What was life like after the Bronze Age collapse (Extended Version)

hello this is epimetheus and this is an extended version of the video i made on what was life like after the bronze age collapse i've added in tons of interesting information that i did not include in the original version of this video the original version of this video did quite well so i wanted to say thank you by making you guys this extra long version to watch first to build a little bit of context we need to answer the question what was the bronze age collapse explained as fast as possible otherwise it would no longer be just a little bit of context so during the bronze age this would have been around the typical alloy ratio to create bronze the ratio would have varied from region to region or individual blacksmiths or even individual batches being made in industrial bronze today 12 10 is typically used which is a little bit higher percentage of tin compared to the average back then at the beginning of the 12th century bc the most populous prosperous and technologically advanced empires on planet earth were all right next to each other with the notable exception of the shang dynasty in what is now china so i saw somewhere around 15 or 20 comments saying what about the indus valley civilization the main reason i didn't mention the indus valley civilization is the last known remnants of their civilization was abandoned or collapsed over a century before in the late 14th century bc and most of it was abandoned or collapsed centuries before that so there is a big time gap between the indus valley civilization collapse and the bronze age collapse in the centuries leading up to the bronze age collapse there was nowhere near the trade volume that there had been between the indian subcontinent and mesopotamia that there had been during earlier sumerian and acadian times the declining collapse of the indus valley civilization i'm sure had an impact on mesopotamia when it happened but by the time of the bronze age collapse that effect had already taken place so at most there may have been some slow-moving ripple effect that did have some larger implications for the near eastern civilizations of the early 12th century bc but i think they were two more or less self-contained collapses in relation to each other in the couple centuries leading up to the collapse of the bronze age in the near east there appears to have been very little trade with the civilizations that were beginning to develop in the interior of the indian subcontinent like the indus valley civilization in south america the nortichico civilization which was an advanced city building and pyramid-building civilization had already collapsed 500 years before to the north the olmec civilization was still in its developmental stage at its first major metropolitan site at san lorenzo at the beginning of the 12th century bc they were much smaller than the near eastern civilizations and even much smaller compared to their fully developed civilization like the olmecs another one i saw mentioned a couple of times in the comments was the nordic bronze age civilization the nordic bronze age culture that traded through intermediaries with the ancient near east survived the bronze age collapse bowen into a long period of economic decline like the olmecs of the early 12th century bc the nordic bronze age peoples would have been far less populous compared to those of the near eastern empires so besides the shang dynasty and the states of the ancient near east was there any other highly developed populist urban civilizations at the beginning of the 12th century bc probably the remains of those cities could be buried under the amazon rainforest or under deserts grasslands or forests almost anywhere in the world but from what we know the most populous prosperous and technologically advanced empires on planet earth were all right next to each other with the notable exception of the shang dynasty and what is now china these states formed a robust interconnected system of economic political and cultural exchange that endured for many centuries so this international system of trade diplomacy and intermarriage of royal houses largely developed after the fall of the neo-sumerian empire during the more than 800 years this system evolved and thrived the majority of wars fought were relatively civil and the newly conquered people might even receive a temporary tax break after being conquered one major exception was the hittite destruction of yamaha and amorite babylon during the ensuing mini-dark age that lasted for less than a hundred years two mountain peoples the huryans and the cascites moved into mesopotamia and became the new ruling classes there the region then quickly rebounded and the international system became stronger than ever before with both the hittites and egyptians becoming heavily involved in the mesopotamian style of diplomacy this stable period ended with the collapse of the matani empire its territory was split into two vassal states one controlled by the hittites and one controlled by assyria which were both dissolved after a few decades by the beginning of the 12th century bc the biggest problem in the region was assyrian expansionism they were beating the hittites but more importantly they had temporarily conquered babylon and destroyed its city walls it seemed like the region might stabilize and then in the span of a few decades diplomacy trade and prosperity gave way to famine war and chaos so here are some emoji faces i had some fun drawing on my ipad which is what i draw some of this on um the maps and the more detailed drawings those i'll usually do on a computer with a wacom tablet wacom i don't know the resulting devastation was so severe that even the ability to read and write was lost for hundreds of years in many regions throughout the greater near east in what is now greece written records disappeared for almost 500 years so the amount of time writing disappeared or even if it disappeared at all varied from region to region at the near east i believe greece may be the most extreme example but also in parts of anatolia and northern mesopotamia the loss of rioting also occurred for hundreds of years in egypt assyria and elam the quality and quantity of written records severely diminished throughout the dark age like in babylonia where writing never disappeared 100 but as the region spent centuries in instability division and turmoil the written records that survive are extremely limited and are usually just the names of kings many of whom were not much more than warlords and short religious inscriptions this loss of civilization was so extraordinary that this collapse has often been called an apocalypse this video is about those that survived context over but first before we answer the question who survived let's briefly talk about who did not survive generally speaking if one were a general king queen priest noble or any of the long-established ruling class chances of survival were slim in addition to the civilizations that completely collapsed this was also true in the surviving elam egypt and assyria where revolt civil war and dynastic change all occurred bad times have always proved to be a good time for the ambitious to replace the old ruling class these fine folks were often the first to