• 1177 B.C.

  • The Year Civilization Collapsed
  • By: Eric H. Cline
  • Narrated by: Andy Caploe
  • Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
  • 3.9 out of 5 stars (2,375 ratings)

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1177 B.C.  By  cover art

1177 B.C.

By: Eric H. Cline
Narrated by: Andy Caploe
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Publisher's summary

In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh’s army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians. The thriving economy and cultures of the late second millennium B.C., which had stretched from Greece to Egypt and Mesopotamia, suddenly ceased to exist, along with writing systems, technology, and monumental architecture. But the Sea Peoples alone could not have caused such widespread breakdown. How did it happen?

In this major new account of the causes of this "First Dark Ages", Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, and the cutting of international trade routes. Bringing to life the vibrant multicultural world of these great civilizations, he draws a sweeping panorama of the empires and globalized peoples of the Late Bronze Age and shows that it was their very interdependence that hastened their dramatic collapse and ushered in a dark age that lasted centuries.

A compelling combination of narrative and the latest scholarship, 1177 B.C. sheds new light on the complex ties that gave rise to, and ultimately destroyed, the flourishing civilizations of the Late Bronze Age - and that set the stage for the emergence of classical Greece.

©2014 Eric H. Cline. Published by Princeton University Press. (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

What listeners say about 1177 B.C.

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Wanted to Like... And Did!

Where does 1177 B.C. rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I would rank 1177 B.C. in the top ten of my audiobook experiences. My academic training is in Ancient and Medieval History and Political Science, and I've enjoyed it enough to listen to it twice.

Many reviews criticize the prose or the narration, but I think those reviews miss the point. So, too, do the reviews that criticize the lack of scholarly notes/evidence in some areas. This is neither a novel nor a peer-reviewed, journal-level article. If you want the best dramatic readings, get Jim Dale. If you want to pore over notes and evidence, subscribe to the proper journals or get a membership to JSTOR.

However, if you want a coherent and interesting overview of the current state of scholarship regarding the Bronze Age Collapse, if you want an informative primer on that transitional period, this is a great book. It kept me awake and alert across the most boring parts of Wyoming, and added to the formulation of my research questions.

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133 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Poor narration kills the experience

This didn't seem like a bad book. The subject matter is fascinating. Cline's prose wasn't particularly imaginative. He didn't seem to providing a unique or create synthesis of the available evidence - really he just reviewed a few hypotheses and used a middle-ground "they're all true" sort of construction. That's not a terrible structure for a popular audience book aimed at lay people. In fact, it may even be the ideal lay-audience structure.

The real problem with this book was the narration. Oh my god is Caploe terrible. He reads like he's performing story time to the preschool crowd at the local public library, with all sorts of over exaggerated tonal inflections. In an expository reading like this one, it's completely distracting and nearly impossible to follow the prose. I nearly gave up 10 minutes into the book. I stuck through it because the topic is really cool, but I probably absorbed less than half of the material.

I may listen to another Cline book at some point. I will never buy another book narrated by Caploe.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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But it was all going so well.....

What did you like best about this story?

What caused the almost simultaneous falls of so many great Bronze Age civilizations? The Minoans, the Hittites, the Trojans, the Babylonians and the Mycenaean Greeks all disappear around 1200 BC. What caused the decline and 2-step-back struggle of surviving Bronze Age civilizations in the Levant and Egypt? Who were these Sea Peoples which the ancient worlds' chroniclers wrote about with such dread?

What was going on?
Why did the world go through an Ancient Dark Age in 1177 BC?

Finally a comprehensive exploration of the current scholarship relating to what in the world was going on in the world around 1200 BC. Eric H. Cline presents the complicated history of the time through a cross-discipline survey of ancient literature, geology, archaeology, biblical scholarship, military accounts and diplomatic correspondence in a way that's well organized and easy to understand.

Great for anyone interested in ancient world history.

What does Andy Caploe bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

The narrator gives some strange accents when reading ancient diplomatic letters. The ancient documents have enough emotional tone on their face and the narrator's performance in these instances detracts from the poignancy.

