Giant cities, thriving civilizations. Literacy, art, trade Wonders, temples, and palaces. Then, nothing but cinder and ash [Intro Music] The Bronze Age Collapse is one of history's greatest mysteries. All along the crescent, from modern day Egypt to Greece, there once existed spectacular ancient civilizations. Civilizations that have lasted thousands of years. That built wonders like the Great Pyramids and the palace complex at Knossos. Then, after just a few decades, all of it was reduced to rubble. Between the years of 1200 and 1150 BCE, archaeologists found city after city burned - leveled to the ground. After thousands of year of thriving growth and prosperity, almost every major Bronze Age civilization collapsed - in less than the span of a single human lifetime. And what followed was, perhaps, the darkest age in history. International trade disappears. Pottery becomes primitive a throwback to an earlier age. Construction of great monuments
and temples ceases entirely. Centralized government vanishes. Certain skills and trades
simply cease to be practiced. And, perhaps most painful of all - for us, as students of history - the written word becomes almost extinct. In some areas, the ability to read
and write appears to die out completely. In others, a few people
desperately clung to the ancient art. That's what makes this period
such a mystery. Because of the shrinking societies, the abandonment of cities and towns, the lack of royal decrees or record-keeping, and the decline in buildings constructed
out of permanent material - like stone, No one really actually knows
why Bronze Age civilization collapsed. So, this series will be an overview of this mystery. A discussion
of everything that we DO know, and then, some conjecture. Let's start by setting the scene. And for that,
you must first know the players. It's roughly 1200 BCE. A number of kingdoms, city-states,
and proto-empires have sprung up in Eastern North Africa, the Middle East, Anatolia, Greece, and the islands
of the Aegean Sea. Starting from the south,
and working our way north, we first have Egypt. Egypt was the great power of the late Bronze Age world - with wealth and sophistication surpassing
anything that the other empires could achieve. This is not to say
that the other empires were poor. There's quite a lot of evidence that, at least materially, people in this age were better off, basically, than every other era,
until the Classical Period. But Egypt was out there on top. Let's talk
about their advantages. First off: The Nile. We may think of Egypt as a desert region today,
but for most of ancient history, it was one of the most fertile
places in the world. Why? Because the Nile is an incredibly predictable river. It floods regularly, in a way that a society living off of irrigation
can take enormous advantage of and the flooding of the Nile didn't merely help irrigate the crops. It kept the soil rich and fertile bringing in
minerals and nutrients that sustained agriculture would usually deplete
in any other environment, so Egypt had an abundance of food, in a time when most of humanity
spent the majority of its days simply trying to produce
enough food to survive. This allowed Egypt to engage
in long distance commerce, create a strong military with a hereditary caste of warrior-charioteers, and develop complex social
and political mechanisms, like a strong centralized bureaucracy, and a highly developed religion, not to mention build things like giant pyramids, and sphinxes, and sprawling temples. Egypt also benefited
from the Nile as a highway. While the Nile cataracts forced merchants
and travelers to switch boats or drag craft overland for a ways, the fact that almost all of Egyptian civilization
existed along this river was a massive boon for communication, internal trade, even the movement of troops. Oh, and Egypt had one other thing: Gold. In the south, The conquered Nubian kingdom of Kush was an unimaginable source of gold. No other Bronze Age kingdom had access to this quantity of gold wealth. Golden artifacts from Egypt
were prized around the ancient world. With this wealth, The Egyptians had expanded well past its modern day borders. Egypt controlled, either directly or indirectly, much of the territory along the Mediterranean coast - from Sinai to Anatolia. Which, of course, put them into conflict with the Hittites. By the time of our story,
the Hittites control most of Anatolia. They were a powerful, militaristic, society, whose empire was built on the back
of two economic advantages: Tin, and Copper. The elements of bronze. Copper, they had in abundance from mines on the island of Cyprus, the only truly major source
of copper throughout the Near East. It became a staple of Hittite trade. And then there's Tin. Tin is actually shockingly rare here on Earth. It's not like Iron or even Copper. It's a lot closer to Uranium in scarcity. Moreover, it's not evenly distributed, so oddly enough, there was almost no Tin to be found where Bronze Age civilizations cropped up. Recent archaeological evidence shows that the Hittites had some production facilities for Tin at Kestel in the Taurus Mountains, which, if true, may well have been the only Tin production
in the entire region. But this source, coupled with the Hittite ability
to import both from the East through the Assyrians, and from the West via trade routes coming through Europe, meant that they could help sustain hunger
for Tin throughout the Bronze Age world. This also put them in the cross-hairs of basically everybody. And they had to fight continuously to keep their trade routes open. They were one of the few powers that could go toe-to-toe with the Egyptians, and, in fact, the oldest written peace treaty we have is from shortly before the collapse, in which these two super powers agreed to stop trying to tear each other apart. Why the cease fire, though? Well, perhaps because they were both feeling pressure from another empire: The Assyrians. Maybe because they were located further east, away from the coasts, or perhaps due to some other combination of military prowess, political cohesion, and luck, the Assyrians would outlast these other empires by 100 years before their own decline. Meaning that they won't play too direct a role in our story. If anything, they serve as a foil - a counter-balance, an antagonizing force that'll keep the pressure on these other empires at a time where they can stand it the least. What the Assyrian Empire lacked was open trade ports on the Mediterranean coast, so they would be drawn to push westward, into the Hittite Empire, and the Egyptian tributary states of the Levant, whenever they think these Empires are too weak to resist them. Which leaves us with just one other people: The Mycenaeans. These were the proto-Greeks, who ruled from most of southern Greece to the island of Crete. They were seafarers. Instrumental in the vast network that extended throughout the Bronze Age world. They were also the industrial center for most of the ancient world. Importing raw goods, and then exporting finished products, built through a complex top-down system of industry. They were renowned for their cyclopean fortifications, and palaces which served as manufacturing centers, political hubs, and redoubts. They were masters of complex engineering, and builders of great roads. They were also spectacular artists. Even the Egyptians would sometimes hire or emulate them. But they, like all the rest, would fall. Join us next time, as we discuss the technology, social structure, and politics that make these societies possible, but might also set them up for collapse. Outro Music: "The Collapse" by Sean and Dean Kiner.
Extra history is pretty generally great. They are doing one on Bismarck right now that I also think users here would like
This is a great channel in general. They have a great series on Justinian for you Roman fans
Unsustainable agriculture + a society based on very complex systems to function + climate change + migrants and conflicts with migrants.
It is a good thing we could never be in a situation like that again!
Threw me for a second with all of the gaming stuff.