go they were not only the primary targets of foreign invaders but also often fell victim to their own people's wrath when these political and religious leaders who controlled the lion's share of the land's wealth failed to deliver on their promises of safety prosperity and a belly full of food they were naturally blamed for the bad times one interesting example where this appears to have been the case was terence there just the palace was destroyed while the city and fortifications endured for decades afterwards and the population even grew possibly from refugees pouring into the city however war famine and sickness were not caused by poor leadership alone and the bad times became worse conflict became constant and life expectancy was certainly not great for military men also was a bad time to try to stay alive for most non-military men as well farmers who would have been the majority of the population pretty much everywhere mostly died off as irrigation systems were destroyed and marauders roamed the countryside before the collapse savvy conquerors and empire builders would have viewed the rural population as a valuable resource just like precious metals or stones in addition to forfeiting the majority of their agricultural output to the state which fed cities and armies while on campaign farmers were also taxed in a variety of other ways taxes could be paid by labor on civic building projects or by service in the military for the majority of farmers very little usually changed in their lives when one king would topple another in the city or if a foreign conqueror placed someone loyal to himself in charge of the city one common tactic was to destroy the city walls while leaving the city itself intact this allowed the region to remain productive profitable and taxable but much less likely to rebel as the best farmland capable of supporting a large population offered very little in the way of natural defense the flat open land was left vulnerable to any invader which is what happened to cassite babylon after assyria destroyed its city walls while still at war with assyria cassite babylon was barely recovering when the elamites came in and completely destroyed the place the elamites had been enemies of the casites for hundreds of years even before the casites became rulers in babylon consequently the elamites prioritized killing off the cassite royal family and ruling class when they were in charge in the century and a half leading up to the bronze age collapse many of the cities in mesopotamia changed hands many times and i suspect many of them had their walls demolished like cassite babylon and this may have been another factor that led to the rapid collapse of the whole region in the 12th century bc cities that survived with their walls intact found new problems that came along with their survival like terence many of these cities likely became overcrowded with refugees too many people to feed and not enough food could cause internal unrest additionally the cramped conditions were ideal for illness to spread which meant that the city folk didn't do any better and probably did a worse job at surviving on average scribes in particular seem to have failed at living given the lack of written records from an ensuing dark age that followed the bronze age collapse in addition to scribes the butcher the baker and the chariot maker and pretty much everyone who lived in towns and cities didn't make it with few exceptions without a massive base of rural farmers well-maintained irrigation and imported goods that were necessary to support a city demoralized city dwellers became the victims of invaders marauders or themselves while life in the big city vanished or greatly diminished there were some exceptions the most notable of which was egypt the year is 1077 roughly 100 years after the bronze age collapse the once mighty egyptian empire has shrank into a shriveled husk of its former glory like its pharaoh ramses the eleventh who is a tired and dying old man so i have a few points about the dates here first point is the dates for egyptian and pharaoh's reigns are constantly shifting and being adjusted this is in no small part due to how the egyptians viewed the afterlife the egyptians believed to speak the name of a dead person restored their breath in the afterlife as long as one's friends family members and descendants mention their name they could live forever so in times of turmoil where there was usurpers and struggle for the throne the failed pretenders for the throne or those that were overthrown and unliked by the new guy in charge would have their names stricken from monuments and temple records with the intended effect being that with their name no longer being read aloud the usurper would no longer be able to breathe in the afterlife and his existence would fade problems in dating with usurpers and multiple dynasties are compounded in times of strife like after the bronze age collapse because of this ramses the 11th strain has shifted around a little bit i think i have four books i have four different years for the reign of ramses the 11th which i believe were 1080 1077 1075 and 1070. i think 1077 or 1078 is the latest estimate for the end of ramses the 11th reign i could be wrong because that's changing all the time but it's usually not by much another reason i thought 1077 was pretty cool was because of eric klein's excellent book 1177 the year civilization collapsed which is a top-notch book this puts the death of the last ramses ramses the 11th just about exactly 100 years after the bronze age collapsed in reality it's probably a year or two off but i still think it's pretty cool my final point on the dates here is that this is for the rain not the lifespan of ramses the eleventh i saw about i think like five comments that said he said he was a tired and dying old man but he's only 30. and this is a reoccurring thing i see in a bunch of my videos when i show a monarch and put the dates that's for the rain and it's common from medieval and ancient monarchs that you don't really have the date of their birth firmly that's pretty common and many of those who you do have a birth date for them it's still not so relevant of what they did before they became a monarch and super relevant for the time after they became a monarch so that's why i show those dates in some videos i do show the lifespan for certain characters leaders or whoever i'm talking about but they usually don't have a reign or i put a birth death or the letter b and d before each date all right so you listen to me talk about one number for like three minutes now so enough of that and more interesting stuff to come i promise he is the last of many pharaohs to be named ramses he is also the last native egyptian pharaoh to rule over united egypt so right there if you weren't paying close attention i threw in one two three qualifiers united egypt native egyptian and in the subtitle until many centuries later so in the whole period following ramses the eleventh's death there were many egyptians who did rule parts of egypt or places in egypt but not a united egypt and then there were two foreign dynasties that did unite egypt under their rule first the libyans and then the nubians and then in between egypt's conquest by the assyrians persians and macedonians there were