Before Lost, There Was the Collapse of the Late Bronze Age

I've been falling down a rabbit hole of Michael Button's archaeology videos on YouTube, and they're rewiring how I think about our civilization and… our storytelling. His methodical, evidence-based breakdown of ancient history keeps circling back to one truth that should make any screen-scribbler pay attention: civilizations don't just rise and stay on top. They crack, crumble, and sometimes disappear completely.

Tell Qarqur in Syria? People kept living there straight through 2200-2000 BCE while neighboring societies were getting wrecked by drought and political chaos. The Late Bronze Age collapsed Mediterranean powerhouses like Egypt, the Hittites, and Mycenae - trade networks imploded, cities burned. The Maya lowlands saw southern cities abandoned during brutal droughts while northern centers like Chichen Itza adapted and kept going.

Collapse isn't a clean Act Three resolution. It's messy. People migrate, downsize, and rebuild from scratch. Pieces of culture and tech survive while everything else gets reorganized or just turns to dust and vanishes.

When we were breaking Lost, we spent hours building backstories for characters who thought their world was stable before the island ripped it all away. That same chaos Button documents - the sudden shift from "everything's fine let’s keep singing You All Everybody!" to "nothing works anymore, maybe the answer under that freakin’ hatch!" - isn’t that kind of chaotic change the engine of drama?

We of the modern world like to believe we're different. We've got our global networks, incredible technology, massive data centers powering our TikToks and AI memes. But today’s climate shocks, resource problems, and political breakdowns? Those aren't new and exceptional. They’re just ancient history doing its lather, rinse, repeat, shampoo dance.

Button's work reminds me why archaeology matters beyond cool artifacts and ancient mysteries. It's about seeing what's coming before it hits. About recognizing when the systems we depend on are more fragile than we want to admit. Without guys like Button dropping science visually, history would be TL;DR and we’d just be destined to repeat it. Or… uh-oh.