History The Impact of Geological/Astronomical Events in Societal Upheaval and How It Is Often Ignored In Modern Historical Discourse

[Bacle]

So I am making this thread to discuss the oft-ignored/overlooked part that geological events have played on mass societal upheaval.

Eruption of Thera, Collapse of Bronze Age Mediterranean civilization, Volcanic Winter around the World

Date: 1650BC± 5y , Authors: Wikipedia, Laura Knight-Jadczyk, Category: Archeology/Volcanic Eruption Evidence, ID: 5127

cof.quantumfuturegroup.org

The Bronze Age Eruption That Ended The First European Civilization

3600 years ago pyroclastic flows from the volcanic island of Santorini triggered a series of devastating tsunami waves in the Mediterranean Sea, bringing one of the first great civilizations to an abrupt end.

www.forbes.com

How an Icelandic volcano helped spark the French Revolution

Profound effects of eight-month eruption in 1783 caused chaos from US to Egypt, say experts

www.theguardian.com

This 1783 Volcanic Eruption Changed The Course Of History

The volcanic eruption at Laki in 1783 killed thousands and may have triggered the French Revolution.

www.forbes.com

Asteroid Impact Blasted Biblical Sodom to Smithereens

Researchers think the aerial explosion could have destroyed the city in an instant.

www.newsweek.com

Ten Ancient Stories and the Geological Events That May Have Inspired Them

If you dig deep enough, say scientists, you can find some truth to legends and creation stories

www.smithsonianmag.com

These are just a few links/examples of major societal shake ups/collapses/disasters that seriously affected the cultures around them and yet are often treated as things to moralize over in Left vs Right debates that try to bring up history. Most debates that even touch on the part geological/astronomical forces treat them as side-issues, instead looking at human events as being downstream of geological/astronomical events.

I think this is also because many of these records of events in early human history are also recorded in religious texts. Religious people tend to not react well to scientists poking at things/stories/parables they take on faith, but which physical evidence contradicts or shifts the story in ways they do not like.

I mean I've even been told here people don't like hearing the reductionist view of many Biblical stories, and other creation myths/histories having mundane geological/environmental/astronomical explanations that re-contextualize them as giant games of telephone over natural disasters.

So why is it that in many debates and conversations about historical societies and why bad things happened in them/to them, why are natural forces often ignored in favor of mostly focusing on the human element?

 

[S'task]

I think this is also because many of these records of events in early human history are also recorded in religious texts. Religious people tend to not react well to scientists poking at things/stories/parables they take on faith, but which physical evidence contradicts or shifts the story in ways they do not like.

I mean I've even been told here people don't like hearing the reductionist view of many Biblical stories, and other creation myths/histories having mundane geological/environmental/astronomical explanations that re-contextualize them as giant games of telephone over natural disasters.

Really? Because, speaking as someone who grew up in a very conservative Evangelical environment, my experience has been the exact opposite. "Naturalistic" explanations of the punishments of God in the Bible were often explored in considerable detail and not dismissed but held up as a distinct possible way in which the events recorded had actually happened. It was never seen as a crisis of faith, as, well, there's no reason God couldn't act through natural disasters and that these events happening at just those times to assist in things God apparently wanted to have happen was seen as showing the omnipotence of God.

No, my experience has been much more that secularists are the ones who systemically reject naturalistic origins of Biblical disasters because it actually threatens their idea that the Bible is entirely mythological and false. If natural disasters, such as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah are shown to be fairly accurate records of events that transpired in the past, or that other events in the Bible are showcased to be historically accurate, what else in the Bible is then actually accurate? The more the Bible is shown to be historically accurate and reflected in archeological and historical records, the more weight you have to give to it being a true document... and if it is a true document, that has some serious philosophical aspects to it as you have to question why, if it's historically accurate, is it not also spiritually accurate? And that's a can of worms rabid secularists want to avoid.

 

[Bacle]

Really? Because, speaking as someone who grew up in a very conservative Evangelical environment, my experience has been the exact opposite. "Naturalistic" explanations of the punishments of God in the Bible were often explored in considerable detail and not dismissed but held up as a distinct possible way in which the events recorded had actually happened. It was never seen as a crisis of faith, as, well, there's no reason God couldn't act through natural disasters and that these events happening at just those times to assist in things God apparently wanted to have happen was seen as showing the omnipotence of God.

It's less about a 'crisis of faith' and more about some people having problems with treating the Bible as a para-historical document recording human events, instead of as a moral or ethical guidebook.

Also, religious texts mean more than just the Bible in what I was talking about; the links I put in there detail how the religious texts and even oral histories from across the globe have been recounting collapses and such with the environmental details intact, but often ignored in any debate where the subject comes up.