some native dynasties that ruled for a short time but in a way i always look at ramses the 11th as the last ancient egyptian pharaoh as the later native egyptian pharaoh's reigns were by and large ill-fated anxiety-ridden disasters which is kind of how ramses 11th reign ended anyways but he still had some of the prestige and tradition of the past but yeah ended pretty awful for him too like his immediate predecessors his long reign was a sad one long gone were the days of god kings beloved by the people throwing lavish parties to celebrate imperial victories and far-off lands the egyptian economy crashed prices of basic goods skyrocketed and taxes were high to maintain the army consequently the malcontented urban population frequently revolted in those times pharaohs were more likely to wage war against their own people than a foreign adversary and rebellions were brutally put down egypt managed to defeat foreign invasions and dominate its own dwindling population while most contemporary empires and kingdoms collapsed part of egypt's strategy was to hire many of the invaders as mercenaries like the sea peoples and most notably many many libyans were hired yeah so it's these libyans that were hired that eventually took over the whole egyptian state this scenario reminds me an awful lot of the germans that took over the western roman empire who were first hired as mercenaries to defend the roman empire against other germans like how these libyans were hired by the egyptians to defend against other libyans which they succeeded at over time they assimilated and had a great respect and love for egyptian culture and like the germans hired in the western roman empire there is an argument to be had about the libyans did they hasten the demise of the egyptian state or do they lengthen the life of egypt if the ancient egyptians had not hired so many libyans they could have prevented their internal takeover but the opportunity cost for this may have been the outright conquest of egypt by the libyans and that would have been far more destructive and violent it's fun to armchair general and all but we do have far less information than ramses the 11th and his contemporaries had about the whole security situation in egypt at the time and i think it is most likely that they made the rational decision at the time for the information they had but it is also possible they made terrible decisions and screwed up everything many many libyans were hired the army was paid well while egypt's border slowly shrank all was sacrificed to feed the egyptian war machine including the pharaoh's power in the nile delta tanis rose as a rival power center to the old capital of memphis there the strong man's mendes ruled little is known of his origins and path to power but it was likely similar to hero the ruler of thebes herohor rose through the ranks of the egyptian army eventually becoming not only the egyptian supreme military commander what is also very interesting that i didn't mention in the initial video is that herohor may have been libyan which would make sense as the libyans were becoming the most powerful component of the egyptian army it is theorized that samandis came out of a priestly family but if he didn't it is also possible he may have come from a military libyan family if true the libyan takeover of egypt would have happened a century earlier than currently thought samendes and arahor both ruled and put down rebellions in the name of ramses the eleventh while consolidating power for themselves ramses the eleventh appears to have been okay with relinquishing his power in return for stability as it is generally believed that both smendes and erohor married his daughters now back to harahor the egyptian supreme military commander and grand vizier of the south but the viceroy of kush and finally the high priest of ammon at thebes herohor took on some pharonic titles and iconography while still acknowledging ramses the eleventh's authority predominantly in name only the power of egypt's military secular and religious institutions were combined and wielded by one autocrat monopolizing the violence and corruption that have always been a part of power herrera not only held absolute control over his citizens life by the sword but also their afterlife herror was indicative of the violent brutal and efficient men that came to dominate egypt for centuries to come following ramses the eleventh's death egypt split in two was solidified the two new rival dynasties that formed engaged in a long-standing mostly cold war with each other even though they were divided and fought their fair share of civil wars they presented a united front to outsiders the pharaoh at tanis was acknowledged as the ruler of all of egypt even if he didn't control all of the nile delta both thieves and tennis recognized the necessity in concealing their divided and declining state they attempted to have closer ties with each other through intermarriage which was partially successful but relations remain tense between thebes and the delta and egypt continued to decline following the death of ramses the eleventh ramses the eleventh was never buried in his tomb instead it became a workshop for stripping ancient mummies of their valuables in a semi-respectful manner even the gold on the coffins was scraped off the methodical manner this appears to have been carried out means these mummies were probably looted by state actors massive spending on the army and an overtaxed demoralized populace made the fabulous wealth buried in the ground a tempting target for state-sponsored looting the new dynasties that had access to temple treasure maps may have not viewed their predecessor's tombs as sacred as before so the traditional narrative of the robbery of many of ancient egypt's tombs is that during times of strife poor people went in and robbed them this view is backed up by some amazing first-hand accounts from the time that have survived till today but something doesn't quite make sense about this narrative the most prolific age of the tomb robbers appears to be at the beginning of the third intermediate period of egyptian history the same period of time this video covers egypt was heavily militarized and were in desperate need of more gold to pay the army supply the army and to build maintain and repair fortifications and were left with a big pile of motive to rob themselves another thing that seems suspicious is the relatively lenient punishments many of the tomb robbers received during this period in earlier times execution was a more common form of punishment in the early third intermediate period beatings and whippings became more common and there were repeat offenders the times were brutal and the ancient egyptians weren't shy about executing a lot of people so it does seem odd that the tomb robbers would get off the hook with a beating or maybe losing a hand in one surviving confession of an ancient egyptian tomb robber he claims to have previously paid off a local bureaucratic official into releasing him so some tomb robbery might be explained by local corruption however i do believe the most likely scenario is that the majority of the tomb robbery was committed by the state in secret and if any of the involved lackeys were caught they were given a slap on the wrist or the foot i haven't