Grad Student Reacts to The Bronze Age Collapse by Historia Civillis

so today we're gonna be checking out more historia sevillas the video i picked is the bronze age collapse approximately 1200 bce so when it comes to history i shy away from a lot of the ancient stuff i like a lot of the post-protestant revolution stuff i i really enjoy that with the expansion of literacy and stuff it kind of changes the way in which you study uh a certain society i find the ancient stuff is really cool but i like studying stuff in a different sort of way that doesn't really work as easily in ancient history i i guess different methods for different time periods we all kind of have our preferences when we get into studying history that's kind of why i have my little cut off if it's before the protestant revolution i'll learn about it but i it's not my focus or anything like that so that's this is something that i know very little about i think i've had some archaeologist friends who have tried to talk to me about it but i don't know if i really had all that much that i absorbed from any of those conversations so this is i'm a blank slate i'm ready to learn i'm ready to check out some more historia sevillas so let's get this one i started the audio going through sometime it is the year 1200 bce human civilization did an oopsie within the short span of one generation the majority of earth's most technologically advanced civilizations faced an existential crisis nearly all of them failed the test the resulting collapse was a turning point in human history similar in scope to the collapse of the roman empire the old world died and the bronze age died with it [Music] yeah the bronze age is also something that like if you asked me to perfectly like define whereabouts it was i guess the further you go back and start divining thing by things by ages it gets a little bit more blurry where one begins and ends i think the more modern we get it becomes easier to draw hard lines though drawing a hard line isn't always the smartest thing when i learn about like the middle ages and stuff we often learn about the roman empire because you can't learn and appreciate the middle ages without understanding the roman empire even though the roman empire isn't technically technically part of most people's understandings of the middle ages so this is a big thing on like how do you define different times i don't know there's no real right answer we just kind of make this up to make it easier for us to understand different periods and make little necessary generalizations and stuff yay the odd thing is that we barely understand why this happened there are a bunch of theories but nothing definitive we'll get into that in a moment but first an introduction when the bronze age began in western asia it brought to an end an old world of tiny city-states ruled by an oppressive class of totalitarian priests the new world that came after was one full of possibilities vast sweeping empires grew up seemingly out of nowhere new religions new systems of government new cultures new technology all at once all at a breakneck pace revolutions in farming led to massive food surpluses which in turn allowed for these huge bustling multicultural cities these new cities participated in a dynamic system of international trade totally unlike the cloistered city-states that preceded them [Music] so from the little bit that i know farming is the reason why people were more capable of settling down in larger numbers like hunter-gatherer societies were a bit more productive when they were able to move around a little bit more freely uh and move with whatever they're hunting and or gathering and if they exhaust resources in one particular area they could move on to another i don't know that that probably doesn't sound too sophisticated coming from me who's basically a layman on all this stuff uh but yeah words by the late bronze age the big players were egypt cyprus the mycenaeans assyria and babylonia each of these states without exception faced an existential crisis around the year 1200 bce within a generation most of them were gone here's what we know sometime around the beginning of the 12th century look at cyprus we saw them a second ago a city in the hittite empire wrote a letter to the king of cyprus my father now the ships of the enemy have come they have been setting fire to my cities and have done harm to the land doesn't my father know that all of my infantry and chariots are stationed in cat and that all of my ships are stationed in the land of lucca cat was another name for the hittite capital several hundred kilometers inland luca was several hundred kilometers to the west on the aegean coast they have not arrived back yet and so the land is thus prostrate defenseless may my father be aware of this matter now the seven ships of the enemy which have been coming have done harm to us now if other ships of the enemy turn up send me a report somehow so that i will know the hittites promised to send the king of ugarit reinforcements but it was too late the last known letter to leave ugreet reads when your messenger arrived the army was humiliated and the city was sacked it's so fun whenever you get to deal with written material from these periods because in it's so rare like the further back you go uh preserved written material becomes so much more rare and as you get into like the newer history like people who are studying 2020 uh something they're gonna struggle with is uh having too much information to sit through and there's so much uh record that's just going to last forever thanks to the internet i i find