No, my experience has been much more that secularists are the ones who systemically reject naturalistic origins of Biblical disasters because it actually threatens their idea that the Bible is entirely mythological and false. If natural disasters, such as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah are shown to be fairly accurate records of events that transpired in the past, or that other events in the Bible are showcased to be historically accurate, what else in the Bible is then actually accurate? The more the Bible is shown to be historically accurate and reflected in archeological and historical records, the more weight you have to give to it being a true document... and if it is a true document, that has some serious philosophical aspects to it as you have to question why, if it's historically accurate, is it not also spiritually accurate? And that's a can of worms rabid secularists want to avoid.

This is something I have literally never encountered in any atheist or agnostic circle I have ever been in.

 

[Navarro]

They take it to very insane levels, like arguing an Assyrian stele mentioning the "House of David" must be referencing the temple of some otherwise unknown deity called "Dod" or arguing that silver amulets discovered with inscriptions from the Torah ... must obviously be sources for the Pentateuch and not quotations.

 

[Bacle]

They take it to very insane levels, like arguing an Assyrian stele mentioning the "House of David" must be referencing the temple of some otherwise unknown deity called "Dod" or arguing that silver amulets discovered with inscriptions from the Torah ... must obviously be sources for the Pentateuch and not quotations.

Again, I have literally never seen that stuff happening in any circles I've been in that had atheists or agnostics in it.

Are you guys sure you're not just thinking of the reddit/4chan fedora atheist crowd who are mostly trolls.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Again, I have literally never seen that stuff happening in any circles I've been in that had atheists or agnostics in it.

Are you guys sure you're not just thinking of the reddit/4chan fedora atheist crowd who are mostly trolls.

No, I've had the same experience multiple times. Then again I'm an ordained minister so I probably run in very different circles and run into biblical and theological debate, well, pretty constantly in my life.

There's a long-standing series of arguments that the Pentateuch, and the bible in general, are the product of many revisions and rewritings that weren't even solidified until the postexilic era. Such theorists hold that Moses wasn't even a real person, much less that Moses wrote the early biblical books like the Pentateuch. There's often attempts to draw parallels between the bible and various Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or other local religions and try to establish that the bible's merely a splinter sect of those other, older religions despite how absurdly different Judaism is from them.

The discovery of a pair of silver amulets at Ketef Hinnom in 1979 rather put a pin in this reasoning as chamber 25 was reliable dated to around 650BC, and contained said amulets which quoted a priestly blessing from the Torah, establishing that in fact the Torah in it's current form existed long before that. Needless to say, said scholars admitted they were wrong and... oh wait, no, they came up with outlandish theories that the bible is quoting the scrolls rather than the other way around and continued with their nonsense.

Much like @S'task I've found that most religious people are quite keen on discovering natural causes for biblical miracles because their faith doesn't depend on that. If we discovered the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah buried under a meteor crater I would be quite ecstatic and trumpet it everywhere, as proof of a biblical event. I wouldn't question that this undermines the original story at all, God simply chose to use a meteor much as He has chosen to use natural disasters such as hailstorms and plagues in other situations.

Secularists, on the other hand... oh wait, we discovered a city there that was melted down by a cosmic airburst. Their reaction has been "Well it doesn't prove anything, this could have been some other city that was melted into slag by fire from heaven. No proof of biblical events."

Biblical scholars? We're breaking out the good stuff to celebrate.

 

[Navarro]

There's also a case I saw where somebody was talking about a clay seal with the name of a Judahite court official briefly mentioned in Isaiah, from the time the Bible says that guy was alive and went "only craaazy fundies would see this as proof the Bible was right about something!".

 

[Bacle]

This isn't a topic about proving or disproving historical events that are mentioned in holy texts of different religions, or bitching about atheists, which seems to be what you guys are hung up on and shows part of the point I was trying to make in the OP.

I made this topic because people are always going on about how things like the Bronze Age Collapse, or the French Revolution, are caused by social strife, 'degenetation of society', or political intrigue. Very rarely when discussung this stuff do natural events seem to be taken into account as causal factors, rather than a unimportant background events in a story or tale that is supposed to relate some moral or ethical point.

Like the tale of Sodom and Gamorrah could now be used as a lesson in why we need asteroid defense plans and equipment, rather than a story about lack of hospitality and sin.

The issue isn't fedora atheists questioning religious stories/timing, the issue is that a lot of times the importance of the environmental context to tales told in religious texts (not just the Bible) are ignored by people who only want to think of them as religious lessons or moral guidebooks.