read this theory anywhere but i'm sure someone's come up with it before it just makes too much sense given all the different things that were going on then the stolen gold probably funded egypt's survival and i don't believe the egyptian dynasties tanis and thebes were so incompetent that they stood by while the common people robbed all the tombs it is easy for us today to condemn all of that destruction of history but in those times i believe they were acting more out of rational self-preservation rather than greed though i'm sure greed played into it too and there were some fantastic post-tomb raiding after parties these pharaohs no longer boasted of foreign victories or massive building projects but occasionally boasted a maintenance on crumbling monuments or if they were less honest wrote their names over old masterworks pretending they had built them as an isolated impoverished egypt lingered on so sometime not too long after the death of ramses the 11th the egyptians lost control of kush which roughly corresponds with the modern country of sudan kush was developed into a formidable state by the nubians who were eventually powerful enough to conquer egypt from the libyans in the mid 700s bc they ruled in egypt for a little over 90 years the kingdom of kerma was the first powerful state in cush and was a long time rival of egypt before the egyptians conquered it in the new kingdom the kingdom of kush that formed after the bronze age collapse endured for well over a thousand years those not so fortunate as to live in a post-apocalyptic dystopian dictatorship run by an authoritarian megalomaniac lived a very different life and yes yes they were very lucky pretty much everywhere in the ancient near east including assyria and elam life became pretty bad the 11th century bc was also a tough one for the shang as their emperors became increasingly despotic and were overthrown so where would have been the best place to live during the 11th century bc maybe in one of the emerging kingdoms of the ganges river valley but they were all waging war on each other so maybe not so nice living in one of the declining nordic bronze age societies might not be a bad choice if you're fine with pretty extreme winters and like later viking times they were probably all raiding each other the developing olmec civilization is probably one of the better choices for the 11th century bc large stoneheads wearing helmets was their favorite thing to make so it wasn't a great choice if you're looking for peace and quiet so they weren't exactly the most peaceful people either nubia was in pretty regular conflict with egypt but it was one of the more internally stable places in the world at the time the nak culture in what is today nigeria was in a very early stage of its development and we don't know too much about them but that may have been a potentially very nice place to live or not we don't really know so let me know in the comments if you were forced to go back in time to go live in the 11th century bc where would you pick to live one of the places i mentioned or somewhere completely different maybe being a hunter-gatherer wasn't so bad or a mediterranean pirate like the lucca or the sardinians the egyptians credited the prodigal band of mediterranean maritime marauders known as the sea peoples with the destruction of the international system of states they were a part of this view was based off of their own personal experience of being invaded by the sea peoples multiple times while the eastern mediterranean they were familiar with was ravaged and plundered so i did not talk about the sea peoples very much in this video if you would like to learn more about them i did make a video about them a couple years ago to quickly sum up the video the current evidence we have seems to point that the sea peoples came from around the central and eastern mediterranean and many of them came from around the gnc including some mycenaeans see people like the tijeker and pelisette were resettled in canaan it is generally considered the pelle set amalgamated with the local population to become the philistines with the exception of the pelosette the surviving sea people and their descendants appear to be relatively few in number however more than any nautical threat much more insidious formidable and familiar forces played a larger role in bringing the great empires of bronze to their ruin the grand hittite capital city of hatusa was sacked by a coalition of former subjects and new enemies foremost among them were the kaskas a fierce tribe of mountain warriors who were a long time off and on again hittite vassal and now they were out for vengeance so the kaska are also known as the gaska or the kaskians for a short while they were probably the most powerful group within anatolia until they were defeated by the assyrians in a failed attempt to invade mesopotamia afterwards they faded into obscurity there are no surviving written records from the central northern anatolia during this time but i think the most likely scenario is that the kaska and the phrygians spent several decades fighting each other for control over the remnants of the spoils of the hittite empire after they both failed in invading mesopotamia also as some people have correctly pointed out in the comments this poor guy is a little bit malproportioned i drew his body way too small for his big head but i promise you if i use him in another video i'll fix his proportions so he looks a little bit more uh left less uh dwarfish like hatusa babylon the intellectual and cultural center of mesopotamia was sacked pillaged and plundered and much of his population massacred by the syrian king to coltinarta so this guy was a bit of a megalomaniac who wrote a long epic poem about himself after turcoltinerta sacked babylon he became very unpopular among the assyrians who viewed his sack of the city as sacrilege two of his sons rebelled against him and he was eventually murdered even though the assyrians were a longtime enemy of cassite babylon they had a great respect for their culture and religion as the city slowly recovered it was sacked again by the elamites plunging southern mesopotamia into a centuries-long dark age the elamites were by far the most organized powerful and populous of all the major mountain peoples of the late bronze age in addition to the elamites there were many more petty kingdoms cities and towns of the anatolian southern caucus and zagros mountain ranges so to reiterate there were many more groups than just the ones i'm showing on screen but these were the most formidable some of the smaller tribal confederations we don't know their exact location also i thought i had cassites here but i might have accidentally deleted that or forgot to put it they would have been around a similar area where i have the gutians here i think a little bit to their south these cassites were related to those that had conquered southern mesopotamia and ruled there for over 400 years and for hundreds of years after the collapse of cassite babylon cassite tribes were active in the zagros mountains before being killed off or assimilating into other peoples the mountain peoples had long-standing antagonistic relationships with the kingdoms and empires of the flatlands when the much more populous flatlanders were