The past and future history of the modern world

These 'duck-billed dinosaurs' had tumors like those of human patients, showing that cancer is essentially unchanged. "Diseases look the same independent of what critter is affected," says radiologist Bruce Rothschild (NE Ohio U College of Medicine, Rootstown), whose team scanned 10k dinosaur vertebrae from more than 700 North American museum specimens, including stegosaurus, triceratops and tyrannosaurus.

The team found 29 tumors in bones from 97 of the 700 (almost 14%), with the only malignant tumor in the 3.5 m (11.5 ft) Edmontosaurus species, where about 3% of its bones contained a lump of some sort. The most common growths were benign hemangiomas - also present in blood vessels of about 10% of humans. (He-Man-Giomas?) "If I showed (the dinosaur bones) to a pathologist, he'd make the same diagnosis," says Rothschild, and he pointed out that they ate conifers, which are high in carcinogenic chemicals. And some of the cancerous-looking bones were actually poorly healed fractures.

The Deccan Traps flood basalt area in India was almost antipodal and had a massive volcanic eruption.

Asteroid impacts may increase volcanic activity near the antipode - planetquakes do increase volcanic activity - on Earth, an 8.0 magnitude earthquake makes eruptions within 800 km (500 mi) much more likely in the next 5 years. This impact effectively caused a magnitude 9 earthquake everywhere on Earth, which may have promoted the Deccan Traps eruptions and other volcanoes around Earth.

• New towns: Beidha, 'Ain Ghazal, Yiftahel, Tell Aswad, Tell Abu Hureyra, Tell Sabyi Abyad, Nevali Çori [Nevali Chorey], Cafer Hoyuk, and Aşıklı Höyük [ash'eekly hoy-ook] (in 2021's Türkiye).
• Expanded towns: Tell-es-Sultan, Nahal Oren, (Tim) Eynan, Mureybet, Göbekli Tepe [Go-bleck-y tepp-ee], Çayönü [Chai-oo-new].
• Lost to time: Wadi Fyenan, Tell Qaramel, Jerf el Ahmar.

Towns were larger, and more populated. These had permanent dwellings replacing the big gaps for temporary dwellings that used to exist between the buildings. Rectangular mud-brick rooms became popular dwellings as they could be packed closer together, and sometimes even share walls to reduce building costs. They usually had a small antechamber before entering the room. These had no doors, instead being accessed either by autofenestrating, or climbing out the ceiling. (Like Minecraft dirt huts - how did elderly people climb in and out?) Buildings were painted with a burned-lime (calcium) substance.

Grains and other plants were slowly domesticated into human-preferred varieties - such as wheat that needs its seeds to be threshed off, instead of naturally blowing away and being lost in the field.

Skulls were extremely popular, and ceramic ones have been found all over the Trans-Jordanian Plains. Some have numerous coats of plaster, revealing use over a very long time.

This means the northern hemisphere gets 7% more solar radiation than 2021, when the opposite is true. Land has lower thermal inertia (gets hot faster) than water, meaning it and the air above get hotter than the water and its air. The hotter, less-dense air over Sahara would have contracted against the cooler, denser air over the Atlantic ocean, pulling the ocean's humidity into the northern African plains. Parts would receive 500 mm (19.6 in) of rain a year. Much of the Savanna Sahara would resemble India's sub-tropical savanna. Beyond this, plant transpiration moved moisture further into the interior, since plants transpire 97-99% of the water uptaken by their roots.

Additionally, 6 large "paleo mega lakes" and many smaller lakes served as reservoirs for the continent:

1. Lake Chad (Chad) would vastly embiggen to be comparable to the Caspian Sea, the largest inland water body in 2021.
2. Lake Phezzan (Libya).
3. Lake Chotts (Algeria/Tunisia).
4. Lake Ahnet (Algeria).
5. Lake Turkana (Egypt).
6. Lake Darfu (Egypt).

Relatedly, the Rainforest Congo is 7.8 million km² (3 million mi², 777 MHectares, 1.9k MAcres, 26 square light seconds) and extends from Guinea to Botswana.

This city-in-a-hill covers 13 hectares (32 acres). It was part of an extensive trade network, and imported obsidian from Cappadocia 170 km (105.6 mi) for processing into extremely sharp blades, and early polished mirrors.

Dwellings were a single room informally split in half. One side of the room was boring and full of grain in big stone or dried clay containers. (Pre-pottery - the process of baking clay hadn't been invented.) The other side was alive with home life, rituals based around hunting wild animals, and food prep - with a clay furnace and hearth directly underneath a dual-use roof hatch entrance, for furnace ventilation and also the ceiling ladder. As common decoration, two pair of bull horns set in plastered bunkers partitioning two sides of a ceremonial corner. Walls were painted with an alluvium plaster dug up from the lakebed, and many walls were painted with a humans-hunting-animals motif (possibly ritualistic) in red ochre. An especially iconic one has a bunch of people attacking a giant aurochs. (Proto-bull of heaven?) None of these motifs show any domesticated animals.