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69 people found this helpful

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The next "Best Popular Book on Archaeology" award?

In his newest book on the ancient Aegean Professor Eric H Cline, Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages at the George Washington University in Washington DC, USA, transports Everyman in his time machine to the lands surrounding the Ancient Aegean and Mediterranean Seas during the Late Bronze Age.

Once again this active digger and the winner of three “Best Popular Book on Archaeology” Awards (2000, 2009 and 2011) brings archaeology to the public. In “1177 BC. The Year Civilization Collapsed,” he starts off with the enigmatic ‘Sea Peoples’ of which the Philistines of Canaan was part. He recasts them into victims instead of presenting them as the conquerors who overrun the Ancient Aegean and Near East. Sketching a truly and surprisingly situation of flourishing cosmopolitan trade routes and political interaction between important Late Bronze cities, he gives a fresh and important look at this important era. The traditional stance that describes that the ‘Sea Peoples’ invaded and overrun the Ancient Mediterranean and Aegean lands, through conquest and due to their advanced technologies - especially the use of iron is seriously challenged in this book.

Cline spins a web which not only illuminates the mysterious late Bronze Age, but at the same time serves his argument. What I liked most about his book, was how he applied the past and what we learned from it on today. I never thought one could learn much about economy and its pitfalls from the Ancient World. Cline has proved it possible.

The book is the first book in a new series, ‘Turning Points in Ancient History” by Princeton University Press. It consists out of five chapters, each highlighting something that is significant to the Sea Peoples and the year 1177 BC. In the final chapter Cline pulls the strings together in a convincing crescendo.

I wish Audible had a PDF file with the maps and illustrations that you find in the hard copy available. If you use Whispersync, it will probably not matter or if you have bought the hard copy. That said the Audible version of the book is much cheaper than the written word, probably because it comes without illustrations and endnotes.

A last thing, I enjoyed Andy Caploe’s reading of the book. He actually brought some life in hard facts. His pronunciation was generally good.

I cannot say if this book will earn prof. Cline his fourth “Best Popular Book on Archaeology” award, but it definitely could.

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54 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Wanted to enjoy but...

I couldn't get focused or interested in this book at all, perhaps it was because the narrator was so bad or I had different expectations. I couldn't even finish listening and that rarely happens to me.

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Astonishingly poor narration ruins it

As other reviews mention that narration is so bad as to make the book unlistenable unless you enjoy being spoken to like a child. Why in the world someone thought goofy teenage voices were appropriate for the handful of texts passed on from this time period I will never understand.

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Too Much Detail for an Audiobook

When I first saw the printed volume, I was happy to see that it was also available as an audiobook. The historical subject is one I have not heard of before and so I quickly downloaded it and started listening. I was disappointed fairly quickly.

If you are not intimately familar with the subject, the names for the ancient kingdoms and entities are completely new to you. The author does go to some troubles to help you over this hurdle. However, without a scorecard immediately at hand, it is hard to remember the names of the players.

The narrator is fairly good but sometimes I felt it was a lecture for high school students.

I will not download any of the follow on books in the series - this one was a bit too painful

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Narrator Drove Me Crazy

What did you like best about 1177 B.C.? What did you like least?

The subject matter is very interesting although the backstory seems overly involved and protracted. What really stood out though was the sing song nature of the narration. It was like he was reading a children's book... or something.. his rhythm and tonalities weren't congruent with the subject matter.

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Excellent history, cringeworthy performance

What did you like best about 1177 B.C.? What did you like least?

I'll have to purchase the text to finish. The performance is overemphasized and over-acted in the manner one reads to a small child.

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How to ruin ancient history

It's hard to tick off a history buff, but this one brought back recurring nightmares from that Ancient History course. Egyptians, Minoans and Hittites were the easy ones…

This should never have been an audio book--especially with the terrible narrator and his golly-gee intonations. I plowed on courageously through half the book, then just chucked it.

A waste of time and money for me.

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