I get that actual religious scholars often actually love when they find clues/evidence of environmental context that backs up religious tales. However, I keep finding in debates around history, people are quick to say that a society fell or shrunk because 'became degenerate' or 'became to decadent/corrupt' and wax on about that, while ignoring environmental factors that factor into why people made decisions or why things happened.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Hmm, well the issue here is that it's relatively rare that a natural disaster of any scale hits only one country and yet is also large enough to significantly alter history. Tambora cooking off and causing Eighteen Hundred and Froze To Death didn't just hit one nation, it hit the entire world with a year-long winter and famine. Very few disasters are going to both be significant enough to matter on a timeline-scale and local enough that only one particular group was hit instead of their neighbors too.

The Spanish Influenza was one of the most horrifying plagues in human history, yet it didn't appear to significantly influence history because the disease didn't worry about borders and instead infected everybody.

 

[BlackDragon98]

No, I've had the same experience multiple times. Then again I'm an ordained minister so I probably run in very different circles and run into biblical and theological debate, well, pretty constantly in my life.

There's a long-standing series of arguments that the Pentateuch, and the bible in general, are the product of many revisions and rewritings that weren't even solidified until the postexilic era. Such theorists hold that Moses wasn't even a real person, much less that Moses wrote the early biblical books like the Pentateuch. There's often attempts to draw parallels between the bible and various Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or other local religions and try to establish that the bible's merely a splinter sect of those other, older religions despite how absurdly different Judaism is from them.

The discovery of a pair of silver amulets at Ketef Hinnom in 1979 rather put a pin in this reasoning as chamber 25 was reliable dated to around 650BC, and contained said amulets which quoted a priestly blessing from the Torah, establishing that in fact the Torah in it's current form existed long before that. Needless to say, said scholars admitted they were wrong and... oh wait, no, they came up with outlandish theories that the bible is quoting the scrolls rather than the other way around and continued with their nonsense.

Much like @S'task I've found that most religious people are quite keen on discovering natural causes for biblical miracles because their faith doesn't depend on that. If we discovered the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah buried under a meteor crater I would be quite ecstatic and trumpet it everywhere, as proof of a biblical event. I wouldn't question that this undermines the original story at all, God simply chose to use a meteor much as He has chosen to use natural disasters such as hailstorms and plagues in other situations.

Secularists, on the other hand... oh wait, we discovered a city there that was melted down by a cosmic airburst. Their reaction has been "Well it doesn't prove anything, this could have been some other city that was melted into slag by fire from heaven. No proof of biblical events."

Biblical scholars? We're breaking out the good stuff to celebrate.

God: One shot, over 10000 kills.

Very good K/D ratio I must say, very impressive indeed.

Speaking of which, though I don't believe that God created all life on Earth, I firmly believe he's the one who caused the Big Bang.

 

[Scottty]

The Spanish Influenza was one of the most horrifying plagues in human history, yet it didn't appear to significantly influence history because the disease didn't worry about borders and instead infected everybody.

Didn't appear to... but you can be sure it contributed to the economic conditions of the early-to-middle 20th century that lead to the rise of the various authoritarian regimes.

 

[BlackDragon98]

Didn't appear to... but you can be sure it contributed to the economic conditions of the early-to-middle 20th century that lead to the rise of the various authoritarian regimes.

Hmmm . . .
If this is the case, then COVID is leading to the establishment of Orwellian police states.

 

[S'task]

Hmmm . . .
If this is the case, then COVID is leading to the establishment of Orwellian police states.

Well yeah.

The thing is, natural disasters are often hard to track to political and social impact in the long term.

Let's take, for instance, Hurricane Katrina. Many people at the time said that it reduced W. Bush's popularity and impacted the reputation of Republicans at the time... however, if we remove Katrina from happening, how much of an impact would that make on future events?

For the short term, I'd argue not much. The 2006 Midterms still likely see the Dems picking up control of the House and Senate, as between war fatigue, the natural rhythm of American elections (the fact they didn't make more gains in 2002 was huge irregularity and had to do with the 9/11). It wouldn't change the 2007/8 primaries, and Obama still likely gets elected.

Maybe the State level politics change dramatically, but I'm not familiar enough with state level politics to comment.

In the long term? Maybe it makes a difference due to demographic changes that didn't happen due to the population shift that occurred due to Katrina. But that's a lot harder to track and say for certain.

And Katrina was about as big of a natural disaster you can get before we get into truly horrifying events. Maybe those are the scale of events needed but at that point it kinda becomes a "no duh" level. The Yellowstone Caldara erupting would obviously have massive political and social ramifications... but it would have those on nations in the world even if the entire North American continent was devoid of human habitation entirely... that's just the scale of the event that we're talking about.