that people who study ancient history in a lot of ways they're fortunate to have the opposite problem because that stuff is very difficult to sift through when you have too much material but i i'm they would like to have more i'm sure [Music] but it becomes uh so valuable to have that mastery of the primary sources when i speak to people who really know this stuff they know their primary sources much better than i know the primary sources from my own time that i study because well there there's less therefore they can spend more time trying to understand them in greater depth and i i really appreciate the concentration that goes into studying ancient history our food in the threshing floors was burnt and the vineyards were also destroyed our city is sacked may you know it may you know it the king of cyprus was well aware of what was happening on the mainland but he had problems of his own cyprus was under attack at the same time several larger cities especially on the western coast were burned and many of the smaller cities further inland were simply abandoned wealthy residents buried their valuables with plans to return once the crisis had blown over they never returned oh shoot what up things were different in greece for the last hundred years the mycenaeans had been plagued by internal instability there are signs of destruction everywhere the ruins of these cities leave evidence of massive fires intermixed with arrowheads and weapons which paints a pretty clear picture of a series of battles in which the defenders were ultimately defeated other cities leave evidence of smaller fires confined solely to the palace structures in the center of the cities this indicates some kind of popular uprising in which local kings were overthrown not just in one city but in many cities still other cities show signs of being a red star or natural disaster or both on the whole the picture is fuzzy but it's fair to say that there was chaos in greece it was even worse in anatolia the homeland of the hittites archaeological evidence suggests that every major city in anatolia may have been at least partially destroyed during this period this was especially true up and down the coast in fact we now know that the city of troy was destroyed at this time recent archaeological digs there have found arrowheads still lodged in the ruined walls of a city and evidence of a fire further in i i think this isn't a fun talk when we get to talk about archaeology it's fun to talk about social studies in general and how the boundaries between the different social studies are so fluid that's something that i really appreciate uh like all archaeologists in a way are historians i suppose not all historians would be considered archaeologists i i i guess based on like methods of study but it's rather interesting when i get to learn about that stuff in the broad sense uh i i respect archaeologists they do the field work that gives historians kind of groundwork to build upon it it's more of a cooperative relationship than anything and archaeologists themselves of course build upon their own work just fine they don't always need us sometimes they they're the best historians in a lot of ways finland things get a little more mysterious the hittite capital which only a few years earlier was being protected by the king of ugarit's army was largely abandoned it would later be stormed and burned just like all the others for a long time this abrupt region-wide collapse was inexplicable historians knew that it happened but they couldn't tell you how or why but in the second half of the 19th century egyptian archaeological discoveries provided a hair-raising and revolutionary explanation for this mysterious collapse this inscription was discovered in an egyptian temple in medanet habu it changed our understanding of the late bronze age forever egyptian pharaoh ramses iii describes several waves of foreign invaders arriving on the shores of egypt over the course of 30 years the inscription at mendinet habu reads the foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands all at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray no land could stand before their arms they were coming forward toward egypt while the flame was prepared before them they laid their hands on the land as far as the circuit of the earth their hearts confident and trusting our plans will succeed the egyptians had some guesses as to who these invaders were but they couldn't be certain historians have simply taken to calling them the sea peoples we now thought that the sea peoples were a loose coalition of groups from atlantis confirmed all across the mediterranean we can't be 100 sure of this but we can say with some confidence that most of them were from sicily sardinia crete and the aegean coast maybe some other places too some wore feathered head dresses while others wore horned helmets or simple leather caps some wore kilts while others wore tunics some went into battle wearing full body armor while others fought shirtless what united these groups was their reason for coming this was a migration we know that they came on boats can i just acknowledge that i love the conversation about the nuances of the differences and similarities between archaeology and history like history the study uh like i i really appreciate that going on in the chat i know my explanation is not always the most sophisticated because i i don't do words good uh but i i i'm just acknowledging i'm watching it while i watch this and i really appreciate it uh it's it's it's a lot of fun finding the difference like i i guess all historians in a way are