A dwelling would remain in use for decades, then be demolished through pulling out the roof supports, and a new dwelling built on the rubble. Archaeologists have found 18 layers of rebuilding with ultrasonic ground scans. Remains of the uninstalled have been found entombed under floors in various dwellings, and a common belief is that the constant plastering was an attempt to cover up the decay.

While Çatalhöyük's population was increasing, Cafer Hoyuk & Aşıklı Höyük were seeing population declines, meaning people were probably moving from the lame old city to the cool new city.

The Konya plain receives little rainfall and the soil is poor quality. But the Carsamba river flows nearby, and would have flooded the city often with large amounts of nutrient-rich silt, which would have supported lots of Einkorn and Emmer wheat, grass for grazing animals, fish, nesting birds, and reeds for weaving. Also there are several forests nearby. (Why *on* the lakebed, and not *next to* the lakebed?)

Before this, the written language in use on Krete island is Linear A, which was definitely not Greek. They're the same script recording a different spoken language. After this, it's early Mykenaean Greek called Linear B, and is also found on the mainland.

The legend of Thesus and the Minotaur could be historical fanfiction of the invasion. The bull monster would be Minoan culture itself, with tons of bovine art and themes. The maze-like palace became the labyrinth. And there was some possibilty of Mykenaean Athenians being both navally pirated and sacrificially uninstalled by some Minoan colonies. The story of sailing to some distant island and uninstalling a giant bull-in-a-maze to emancipate yourself from tyranny in foreign government wasn't so far from the truth.

Given the dramatic name "Collapse of (Mediterranean) civilization", it began with collapse of the Assyrians and Aegeans, followed by Cypriots, Babylonians, then at once the Canaanites & Mitanni & Hittites. In total, 42 cities fell, including Ashdod, Ashkelon, Emar, Hattusa, Megiddo, Midea, Miletus, Pylos, Qadesh, Tiryns, Troy, and Ugarit. Egypt remained but was so weakened that they'd never be the same.

The cause isn't known, and speculation tends toward a systemic failure instead of a single cause. The dominant theory is Drought > Famine > Movement > Havoc and cutting of trade routes > Collapse. But this is too linear and not a chaotic-enough narrative. Drought > famine sure, invaders & earthquakes were also likely. (Also the Trojan War was happening.)

Additionally, tin and copper are not found in the same geographic regions. Everyone gets copper from Krete through Cyprus, and tin from Kestel near Türkiye/Greece. When any nation supporting these traders fails, the trade route fails, and bronze can no longer be made. Luckily, technology to process iron had just been invented.

The "Sea Peoples" is a lazy modern way to refer to them. Ramesses3 enumerated them, and would later record defeating each of these micropowers:

After this, Mykenaean-inspired pottery begins showing up in the Levant, like some Mykenaeans had moved there and were working with local clay. It's likely that whatever group started this picked up a few of each group when they raided them, and Egypt was seeing this motley crew because they were the last spot on the map. They weren't raiders like Vikings were, but bringing their wives and lives like refugees.

This occurred in the 3rd year of Ramesses3's reign - shifts with Egyptology's oft-revised timeline.

(Another theory, based on ideas in: a StackExchange History post - Hittites were militarily strengthened by trade and environmentally weakened by poor crops due to the Dry Event, and began to invade their neighbors. They had more swords than grain, and "when the going gets tough, the tough go Viking." But everyone was on the edge of rebellion due to perpetually low harvests, and this was the tipping point pushing numerous nations into open rebellion. They start with the Assyrians who had pressured them into that peace treaty with Egypt. The Hittites would walk or sail into an area, find that the locals have already raided the grain warehouses so *shrug* burn the warehouses I guess, and accept whatever locals wanted to join. People were looking for any way to escape the madness at this point - shelter in place with a big pile of grain, join the raiders, join the invaders, or flee as a refugee.

Then the Hittites attacked the Aegeans before they become a naval problem. Next Cyprus to secure the copper supply, and then down the coast, through Canaan and into Egypt. This caused a wave of refugees to rise up and flee in front of the invading Hittite forces, which is much of what Ramesses3 recorded, people bringing their husbands and wives and lives. And probably various rebel groups who managed to get to Egypt and were mixed in with their refugee countrypeople. This gave Egypt that chaotic mix of people looking for a fight, people defending themselves, and people looking for a home. Separately, mainland Greeks sack Troy and overthrow the Hittite kingdom, for ruining all of the good Bronze times. This was while the Hittite forces were in Egypt, and this is what the Trojan War epic tells through allegory and allusion. The thousand ships wouldn't be Greeks sailing to Troy, but all of the various groups fleeing the fighting, and troop transports bringing the fighting.)

• Mirror for purity
• Jewel for benevolence
• Ame no Murakumo no Tsurugi for courage