united and strong they pushed their way around they marched their armies throughout the mountains and extorted tribute from the overwhelmed mountain people in exchange for not burning down their crops towns and cities this same dynamic of large population empires exploiting resource-rich less populated mountainous or difficult terrain countries has existed from the beginning of written human history till modern times and in almost every example of this there's always a built up resentment and a backlash when the tables were turned in times of civil war famine or any other time of weakness the tough impatient mountain people flooded into the flat lands collecting tribute and sacking cities this usually ended when enough organized resistance was mounted or as was sometimes the case the mountain peoples settled among the flatlanders as a new ruling class eventually assimilating into their culture like had been the case with the earlier hurrians gutiens and cassites in contrast to their success in the early decades of the bronze age collapse the warlike assyrians defeated just about every mountain people that attempted to establish themselves in mesopotamia so a really interesting question i don't know the answer to is what were the cassites doing following the bronze age collapse did they attempt to rescue or take advantage of their cassite relatives who had assimilated into babylonian culture or did they just kick back and watch the show or perhaps they provided refuge for casites fleeing babylonia and we're like we told you 400 years ago moving down there was a bad idea and the city folk replied but at least we had some fun well whatever the case none of the mountain people had any luck fighting against assyria assyria appeared to be on the verge of holding the collapsing age together by their own force of will and brutality until they met their match a people more stubbornly resilient than the mountain peoples and more terrifying than the sea peoples i'm very happy with how these drawings turned out these don't look like the sort of lads you would like to meet in a dark alley at night or during the day either but they were great guys to have on your side in a fight long before the bronze age collapsed during its most stable and prosperous epoch there were those that just didn't fit into society some were criminal fugitives bandits or those who just wanted freedom on the southern periphery of the fertile crescent a multitude of small familial clans eeked out in existence as pastoral nomads an important point to make about nomadic groups throughout history is that they weren't always born into that lifestyle wherever there has been a large populated area in history there have been those that wanted to leave and get away from all the people for a variety of reasons individuals as well as groups were outcast or chose to leave settled societies and take up a nomadic way of life some were fleeing a life of slavery or a victorious enemy but all preferred the tyranny of a harsh environment over the tyranny that they had fled a little bit of water or patch of grass could mean the difference between life and death consequently these people were fiercely competitive highly mobile and nearly indestructible in contrast to the mountain peoples who hoarded away wealth of metals and other highly prized resources in their remote citadels one of the other highly prized resources that was commonly extorted from the mountain peoples was horses especially in the later neo-assyrian empire where they would sometimes go on yearly missions to go get horses the horses bred in the mountains were considered to be better quality than those bred in mesopotamia the majority of a assyrian campaigns did not have territorial conquest in mind but tribute instead the assyrians would go looking for cities towns villages or citadels once they found a place that looked good they would say hey nice place you have here it'd be a big shame if something bad would happen to it maybe if you could give us two 300 horses then we could ensure your safety and uh be on our way if they got what they wanted they would go looking for the next place they could extort if the mountain people being threatened couldn't or wouldn't pay up then there would be a siege the intended destruction was meant to encourage others to pay up quickly assyria did not invent these tactics but they were the most prolific users of them the people of the wasteland had very little wealth which the bronze age empires could extort from them so they were usually left alone the wastelanders periodically visited the region's cities and traded sheepskins and other assorted loot with the settled peoples the egyptians had a somewhat similar relationship with the libyans although it was more hostile overall the most powerful and numerous of the libyan tribes was the mesh wish like the wastelanders in the east the libyans were nomadic pastoralists who tended cattle camels and goats primarily when egypt was strong they liked to engage in small-scale trade but when egypt was weak they liked to raid but their most notable rule in pre-collapse bronze age society was as mercenaries which also became true for the meshwesh libyans the egyptians built fortresses from the nile delta all the way down to thebes on their western border and at some point probably figured out it's easier to hire these people than try to defend against them these tough tribal people with an extensive knowledge of the region's terrain would be frequently hired to guide and guard caravans or attack raid or harass one city on behalf of another by the later 12th century bc their time had come the age of epic battles fought between collapsing empires was drawing to a close this gave way to a short period of assyrian dominance over much of the near east but despite their success the empire was exhausted overextended and the land they ruled over was devastated then the floodgates opened and the wastelanders poured in chaldeans sutians and aramaians were the most numerous of the tribal peoples to migrate into mesopotamia again there were many more tribes at play here like the yamanites and probably even many more that were never recorded many of the smaller tribes were probably generalized as arameans or chaldeans depending on the region they moved into ulsolate would have been common for tribes clans or families of one ethnic origin to split off and join those of another usually through a marriage alliance which this process of splitting up coalescing and reforming was very common for nomads throughout history which has often made nomadic groups very difficult to firmly identify by ancient as well as modern people which is why broad generalizations were often used the countryside was devastated but in comparison to the wasteland where clans could spend generations fighting over access to a well the depopulated rubble of the old world would have appeared as if the gates of heaven had opened up now they had much better things to squabble over like gold wine slaves and prestige where mass irrigated fields of grains had once stood there was more than enough wild grasses growing for sheep to have a hearty meal or two because of this pastoral nomads thrived after the collapse and their way of life became the dominant lifestyle almost everywhere in the near