Byblos shows a layered history, from Phoenicians, to Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, and now hapless Lebanese governments.
The Phoenician “Gebail”, continuously inhabited since 5000 BC, may have been first settled between 10,800 and 9,000 years ago. That would have been before agriculture, at the time of the mysterious ancient hunter-gatherer culture that gave rise to Göbekli Tepe's temple and Jericho's ancient towers.
Much like Japan's Jomon Culture, ancient Phoenicians could reliably rely on fishing. this would have allowed them to settle in cities long before agriculture was developed.
With agriculture, the city then thrived; known to the Greeks as “Byblos”, after its monopoly of book papyrus, the city gave its name to the Christian Bible.
The more we progress, the greater the risk of a devolution into a #DimAge Already, our own #technology is growing too complex for us to understand or manage, and scales up faster than our own understanding can keep up.
In todays’ world, transport choke points are unavoidable, a feature of an unsustainable, #globalized world.
The #RedSea passage #BabElMandab is one of those, critical because of the #MiddleEast's central importance to the world's #EnergyEconomy
Agree to the rich world's desired outcome, before building the systems that made it rich? You get one form #CarbonColonialism
Then again, too much of a system focus, you get the excesses of the gilded age.
Better a #FailedState than a crazy kingdom.
A failed state is like a broken clock; it is broken, but may still be right twice day. On the other hand, a crazy kingdom is like an off clock; if it is off by 5%, it is only right once every 10 days.
...In addition, in a failed state, you and your community stand a chance to grow and succeed; the crazy king can't easily reach you, unlike in our modern anarcho-tyranny