archaeologists that's why it's kind of like a blurred line between any social studies because if you're a historian in a lot of ways you gotta be depending on what you study you gotta be an economist you gotta be uh into geography uh you gotta understand culture you gotta understand military there's all sorts of it's such an all-encompassing umbrella that uh he got to be a little bit of everything i suppose uh i wouldn't go so far as to call myself an archaeologist because i think that would give me uh oh no the bird stepped on the computer get off the computer ah that would give me credit that i don't think i or an air of respectability that i don't think i've earned but oh god where were we ah what happened there we go uh let's let's figure out where we were either because of famine or natural disaster or both on the whole the picture is fuzzy but it's fair to say that there was chaos in greece it was even worse in anatolia the homeland of the hittites sorry i need to figure out where i was suggests that every period troy was destroyed at this time oh whatever been at least well disgustingly destroyed during this period this was especially true up and down the coast in fact we now know that the city of troy was destroyed at this time recent archaeological things there have found arrowheads still lodged in the ruined walls of a city and evidence of a fire we're gonna go a little further than that would later be stormed and burned just like all the others for a long time threw me off so much region-wide collapse was inexplicable historians knew that it happened but they couldn't tell you how or what this you sent me back so far dude like i can't believe you did this to me the four not allowed on the community conspiracy in their islands all at once all at once the flame was prepared by him yes we were here the egyptians have simply taken here we are we're gonna we're gonna get my group here we know that they came on boats and on wagons with their families and all of their worldly possessions what brought them here is another question that we'll get into later by the time the sea peoples finally arrived in egypt virtually every other bronze age civilization had been overrun the myceneans in greece the hittites in anatolia canaan in the levant cyprus in cyprus all gone some states further inland were less affected by the invasions but they were so weakened by the collapse of their neighbors that their days were numbered as well when the sea peoples began their migration they couldn't have imagined that it would have been this successful all the way up until egypt every attempt to resist them failed why in order to understand this we need to talk about bronze age warfare hell yeah that's exciting right chariots chariots chariots chariots bronze age warfare in western asia was all about chariots in the early bronze age they were primarily used that's fun because chariots like when i think about them feel like such a novelty so i love the idea of hearing that like even like you go pretty far back and they still feel like a bit of a novelty i i love the idea of going back and understanding like when they were a bit more practical for transportation but by the intermediate bronze age the militaries of every major state in the region were completely designed around the use of the chariot a chariot of this period usually consisted of a team of two horses pulling a team of two humans one driver and one archer the humans i mean the horses and the driver were trained for speed and maneuverability and at full speed could move roughly twice as fast as a human could run the archer wielded a composite bow not as clumsy or random as a regular bow it was smaller and lighter with better accuracy range and firepower it was a state-of-the-art piece of technology in this period it could punch through roughly three inches of metal oh shoot so a full chariot team had everyone else beat when it came to speed range and firepower this is a bit of a tangent but it's said that the moment the hms dreadnought touched water in the year 1906 every other ship in the ocean became obsolete the hms dreadnought was the best in the world when it came to speed range and firepower which meant that it could just sit back and share off enemy ships at a distance and then outrun anybody who came too close the chariot bronze age chariots had speed range or firepower like the dreadnought they could just sit back and pick off enemies at a distance like the dreadnought they could outrun anybody who came too close an experienced group of chariots were capable of defeating an army 10 times its size this revolutionized bronze age warfare but they were expensive as hell horses had to be specifically bred and trained which cost a small fortune the equipment was all hand crafted by artisans and cost at least twice as much as the horses did the loss of a single chariot was catastrophic and so chariots went into battle with thousands of inexpensive spearmen and archers deployed in a defensive line the infantry could protect friendly chariots that needed to repair or regroup or they could rush forward and destroy enemy chariots that were damaged or caught in a bad position as we get into the late bronze age the region was in the midst of a chariot arms race and then a chariot arms race that's amazing [Music] unlike the bronze age civilizations of western asia the sea peoples fought on foot instead of using spearmen and archers to form a defensive shield for their chariots the sea peoples wielded long swords and javelins and they fought with an unmatched aggression i've so that so the syrians syrians sorry are