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*The 'Kultursturz' At The Bronze Age - Iron Age Boundary*

*Irving Wolfe*

/University of Montréal, Department d'études anglaises, CP 6128,
Montréal, Canada/

One focus of the 2nd SIS Cambridge conference is the Bronze Age - Iron
Age interface, which will be looked at from many different scientific
perspectives. They will attempt to establish between them that a
significant cluster of natural cataclysms provoked by non-terrestrial
influences occurred ~600 - 500 BC and altered the physical world. These
events are therefore called /axial/ because they caused the transition
from the Bronze to the Iron Age. 

	<blockquote><I>"I think the period </I>[600 to 500 BC]<i> may also
be called 'axial' because it seems to me to have led to a virtually
universal </i>cultural<i> revolution in all dimensions of human existence.
</i>[in the paper]<i> I will present evidence for what I call a
'Kultursturz' or cultural crisis in which a large number of cultural
elements underwent quick and sharp change within the same short period of
time. These include the appearance of secular as opposed to strictly
religious art, a host of new religions </i>of a new type<i>, new
philosophies of a new type, writing, dynastic upheavals, the quick upsurge
and removal of several tyrannical regimes, urbanism, new patterns of
consciousness, behaviour and dreaming, new types of social organisation,
vast pan-Greek ritualistic athletic games, the institution of democracy
and the use of money. All of these elements are totally different in
spirit from those of the previous (Bronze Age) cultures. If all of these
cultural revolutions can be correlated chronologically among themselves
and to scientific evidence for similar upheavals well documented in the
geological, archaeological and climatological record, then we have before
us the outline of a global natural event which not only ended one
historical era, but led to the distinctive cultural characteristics of our
modern age. After all, we are the children of this period of upheaval."

-- Irving Wolfe, "The 'Kultursturz' At The Bronze Age - Iron Age Boundary" 
SIS Conference: Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age
Civilisations (1997)

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IRVING WOLFE is professor agrégé, Département d'études anglaises, at the
University of Montreal. (M.A. in English from McGill University, Canada;
PhD in Drama from Bristol University, England; Speciality Shakespeare).
In addition to his literary research, he has presented several dozen
papers on catastrophism at conferences in England, Canada and the U.S.,
and has published papers in this field in several British and American
journals. Has also contributed chapters on catastrophism to a number of
anthologies. He is currently completing a book on Hitler and
catastrophic terror and has prepared a screenplay for Hollywood of a
mass shooting by Nazi soldiers. Professor Wolfe is concerned with the
long-lasting effects of unconscious catastrophic memory on later
collective human behaviour, and his work has therefore focused on such
topics as catastrophism and creative art; catastrophism and religion;
catastrophism and cosmologies; catastrophism and political extremism;
catastrophism and epistemology; catastrophism and soap opera;
catastrophism and Shakespeare; catastrophism and scientific repression;
catastrophism and sport, and catastrophism and popular culture.

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Presented at the SIS Conference: Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age
Civilisations. 1997
<../cambconf.htm>