That said, you're also not wrong. The Little Ice Age definitely impacted politics around the world, but how much of those political issues are areas that are hard to distinguish from normal events. That said, you're not wrong to look at these events and their impact, and I would agree that in modern times we're not very concerned about them seeing how we assume we've gotten all the issues mostly under control. That said, I do wonder how the modern world would handle a year without summer...

 

[Bacle]

Well yeah.

The thing is, natural disasters are often hard to track to political and social impact in the long term.

Let's take, for instance, Hurricane Katrina. Many people at the time said that it reduced W. Bush's popularity and impacted the reputation of Republicans at the time... however, if we remove Katrina from happening, how much of an impact would that make on future events?

For the short term, I'd argue not much. The 2006 Midterms still likely see the Dems picking up control of the House and Senate, as between war fatigue, the natural rhythm of American elections (the fact they didn't make more gains in 2002 was huge irregularity and had to do with the 9/11). It wouldn't change the 2007/8 primaries, and Obama still likely gets elected.

Maybe the State level politics change dramatically, but I'm not familiar enough with state level politics to comment.

In the long term? Maybe it makes a difference due to demographic changes that didn't happen due to the population shift that occurred due to Katrina. But that's a lot harder to track and say for certain.

And Katrina was about as big of a natural disaster you can get before we get into truly horrifying events. Maybe those are the scale of events needed but at that point it kinda becomes a "no duh" level. The Yellowstone Caldara erupting would obviously have massive political and social ramifications... but it would have those on nations in the world even if the entire North American continent was devoid of human habitation entirely... that's just the scale of the event that we're talking about.

That said, you're also not wrong. The Little Ice Age definitely impacted politics around the world, but how much of those political issues are areas that are hard to distinguish from normal events. That said, you're not wrong to look at these events and their impact, and I would agree that in modern times we're not very concerned about them seeing how we assume we've gotten all the issues mostly under control. That said, I do wonder how the modern world would handle a year without summer...

A year without summer...it would all depend on how fast it comes on and if any warning is had that we'd be facing it.

If we have enough warning to start stockpiling food and water supplies, maybe we can do a crash program for mass scale greenhouses to save some farmland, so we can ride it out on with a minimal amount of rationing or societal disruption. Also, all fishing restrictions are gone, because the sea will have some of the only non-frozen/frostbit biomass.

If it's a rapid event that causes the on-set, and we are not prepared...lots of people going to die and nations are going to fall or go to war for resources.

 

[Scottty]

Well yeah.

The thing is, natural disasters are often hard to track to political and social impact in the long term.

Let's take, for instance, Hurricane Katrina. Many people at the time said that it reduced W. Bush's popularity and impacted the reputation of Republicans at the time... however, if we remove Katrina from happening, how much of an impact would that make on future events?

I would like to take the vote away from anyone who seriously thinks that a US president is to blame for a hurricane.

And Katrina was about as big of a natural disaster you can get before we get into truly horrifying events.

There's nothing OCP about hurricanes - they are known and recurring, on the US east coast. Building little wooden McMansions and then complaining when the Big Bad Weather huffs and puffs? Seriously?

 

[ParadiseLost]

There's nothing OCP about hurricanes - they are known and recurring, on the US east coast. Building little wooden McMansions and then complaining when the Big Bad Weather huffs and puffs? Seriously?

That's an aspect of leadership. If something bad happens, its your fault.

 

[Scottty]

That's an aspect of leadership. If something bad happens, its your fault.

Anyone who thinks a hurricane is the president's fault should not be having any say in how a country is run.

 

[ParadiseLost]

Anyone who thinks a hurricane is the president's fault should not be having any say in how a country is run.

I mean, it is dumb, but its how many people think.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Anyone who thinks a hurricane is the president's fault should not be having any say in how a country is run.

Mostly it wasn't belief that Bush was responsible for the hurricane (Though I saw some people claiming it was God's punishment), but rather FEMA's lackluster response and leaving many of the refugees out to dry for months on end. There was a lot of outrage when Mayor Ray Nagin declared that "No one will be able to be armed. We will take all weapons. Only law enforcement will be allowed to have guns," and made gun confiscation the first priority over, say, feeding people or providing medical care to the injured. This bled over to the Bush administration when Bush didn't do anything about it and continued to work with Nagin (to be fair, Nagin got 10 years for corruption and fraud issues about a decade later).

 

[Cherico]

geological events I think are an amplifier.

A strong community will suffer but survive, a community riddled with corruption and incopetance though will fall. The more tyranical and assholish the regime the more likely that people will decide to take it down once they see even a glimer of weakness.