the sea people why why why did i say syrians are the sea people like the vikings of their time they're just kind of like rolling up on uh on people like from like a vague location like all off over there and just like i i i guess it depends on how dominant they were in battle uh i don't know if there's a uh i i i don't know maybe there's some parallel there i i'm not sure for some reason i can just think of the uh the vikings um yeah sorry laura i i had work earlier today so i had to stream a little bit later um and it's gonna be that way for a couple more weeks and then i want to get back to slightly earlier streams if i can we'll see i mean if they offer me a permanent shift on sunday i'm not going to turn it down but we'll see how it goes as of now it's just a temporary thing i've seen the sea peoples described as skirmishers but i don't think that quite covers it a much better word i've seen used is runners the sea peoples or runners they were highly mobile and weren't locked down into tight little groups like the spearmen were instead their way of fighting was to explode outwards in unexpected bursts this fact made the sea peoples chariot killers the whole reason a chariot was effective was that they could outrun a person on foot but was the same true of 10 people a hundred people what if they were coming at them from different directions what if they got cut off from the main group chariots couldn't exactly turn on a dime so it only took one wrong move for the sea people's runners to overwhelm and destroy a chariot and like i said the loss of a single chariot was catastrophic the defensive line of spearmen and archers were supposed to protect against something like this but in practice the highly mobile sea peoples were able to get behind their lines quite easily as a response to these new tactics defensive lines grew and grew and grew it appears that by the end of this period the armies facing off against the sea peoples were 10 times larger than they were at the beginning [Music] as i said before towards the end of this period egypt was pretty much the last state standing virtually all of its neighbors had fallen to the sea peoples the inscription at mednet habu depicts the final battle against the sea peoples at the mouth of the nile is that supposed to be the pharaoh in the top right corner like actively firing or am i hold on let me see though i don't know if that's supposed to be him or not i i remember they were say they were talking about the pharaoh as they zoomed into this archer picture up here i don't know if and he's like standing on people like a boss that that that does feel very pharaoh like so they're they portray the pharaoh as like an active fighter that's that's kind of cool that is very very cool uh if that is the case i i i find that pretty fascinating uh uh when when you look at kings like some kings are portrayed as like uh as fighters as like fighting kings or whatever uh but it kind of depends on the where and when i guess like not oh you don't always see uh depictions of them actively taking people on unless they're specifically known as like conquerors depicts the final battle against the sea peoples at the size equals power look at how the inscription emphasizes how large the egyptian army had become here's a row of spearmen and then a row of archers and here's the pharaoh ramses iii personally leading the battle stan i just had to wait like three seconds to get the answer to my question i'm sorry i do that uh that's really cool like yeah it it is like the like propaganda uh showing him in the fight it it really does i i think about that um portraying him in the fight is so interesting to me sometimes uh kings are portrayed as kind of above the combat stuff because they're seen as like uh synonymous with like tiny gods basically in some civilizations so it's interesting seeing one fighting with just regular people though his portrayal is clearly ridiculous with him being like 20 feet tall [Music] so you know there is an otherworldly element to it that has to be acknowledged i guess ending on the bodies there's an animal for egypt and then of course here's the mighty chariot prominently displayed but not playing a decisive role in the battle clearly the bulk of the fighting was among the spearmen and the archers in writing we are told that the egyptians protected the mouth of the nile by making a wall out of ships each loaded with archers we're also told that every spearman in egypt was in position and waiting for the sea peoples to land on shore the inscription at mednet habu tells us the final result of the battle here are some sea peoples taken captive and being led away here is some unspeakable carnage of course this is a piece of egyptian propaganda but we have no reason to doubt that this was the result after so many incredible successes the sea peoples were finally defeated in egypt but even in victory egypt suffered egypt is so cool moment forward egypt was a second-rate power and even after a thousand years it had not yet fully recovered the fact that egypt was so badly i i know some people from egypt and uh they were asking about my studies and they were wondering if i ever studied ancient egypt i was so uh i was so sad to admit that i knew very little about it because uh they're really cool and they seemed disappointed that i never studied it they're like well a lot of stuff happened in it built and to a lot of other stuff and it's a really important part of history and i'm like yeah i just never got around to it man uh i wish i did but i never got around to it man damaged by the collapse of international