Category: Uncategorized
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Cataclysms of Antiquity: Unraveling the Black Swan Events of Ancient History
The notion of a “black swan” popularised by philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb, describes rare, unpredictable events with profound and often catastrophic consequences. In the annals of ancient history, such events—cataclysmic floods, cosmic impacts, and vanishing rivers—may have reshaped human civilisation in ways we are only beginning to comprehend. Younger Dryas: A Cosmic Catastrophe? The Younger…
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Phoenicians: Saviours of Civilisation
In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond asked how much effect geography had on ‘history’s broad pattern’. He concluded that all societies had inventive people but some environments provide more starting materials and favourable conditions. He concentrated on domestication and the axis of the continents. I contend that ports were the favourable conditions that continued…
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The Engine of History: Maritime Trade – Two Mediterranean examples
History often celebrates kings, queens, and wars. Such narratives obscure a quieter force: maritime trade. In the 6th–2nd century BC and 11th–15th century AD, Mediterranean ports, not battlefields, fueled economic and cultural prosperity, laying the foundations for the Roman Empire and Renaissance Europe. Two examples—Carthage’s trade empire and Venice’s commerce with Alexandria—reveal how merchants, not…
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The Antiquity of Seafaring
Out of Africa That Homo Sapiens crossed the Red Sea out of Africa about 90,000 years ago, probably in a series of sailings over hundreds of years and spread rapidly across the world is generally accepted. But that maritime trade is perhaps the most important driver of our human story is not yet acknowledged, something…
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Why Maritime Societies Drove (and Drive) Innovation
My career in maritime trade in London, Tokyo, Singapore and Dubai showed me how pro-active ports are crucibles of innovation. I explore this in a 3-book series, How Maritime Trade and the Indian Subcontinent Shaped the World- Ice Age to mid-8th century, The Millennium Maritime Trade Revolution 700-1700- How Asia Lost Maritime Supremacy and The…
Nick Collins 