YouTube Videos Worth Watching

Catastrophe.  It is about how a volcanic eruption in 535 AD created the modern world.  This was HUGE.  Multiple accounts report the Sun pretty much ceàses to shine for a year or two because of dust.  Drought, famine, bubonic plague (induced by the cold) and moving barbarians wipe out major civilizations or at least wound them badly enough to be knocked down.  I am reading David Keys' Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World.  Heaven for history-nerds.

1177.  The professor is marvelously fun to listen to as he explains how most of the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations collapsed around 1177 BC.  Climate change is the start and he is careful to point out that the Hittites did not use SUVs.  Cold weather, drought, famine, interruption of supplies of tin for the making of bronze reveal that the intricate trade network of these civilizations made them too dependent on each other for needs (or at least wants mistaken for needs) and much like today, we are not sufficiently self-reliant if trade stops.  (Think chips and cheap Chinese crap.). Oh and earthquakes.