trade is a clue there has to be more to the story than the sea peoples scholars have been pulling at this thread for the last couple of decades and the evidence is convincing bronze age civilizations needed bronze obviously without a constant supply many of their cutting-edge technologies began to deteriorate bronze is made by combining nine parts copper with one part tin copper is a relatively complicated but it's difficult to mine most of these bronze age civilizations had their own small mining operations but the real action was in cyprus cyprus was absolutely swimming in copper and mining it was dead easy this trans they're so small that's crazy into a fabulously wealthy hub of international trade that brings us to tin tin is funny because it's actually extremely rare and it's not evenly distributed across the earth there was a tiny tin mine in anatolia controlled by the hittites but it didn't produce nearly enough to supply the entire region after that there weren't many options the next closest major source was all the way over in modern afghanistan more than 3 000 kilometers away you can just imagine how expensive and dangerous it was to haul tin all the way from afghanistan to cyprus i could only imagine there were alternative sources but it was tough there was a smaller mine in italy and another small mine in spain but these alone couldn't meet demand there wasn't another deposit on the scale of the afghanistan mine until you get all the way up to cornwall on the island of britain it might shock you to learn that people actually made this trip it was a risky voyage but if you made it back it was worth it so as you can see any disruption that's like the lost frontier in there it was no longer possible for bronze age civilizations to produce bronze which by very definition was a problem so the argument goes that the sea people's attacks disrupted international trade slowed down the production of bronze and weakened every state in the region it was a vicious cycle more attacks meant less trade less trade made everybody even more vulnerable to additional attacks as the bronze age states collapsed the situation grew even more dire but there might have been more to this story even if you put the whole international trade angle to the side this entire region may have been much weaker than it seemed according to experts the migration of the sea peoples coincided with a 50-year period where western asia was riddled with massive earthquakes i'm no scientist but that seems bad it's possible that these earthquakes were absolutely wrecking the economy in the region some of the cities that were abandoned for mysterious reasons may have in fact been abandoned after a seismic event there's at least some evidence of earthquakes destroying city that's another reason why it's so hard to study this period this is why i'm very happy in the period that i do study uh you have so little back then that it's kind of unsatisfying but if you study too modern you have so much that it's hard to make sense of any of it i like my little middle goldilocks zone that this seems like so difficult like how does an archaeologist or a historian of this time like cope with how little they're capable of knowing and there's like so it feels like there's so little hope of actually figuring it out like it's always going to be so vague i guess in a sense what we don't know is part of the appeal but this gets to a point where where i'm like oh man i really wish i could find that answer i don't think i don't wouldn't even know where to start it is in greece anatolia the levant and cyprus greece seems to have got the worst of it seems like a good theory that off easy which is an interesting fact considering that they were the only major state left standing maybe the earthquakes played a role so what brought the cp people for a long time scholars guessed that some kind of famine in northern europe caused a domino effect of southward migrations culminating with the sea peoples packing up and fleeing across the mediterranean sea this always made sense on paper but there was very little evidence to support this theory so who whoever it was that said like armed refugees somebody in the chat said that earlier that that that actually does uh seem to apply very well to this until now we now know that around this time there was some kind of environmental emergency it turns out that as expected northern europe was badly affected by this which would have caused that domino effect but the surprising thing is that the effects were even more severe in the eastern mediterranean we now have ancient pollen samples from northern syria which seemed to point toward a dry event lasting for 300 years beginning just before the bronze age collapse pollen samples have also been taken from cyprus where things are even worse these samples indicate that environmental changes were so severe in cyprus there was no longer enough rainfall to sustain even basic agricultural activity this would have been catastrophic it may explain why some of the cities were abandoned before the sea peoples even came similar things have been found in the levant anatolia and greece in fact in greece there's evidence that over hundreds of years plants were evolving to survive a desert-like environment some of the letters we find in the city yeah buxton it was buxton who said that apparently during one of the points there were crop failures across the entire hittite empire one letter from the hittite king to the king of ugarit makes an urgent request for brain ending it is a matter of life and death there is another letter from the nearby city