I’ve all the time been fascinated by the Hittites, an historic Indo-European civilization that flourished between 1700–1200 BCE in what’s now modern-day Turkey. Like the USA, the Hittite Empire was a superpower within the international politics of the interval, conquering Babylon and clashing with fellow heavyweight Egypt over management of what’s now Syria.
But other than their expert use of conflict chariots and a number of other sometimes- disputed references within the Previous Testomony of the Bible, the Hittites are actually barely a footnote within the Western canon.
How did this occur? How did a powerhouse fade into close to historic invisibility? And does the destiny of the Hittites recommend something about America’s future?
Historians typically disagree on the confluence of circumstances that trigger a civilization to break down. Illness, inhabitants shifts, climate-related catastrophes like famine, financial battle, rebellion and warfare, dynastic feuds, and cultural intransigency within the face of peril, can all play an element. Regardless of the invention of 1000’s of cuneiform tablets on the Hittite fortress capital of Huttusa within the early 1900s, Hittite students — referred to as Hittitologists — lack a full sufficient and detailed file of the dominion’s social, financial, and non secular group to nail down any of those collapse-scenarios.
