Some time around the year 1200 B.C.E., human
civilization did an oopsie. Within the short span 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. 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 lead to massive food
surpluses which in turn allowed for these huge, bustling, multicultural cities. These new cities participated in dynamic system
of international trade, totally unlike the cloistered city-states that preceded them. By the Late Bronze Age, the big players were
Egypt, Cyprus, the Mycenaeans, the Hittite Empire, Assyria, and Babylonia. Each of these states, without exception, faced
an existential crisis around the year 1200 B.C.E. Within a generation, most of them were gone. Here's what we know. Some time around the beginning of the 12th
century, the King of Ugarit, 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 Khatte, and that all of my ships are stationed in the
land of Lukka?" Khatte was another name for the Hittite capital,
several hundred kilometers inland. Lukka was several hundred kilometers to the
west, on the Aegean coast. "They have not arrived back yet, 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 King of Ugarit
reinforcements, but it was too late. The last known letter to leave Ugarit reads,
"when your messenger arrived, the army was humiliated and the city was sacked. 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 around 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. 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 by in many cities. Still, other cities show signs of being abandoned,
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. Archeological 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 archeological digs there have found
arrowheads still lodged in the ruined walls of the city, and evidence of a fire. Further inland, things get a little more mysterious. The Hittite capital, which only a few years
earlier was being protected by the 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 it happened. But in the second half of the 19th century,
Egyptian archeological discoveries provided a hair-raising and revolutionary explanation
for this mysterious collapse. This inscription was discovered in an Egyptian
temple in Medinet 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 Medinet 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 think that the Sea Peoples were loose
coalition of groups from 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 headdresses, while others
wore horned helmets or simple leather caps. Some wore kilts, while others wore tunics. Some went into battle wearing full body-armour,
while others fought shirtless. What united these groups was their reason
for coming. This was a migration. 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
down in Egypt, virtually every other Bronze Age civilization had been overrun. The Mycenaeans 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 neighbours 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. Chariots. Chariots chariots chariots. Bronze Age warfare in Western Asia was all
about chariots. In the Early Bronze Age they were primarily
used 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 in 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 3 inches
(7.62 cm) of metal. 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
pick off enemy ships at a distance, and then outrun anybody who came too close. Like the Dreadnought, Bronze Age chariots
had speed, range, and 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 the Sea Peoples came. 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 longswords and javelins,
and they fought with an unmatched aggression. I've seen the Sea Peoples described as skirmishers,
but I don't think that quite covers it. A much better word that I've seen used is
"runners." The Sea Peoples were 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 reasons chariots were effective
was that they could outrun a person on foot. But was the same true of 10 people? 100 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 1 wrong move for the Sea Peoples 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 ten times larger than they were at the
beginning. As I said before, towards the end of this
period Egypt was pretty much the last state standing. Virtually all of its neighbours had fallen
to the Sea Peoples. The inscription at Medinet Habu depicts the
final battle against the Sea Peoples, at the mouth of the Nile. 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, standing on
the bodies of his enemies. 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 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 landed on shore. The inscription at Medinet Habu tells us the
result of the battle. Here are some Sea Peoples taken captive and
being lead 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. From this 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 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 few 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 9 parts copper
with 1 part tin. Copper is a relatively common metal, but it's
difficult to mine. Most of these Bronze Age civilizations ran
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 transformed the island 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 that 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. 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 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 in this
supply chain meant that 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 Peoples
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 more and 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 cities in Greece, Anatolia, the Levant, and Cyprus. Greece seems to have got the worst of it. Egypt got 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 Sea Peoples here? 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. Until now. We now know that around this time there was
some kind of environmental emergency. It turns out that, as predicted, 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 seem to point towards a "dry event" lasting for 300 years, beginning just
before the Bronze Age Collapse. Pollen samples have also been taken from Cyprus,
where things were even worse. These samples indicate that environmental
changes were so severe in Cyprus that 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 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 that were evolving to survive a desert-like environment. Some of the letters we find in the city of
Ugarit support this finding. Apparently during one of the invasions there
were crop failures across the entire Hittite Empire. One letter to from the Hittite King to the
King of Ugarit makes an urgent request for grain, ending with "it is a matter of life
and death!" There's another letter from the nearby city
of Emar, 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 an 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 analysis of the Bronze Age
Collapse has landed on something called the Systems Collapse Theory. According to the Systems 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 lead
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 Sea Peoples invasions
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
were dealing with 5 crises at once, with each crisis creating a multiplier effect for all
the other ones. And then the Sea Peoples came. We still don't fully understand how or why
the Bronze Age abruptly ended, and perhaps we never will, but the Systems Collapse Theory
is pretty good. One thing that I will point out though is
that for all over its clever work collecting pollen samples and studying ancient seismology,
the Systems Collapse Theory does slightly de-emphasize the destruction wrought upon
the Bronze Age civilizations. The fact that countless cities were destroyed
is undeniable. We have the physical evidence. The Systems 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 ongoing. There have been significant breakthroughs
just 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. Upon closer examination, I think these guys
are still alive, and I think they're licking somebody's foot. Nasty!
Those god-damned sea peoples.
If you want to go more in-depth and have 70 minutes to spare.
https://youtu.be/bRcu-ysocX4
I love this channel so much. I've watched every video
I visited Greece recently and Akrotiri in Santorini is evidence of this theory. Santorini itself used to be a ring shaped island until 3000 years ago when it was blown asunder by an enormous volcano. When you look at the magnificent unearthed city now it’s evident the city was abandoned before the giant volcano erupted because the only significant treasure found is a small golden Caribou. The inhabitants would’ve had a lot of earthquakes preceding the eruption and knew to leave. But I wasn’t aware that eruptions were occurring all over the Mediterranean at the time too. Combine that with drought and invasions, baby you got a collapse going.
Ooh, history YouTube I don't follow yet. Score!
Look at the fall of civilizations podcast or channel on YouTube.
I fucking love Historia Civilis. It's probably my favourite history channel on YT.
Having said that, I don't think he did the Systems Collapse theory justice. It's not that a lot of small things went wrong, leading to collapse. The idea is that there is a complex system that only works as a whole, and removing a cog leads to the collapse if the whole system. Extra Credits definitely did a better job on this one.
This is exactly the sort of shit that should be on the History Channel
Also reminds me of Ages of Empires. I love that game.
But the bronze from bronze era was made by arsenic bronze, right? Tin wasn't the main source for bronze.