east because those living in the wasteland lived such a hard life before the collapse things actually got easier for them when civilization did collapse they were such effective survivors that the surviving sagewellers couldn't compete with their ravenous and resilient nature and most simply lacked the skillset necessary to survive and as the sheep population grew so did the population of those who ate them especially the arameans because of their mobile nature the assyrians found it nearly impossible to stamp them out with conventional military means assyrian kings frequently boasted of wiping the aramaians off the face of the earth then a few years later they would boast of defeating them again and again but this time for good the assyrians were not keen on keeping records of their own defeats when they did keep records about their defeats it was usually in the context of complaining about their predecessors how they gave up land and screwed everything up and they had to go fix the situation but three signs point to the likelihood they frequently lost during this period one the large number of campaigns they waged against the arameans 2. they made and kept peace with survivors from their old enemy babylon was also being overrun by nomadic pastoralists number 3 they ultimately abandoned their empire and retreated into their heartland which itself was under aramian assault some of their cities were sacked and even an aqueduct to their capital city was destroyed and it lay and repaired for decades the arameans were everywhere some daring warlords captured remote assyrian mountain citadels and outposts these were used as the base of operations for further marauding numerous small bands of aramians stalked the countryside enslaving rural farmers for hundreds of years after the bronze age collapse aramians enslaving assyrian farmers was a reoccurring problem some of them were probably sold on the coast to phoenician and neo-hittite merchants but the vast majority probably remained in northern mesopotamia when assyria re-emerged freeing their enslaved brethren was one of their top priorities as well as enacting revenge on the arameans consequently many refugees flooded into assyria cities this caused food shortages sickness popular unrest and ultimately civil war while many still maintained their nomadic way of life over time many of the illiterate aramian herdsmen became kings many of these kings were merely the rulers of fortified towns and villages built on the ruins of what were one cities there were some legitimately powerful aramean kings and chieftains who could marshal thousands of men into battle however the independent and competitive nature of the arameans meant that they never united into a larger empire and were frequently at war with themselves as they were with almost everyone else which for some campaigns they did form large coalitions of kings to fight against the assyrians but these coalitions were short-lived and they never formed into their own empire which would have been really formidable if they had done so an interesting question my cousin asked to me about this drawing is why is the bronze different colors which i actually did on purpose to represent that there was different qualities of bronze in circulation this guy gave a greenish tint to his helmet to represent oxidation which happens to bronze when it is exposed to air over a long amount of time which is why you see a lot of old bronze statues that are look pretty green and the oxidation actually protects the bronze layers under underneath which is um pretty cool where it keeps it from deteriorating the king over here also has some oxidation on his armor i also gave his axe the look that it has a higher copper content because if you had to choose i think they would have wanted their higher quality bronze to be used for swords because if you use a sword that has too high copper content on the battlefield it could bend which could be fatal for you in contrast a more girthy axe head is unlikely to bend or have issues with being made from a more soft bronze even well into the iron age in republican roman times low quality bronze and copper helmets were used periodically it still did a great job at preventing your head from getting cracked open and it was resistant to corrosion which was another added side benefit because bronze was lower maintenance and resistant to corrosion it was still heavily used in the iron age the butt spikes for spears and pikes were usually made of bronze while the spearhead was made of iron because if the butt spike was made of iron then it would probably rust pretty easily because if you're repeatedly putting it into damp soil then it's gonna rust in the west there was a chunk of the hittite empire that never fell it transitioned into a collection of loosely allied city-states called the neo-hittites here the aramean onslaught appears to have been slightly more gentle in this case all we know is that around 1000 bc the rulers of many of the city-states there came to have aramean names and the culture gradually became more aramian one possible scenario is that the hittite cities in this region became so sick of being constantly extorted by a never-ending series of aramian warlords chiefs and petty kings that one day they said hey you want to come here and be a real king and defend us from the rest of your buddies that ended up working and a bunch of other cities followed the same strategy the later hittite empire was far more adept at diplomacy compared to the assyrians which is evidenced by the vast majority of surviving treaties from the bronze age involve the hittites which is why i suspect that the transition of power in the neo-hittite city-states was diplomatic but i could be wrong and they just could have conquered them or besieged them and then they surrendered another possibility is that the arameans just immigrated into the cities and eventually were numerous enough to overthrow the elites and become the ruling class the long-standing most powerful and stable aramean kingdom was aram damascus from there the arameans launched many campaigns against the hebrew tribes to their south and this has many many wars over a roughly 400 year period but it is important to note with situations like this in history that peace was more common than conflict in the later 8th century bc aram damascus met its end when it allied with israel against judah judah petitioned the assyrians for help and the syrians went and destroyed aram damascus in return for judah pain tribute some scholars believe the hebrews or the haberu mentioned in earlier egyptian records while others think the term habiru was a generic term for some of the wastelanders in the region similar to how alamu appears to have been a generic term for wastelanders to the northeast so it could be said the arameans or alamu but not all alamu were aramians the hebrews also had nomadic pastoralist roots and followed a somewhat similar trajectory as the arameans did gradually becoming city dwellers and founding formidable states israel and judah split after the libyan pharaoh shoshank invaded the levant beforehand they were united by a single monarchy for a little over a hundred years there is an alternate theory that they both evolved as two separate states currently this view is in