good, almost like a bookmark shall we say. for instance, the fall of rome is 476, right? no, that is the short hand for the fall of rome. i would say 1177 is shorthand for the collapse at the late bronze age. the problem is there is no proof for who or what did it. there are a number of scholarly p publications that suggest it is a linear progression and they say a drought caused famine and sea people to cut the trade roots and i would argue it wasn't linear and the reality was much messier. we can say there probably wasn't one single driving force. it is not the sea people. ...

>> >> and then there is a population decline. but after that if you have the dark age, do things to come up basically the

phoenix rises up from the ashes. even though the civilization and out of them come out of the ashes are the israelites and phoenicians and even agree xi and athenians and spartans could establish themselves because of the power vacuum that have been to. all the sudden there were able to move in and. there we get new ideas monotheistic religion, alphabet and democracy. the way i would phrase it is out with the old id with the new the new includes lots and lots of good things. in the end sometimes it does take a large scale wildfire to help reduce the ecosystem of the old-growth forest to allow it to a survivor freshen that is what we have here. thank you. [applause]>> i have of questioni

think there is a parallel with california. i just wonder if the droughts in california have then a parallel because of the overall greater economy of the world to draw up parallel what you talk about and california? >> that is a possibility you never know what will happen with the drought but what i will point out one of the

differences is we are fully aware of what is going on. i am not so sure they completely understood what was going on so we have the advantage to look at this to realize the ripple effect. we know this is a possibility we will take steps and somehow make sure it does not collapse our civilization. but there are parallels between back then but i would suggest maybe we see what would happen to them and every civilization has collapsed and we are probably not immune. so looking for clues what to help us move forward i still say one needs to learn from the lessons of the past.

>> if you read the novel with the antics that in sid was right and wrong. >> i have not heard of it but i will read that now. thank you. >> there is also a bunch of sequels. >> then i will let you know, >> looking at that nefertiti's empire with your studies did you look at that? >> somewhere about 1350 he was put things especially the in rebellion i don't think we can attribute that. he pretty much this stuff

everybody but what is happening here has already begun back then but with self awareness we are aware of climate change but as of world civilization for what we have done and not much to combat that. the understanding is there is no parking lot for the exodus. wait to be here all afternoon. [laughter] there is not evidence yet that does not mean there won't be but 1250 b.c. is

probably the only time it possibly could have happened if it does but we have yet to find anything whatsoever. >> how did you get interested in anthropology? would ensure vice for people? >> great question. it is my mother's fault. [laughter] and it was a book. my mother gave me a book when i was seven a child biography about finding troy and i announced i would be an archaeologist. my mother said that is great and my father said he will be a doctor.

[laughter] so now i am a doctor but not a body dr. [laughter] i decided the age of seven it is hard to get a job with archaeology so if there is one thing that you love then go for it but be aware you been eating rice and beans at some point in your parents' basement. i say that to than half joking with one of my recent graduates who say i was eating a tortilla and i realized i was eating rice and beans in my parents' basement. [laughter] i said i told you so. but i would heartily recommend it but it be aware you will not be wealthy or famous but you will be doing what you love and excavating

that is an amazing thing. i have to do that i helped do direct which you may have seen just recently i saw the oldest and largest wine cellar readjust officially published on thursday so i bring my students with me every summer and that is absolutely amazing. just be prepared not to have any money. [laughter] >>. >> we see all the physical. is there a way to take a look back with that cultural attitude we have seen quite

a bit of the rebirth so i am curious also about this period. >> the problem with things like that we are at the mercy of the text. fatally their market the record but yes, we can otherwise you're literally at the mercy of the written evidence. sometimes we can figure that out sometimes we can somebody once said love does not leave of mark of the record but politics might do the same. otherwise that can be tough. always. you never know what will happen tomorrow. that is the duty of archaeology. >> thank you very much