of imar written during one of the later invasions it reads there is famine in our house we will all die of hunger if you do not quickly arrive here we ourselves will die of hunger you will not see a living soul from your land if these reports of environmental emergency are true and we think they are the bronze age civilizations may have been in a state of crisis before the sea peoples even arrived the best current that's another element of studying ancient history that is uh that that is not super appealing and i respect people who actually do go through the trouble these things had to have been translated and the fact is you'd have to learn a language that likely isn't all that useful today even if you have languages that do translate somewhat today they're probably very different now than they were back then that's another thing like i don't know if i'd want to put that time in to study something like that it's very impressive but man it's a it's a big investment and i it's a noble investment i would say analysis of the bronze age collapse has landed on something called the systems collapse theory according to the system's collapse theory the arrival of the sea peoples was actually a medium level threat under normal circumstances the bronze age civilizations should have been able to fight them off but they weren't living under normal circumstances changes to the climate had resulted in widespread famine across the region this resulted in the depopulation of key cities the famine and the depopulation then led to internal instability where some local populations rose up and overthrew their ruling classes we have evidence that this happened with some frequency over this period especially in greece these factors and the invasion of the sea peoples caused a collapse in the international trade system which just made everything all the worse oh yeah and the region was absolutely riddled with earthquakes the bronze age civilizations in western asia so they just didn't know crises at once with each crisis creating a multiplier effect on all the other ones and then the sea peoples came we still don't fully understand how or why the bronze age abruptly collapsed and perhaps we never will but the system's collapse theory is pretty good one thing that i will point out is that for all of its clever work collecting pollen samples and studying ancient seismology the system's collapse theory does slightly de-emphasize the destruction wrought upon bronze age civilizations the fact that countless cities were destroyed is undeniable we have the physical evidence the system's collapse theory argues that less of these were destroyed by the sea peoples than originally thought and this might be right we have all that evidence of environmental changes and earthquakes but we don't know for sure scholarship in this area is still ongoing there have been significant breakthroughs within the last 10 years we may see some definitive answers in our lifetimes but for now we don't know we see the aftermath of the bronze age collapse but when it comes to the root cause all we have are theories go [Music] longest year in human history maybe maybe next time we'll see i i should do historia civilis a little bit more often that i have because he's a fantastic presenter his visuals i always remark on how simple yet effective they are and i think that's one of the best things about him his simplicity anybody can throw the kitchen sink at somebody visually and try to keep their attention but to keep somebody's attention with minimal vigil visuals and still keep it engaging i think it's a very strong skill that historia sevillas has as a presenter and i really do appreciate their content it's really cool i think i may have made a bad call with uh checking out a video about the collapse of the bronze age without checking out some more stuff on life during the bronze age it's like i'd have to i learned how it ends and then it's like the end of a movie it's like it shows the end but then here's how we got here it's one it's one of those things uh so maybe i should check out some more stuff on the bronze age itself like which i'm i'm totally down with if i can find something that looks interesting so i'm i'm maybe maybe we'll think about it i want to see what else historia sevillas has as well i was thinking about going through some of the greek and roman history videos which is a big chunk of their videos they have a julius caesar playlist they have stuff on uh a couple that i was looking at the i think it was like the constitution of sparta and and of athens and i was thinking about checking out both of those at some point in the future i wasn't sure if i'd have time for it today i don't know we're we're we're doing all right and i'm not as tired as i thought i would be over an hour into the stream so who knows how far we're gonna be able to get today but uh i wasn't sure if i'd be up for uh that much grease in in one uh in one stream but maybe next time maybe i'll think about it at some point in the near future i have so much stuff i want to check out though

Channel: Social Stud

Views: 1,216

Keywords: Historian, Reaction, History, React, Historian Reacts, American History, Graduate Student, bird, green cheek conure, conure, The Bronze Age Collapse reaction, The Bronze Age Collapse, historia civillis, history boy, history civillis reaction, cyprus, greek, ancient history, how to make bronze, tin, what happened, making bronze, ancient egypt, egypt, egypptian, anthropologist, archaeology

Id: F_6xjcPItvw

Length: 41min 15sec (2475 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 23 2021