the minority and for obvious reasons there's by no means an academic consensus on the date or the territorial size of these ancient states i think the conventional view makes the most sense but just letting you know there's other theories out there either way the cool silver lining for all of this is that there is a lot of archaeological activity going on there now and a lot of really cool things are rediscovered there all the time which allows us to understand the history of these states to a greater degree despite the chaotic age many of the battered city-states in the levant enjoyed a golden age of sort after things started to settle down a little bit after 1000 bc the region was no longer at the crossroads of powerful empires which allowed the kingdoms and city-states there to thrive and fight amongst themselves for a little while an important note about these states during the 10th and 9th centuries bc even in larger states like egypt assyria and elam cities acted more independently than they had before because of the tough times they acted more in their own self-interest conflict was on a smaller scale and diplomacy became centered around personal relationships between the kings of cities tribal chieftains and warlords rather than the dictates of a great king in phoenicia philistia and the neo-hittite city-states cities frequently cooperated with each other but were fiercely independent and could even go to war with each other however they were usually far more united compared to the emerging aramean kingdoms to the south more than 200 years after the bronze age collapse the semi-nomadic libyans that had poured into the nile delta and served in the egyptian army slowly took over the egyptian military government and finally the throne the libyan pharaoh shoshank united the land and for the first time a foreign dynasty ruled all of egypt shoshank was not the first libyan pharaoh in egypt he was preceded by osakan the elder who ruled in the nile delta a few decades before shoshank but i do suspect there were other libyan pharaohs before oscar khan who may have taken on more egyptian sounding names to fit in even if there were no earlier libyan pharaohs libyan generals or warlords likely controlled the throne long before shoshank or asar khan sat on it the dynasty founded by shoshank reigned in egypt for over 200 years during its last century this dynasty splintered off into multiple competing factions which were all eventually conquered by the nubian kingdom of kush to the south i saw a couple comments saying the shoshank redemption shawshank does seem like that could be the name of the brother of shoshank but i do think it's funny and fitting that shoshank redemption is the name for the era where shoshank did bring egypt back to a period of prosperity for over a century after the bronze age collapse it was undoubtedly the warlike semi-nomadic herdsmen that proved themselves the best survivalists this ability to survive was in large part due to their mobility they could move away from greater threats and take advantage of weaker targets their society was efficient low maintenance and based around small united family units in order to survive the arid wastelands south of mesopotamia strong family ties were a necessary but not sufficient qualification along with other skills like being able to fight and find food while efficiently rationing it gave nomadic herdsmen a huge competitive advantage in this post-apocalyptic age before i get back to our regular programming so on this next part i had a little fun and i think most people got it but a few didn't a brief message from this video sponsors this video has been sponsored by bronze tired of your copper bending or your iron rusting i recommend you buy bronze and a lot of it why buy bitcoin when you can buy a pound of bronze for a very affordable two dollars and two cents a pound now that is what i call a bargain so you may ask what can you use bronze for today when we have all these fancy new metal amalgamations well because bronze is strong and resistant to corrosion it is still the preferred material for the largest statues in the world or any classy statue you want to leave outside like the world's current largest statue the statue of unity in india which stands a staggering 182 meters or 597 feet tall height of the base not included and in case you were wondering the statue is of sadar patel who was one of the most prominent leaders of both indian independence and unification movements if you're not in the statues there are still many more modern uses for bronze because of its pleasing acoustic qualities bronze is still the preferred material for high quality bells whether small or large bronze is also used as components for a variety of other musical instruments another one of bronze's superior characteristics is that it does not produce sparks when struck which makes it ideal for some modern industrial components intended for use in highly flammable environments where a spark could cause a disaster if that's not enough bronze is also extremely resilient against the effects of salt water corrosion which why bronze today is the preferred metal for many nautical instruments fittings and tools such as ships anchors this video is also sponsored by my fantastic patrons over on patreon who have helped out this channel through the tough times one group of people i believe would have survived at a greater rate than most other civilians would have been merchants another group of people that i saw mentioned in the comments that i do agree would have survived more than most city dwellers would have been blacksmiths they possessed a skill that even the most illiterate toothless and ill-tempered warlord could appreciate and like merchants most metal workers probably had experience negotiating which is a good skill to have when you're trying to talk someone into letting you live they have the ability and know how to travel long distances preferably away from danger they were master negotiators and could possibly barter to save their own life merchants would have known many languages and social customs to get around foreign areas and most competent merchants probably developed likable personalities and were able to tell a good story or do a magic trick or something so that they would be entertaining enough that people wouldn't want to kill him one piece of anecdotal evidence is that during the bronze age collapse the assyrian king asher balcala so i messed up egypt's territory here by the reign of asher belcala they had already given up all this land in the levant and had withdrawn from most of the sinai peninsula so yeah sorry about the map asher balcala built the world's first recorded zoo this is while his empire was being torn apart by civil war and aramian tribal incursion so even though godel asher belcala may have failed in setting his priorities straight his merchants did succeed in acquiring exotic animals from far-off lands for their king zoo which included an ape and a crocodile their ability to travel through hostile terrain and return with such unwieldy cargo is a testament to the merchant's resourcefulness which may indicate they were good at surviving so asher belkalla started his zoo when the egyptians sent him a gift of a couple of animals which apparently blew his mind because his reaction was i gotta catch em all he also became obsessed with trying to breed animals in captivity and acquiring more animals he also had some run-of-the-mill animals like camels but he also had some weird ones like beasts of the great sea or a river man which your guess is as good as mine on whatever that was and the beasts of the great sea kind of implies that salt water so perhaps he could be history's first person to keep a saltwater fish tank as well asher belk hollows or really liked hunting and boasted about killing a bunch of animals too which was more typical of almost every other assyrian king too the greek island of yubia is the only example i can think of where the pre-existing farmers survived and thrived after the collapse once a mycenaean backwater the island became a fortress where small family farms grew and banded together in a collective defense so the pronunciation of yubia i think is more like evia or avia or evia i don't know i'm pretty sure i'm just saying it wrong googling this online i even saw people disagreeing with how to pronounce it from modern greek to ancient greek so pronunciations are often a big pile of worms and not super straightforward so anyways life outside of evia evia was very different on mainland greece there large-scale farming and urban life died out and what sort of lifestyle took over there you guessed it semi-nomadic pastoralists or herdsmen survivors lived in the mountains evidenced by the remains of small hilltop communities that have been found where they could easily spot danger coming from far away and when the coast was clear they could take their sheep down to graze in the valleys below centuries later the eubans were the first greeks to emerge from their dark ages establish colonies in far-off lands and rediscover writing they also fought the first recorded war between two greek city-states the two leading evian cities of calcus and eritrea the 60-year-long war devastated the island which returned into being just a backwater while mainland greece was just beginning to embark on the most illustrious period of its history what happened after this post-apocalyptic age the short answer is assyria so yeah assyria got really good at surviving their core territory had next to zero natural defense they were under constant attack and then they went on the constant attack the mountain people that they attacked frequently in the north banded together and formed the kingdom of iraq ii which proved to be a formidable and long time assyrian enemy even though they were divided it took assyria hundreds of years to defeat the aramian states it was not the assyrian legendary brutality that finally brought the arameans down but instead more pragmatic means were used arameans who worshipped the god asher and served in the assyrian army could become assyrian with all the same rights and privileges of any other assyrian citizen the arameans were so prolific within the empire that even the official state language was changed from acadian to imperial aramaic aramaic was far easier to learn to speak read and write compared to acadian because of this it became the common language throughout mesopotamia and the levant for over a thousand years until it was replaced by arabic babylonia which was slowly being rebuilt by the chaldeans was conquered by assyria and one by one all the kingdoms that had risen in the aftermath of the bronze age collapse fell to assyria and the line blurred between who was aramian and assyrian and in some way you could argue the syrian empire was also an aramean empire a question i've seen periodically in my bronze age videos is why does southern mesopotamia look like that and the answer is silt silt is a sandy clayish material silt is carried from the mountains where mesopotamia's rivers originate down into the persian gulf where the silt builds up his sediment and ever so slowly pushes the coastline out to sea new marshlands are created which dry up and new marshes form on the periphery of the dried marshes and the cycle repeats over and over again so all of the light blue areas show where the modern coastline is and what's land now which i believe it was somewhere around the later first millennium bc when the tigris and euphrates first joined together to create a confluence which i'm not sure what the tigris euphrates confluence is called or if it's just called the tigris euphrates confluence so going back a little earlier i didn't really talk much about lydia fridgior alycia the main reason why is we have very little archaeological evidence or written accounts for the formation of these states lycia is pretty straightforward though they were the luca which was one of the sea peoples and pretty much after the bronze age collapse they continued being pirates and raiding places and that's that and for the formation of lydia and phrygia we do have some clues from much later greek semi-mythical accounts but we do have very little solid facts about the formation of their state from the archaeological record following the bronze age collapse or what was their lifestyle like which i think the most likely scenario is they were a coalition each were coalitions of tribal peoples that came in there they fought amongst themselves for hundreds of years but were fighting outsiders and gradually coalesced into the phrygian and lydian groups which assimilated hittite and louie and survivors in other confederations most were probably semi-nomadic pastoralists again but settled down over time which i believe that scenario played out again and again and again after the bronze age collapse and if we don't know the history it's probably a safe bet that in any region something similar might have happened following the bronze age collapse if you enjoyed this video you will probably enjoy my many other videos on the bronze age and the ancient near east this has been epimetheus and thank you so much for watching to the end of the video especially because this was the much longer version of the video more than usual i'd love to hear your feedback on this video because i did this one in a longer more experimental style where i added all this commentary in do you think it worked or not let me know was there interesting information in all the additional commentary or do you like the shorter more polished videos better i would love to read all your thoughts on this in the comments would you like to see more videos like this yes no maybe or depends again big thanks to my patrons who support the videos on this channel i am a one man team that does all the drawing editing writing researching and narrating and everything else and i appreciate all the support

Channel: Epimetheus

Views: 901,626

Keywords: Ancient history, history, documentary, bronze age, bronze age collapse, What Happened After The Bronze Age Collapse?, bronze age documentary, Hittites, hittite empire, ancient egypt, arameans, assyrians, assyrian empire, assyrian history, elam, bronze age empires, babylon, fall of babylon, sea people, aramaeans, mycenaeans, epimetheus, bronze dark age, canaanites, near east, dark age, mesopotamia, sea peoples, phoenicians, minoans, bronze age apocalypse, ancient, ancient history, podcast

Id: uM6JSS3l-IQ

Length: 60min 13sec (3613 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021