# How and Why the Bronze Age Collapsed

An episode of [Human History ASMR](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6793196842), 7 Oct 2026, 1 h 01 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75560590/how_and_why_the_bronze_age_collapsed_human_voiced_no_ads.mp3

Journey back more than three thousand years and explore one of the great mysteries of ancient history: the collapse of the Bronze Age civilizations. This episode examines how a connected world of powerful kingdoms, thriving cities, international trade networks, and sophisticated cultures was transformed by a period of extraordinary upheaval around the end of the second millennium BC. Discover the civilizations that dominated the eastern Mediterranean and Near East, including the Egyptians, Hittites, Mycenaeans, Minoans, Canaanite city-states, and kingdoms of the ancient Near East. Explore the diplomatic relationships, trade routes, agricultural systems, and political alliances that connected these societies across enormous distances. Examine the warning signs that appeared before the collapse. Explore drought, famine, earthquakes, internal rebellions, political instability, economic disruption, warfare, and the breakdown of long-distance trade. Discover how a system that depended heavily on interconnected kingdoms and supply networks could become increasingly vulnerable when several crises occurred at the same time. The episode also investigates the mysterious Sea Peoples, whose movements and conflicts appear in Egyptian inscriptions and other ancient evidence. Explore what historians actually know about these groups, where they may have originated, and why modern interpretations remain controversial. Separate the historical evidence from the popular image of a single invading force responsible for destroying the Bronze Age world. Discover what happened to major centers such as Hattusa, Mycenae, Ugarit, and other cities that were abandoned, destroyed, or dramatically transformed. Examine the evidence from archaeological excavations, destruction layers, written records, inscriptions, environmental studies, and ancient correspondence to reconstruct a world experiencing profound political and economic change. But the Bronze Age did not simply end overnight. Explore how some regions survived, adapted, or reorganized while new political powers gradually emerged. The collapse was followed by centuries of transformation that helped create the societies and kingdoms of the early Iron Age. Drawing on archaeology, ancient texts, climate research, inscriptions, material evidence, and modern scholarship, this episode examines the competing theories behind the Bronze Age Collapse and explains why historians increasingly view it as a complex combination of interconnected crises rather than a si

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: It's the late 13th century BC. A desperate king has
[0:06] Speaker 1: a scribe frantically scribble a message on a clay tablet
[0:11] Speaker 1: as invaders close in on his city. Send me forces
[0:17] Speaker 1: and chariots, and may my lord save me from the
[0:21] Speaker 1: forces of this enemy. He pleads, but the letter is
[0:27] Speaker 1: never sent. Not long after that, That city, the thriving
[0:33] Speaker 1: port of Ugarit on the Syrian coast, was burned to
[0:37] Speaker 1: the ground, its people displaced or killed. Within a span
[0:44] Speaker 1: of decades, around 1200 BC, the great civilizations of the
[0:48] Speaker 1: Bronze Age world fell into ruin. Palaces and cities from
[0:54] Speaker 1: Greece to Mesopotamia were abandoned or sacked. The trade routes
[1:00] Speaker 1: went dark. Riding systems and monumental buildings ceased. The collapse
[1:08] Speaker 1: of these interconnected Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilizations was a
[1:13] Speaker 1: cataclysm of intense proportion. It was an ancient apocalypse, ending
[1:19] Speaker 1: centuries of prosperity and ushering in a new, dark age.
[1:26] Speaker 1: Why did this happen? And why were some societies hit
[1:30] Speaker 1: harder than others, And that's what we're going to talk
[1:33] Speaker 1: about today. We'll explore the chronological unfolding of the Late
[1:38] Speaker 1: Bronze Age Collapse, and examine the leading theories behind its cause.
[1:44] Speaker 1: We'll go into the Golden Age of the 13th century BC,
[1:47] Speaker 1: witness the storms gathering on the horizon, and follow that
[1:51] Speaker 1: cascading fall of kingdoms. And along the way, we're going
[1:56] Speaker 1: to consider evidence from contemporary records, letters, inscriptions, and archaeology.
[2:02] Speaker 1: and tried to piece together how drought, invasions, internal strife,
[2:09] Speaker 1: and other factors converged into a perfect storm. By the end,
[2:16] Speaker 1: we'll see why the Brontëge Collapse was not caused by
[2:19] Speaker 1: any single event, but by a combination of stresses overwhelming
[2:24] Speaker 1: even the mightiest of empires, while allowing a few fortunate
[2:28] Speaker 1: survivors to adapt and endure. But first, let me welcome
[2:32] Speaker 1: you to the channel. We're going to be spending a
[2:35] Speaker 1: little bit of time together today discussing these sorts of questions.
[2:38] Speaker 1: I've really been looking forward to it. And if you're
[2:41] Speaker 1: new to the channel, I invite you to like the video, subscribe,
[2:45] Speaker 1: and perhaps tell your friends about it. For those who
[2:48] Speaker 1: would like to do so, there's also a Patreon you
[2:51] Speaker 1: might want to check out. But most importantly, let's all
[2:55] Speaker 1: get nice and relaxed, and perhaps you can tell me
[2:58] Speaker 1: where you're listening from in the comments. In the centuries
[3:03] Speaker 1: before the collapse, the Eastern Mediterranean world of the Late
[3:07] Speaker 1: Bronze Age, that is from 1500 to 1200 BC, was
[3:13] Speaker 1: a vibrant international system. Powerful kingdoms and city-states were all
[3:19] Speaker 1: linked by commerce, diplomacy and cultural exchange. The Mycenaean Greeks,
[3:25] Speaker 1: for example, you might have heard of them. They ruled
[3:29] Speaker 1: a network of palace-centered states across mainland Greece and Crete.
[3:34] Speaker 1: And then there was the Hittites, based in Anatolia, modern Turkey,
[3:39] Speaker 1: with its capital at Hattusa. They controlled much of Asia
[3:43] Speaker 1: Minor and northern Syria, too. In Egypt, the new kingdom
[3:49] Speaker 1: pharaohs of the 18th and 20th dynasties commanded an empire
[3:53] Speaker 1: that extended into Canaan and Syria. Further east, Babylonia, under
[4:01] Speaker 1: the Kassite dynasty, and Assyria, vied for dominance in Mesopotamia,
[4:07] Speaker 1: the land between the two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.
[4:13] Speaker 1: Small estates like Ugarit in Syria and Cyprus, known as
[4:17] Speaker 1: Alishia in the day, prospered as intermediaries in trade. Halfway points.
[4:24] Speaker 1: They took what they could. It was a cosmopolitan world. Merchants,
[4:31] Speaker 1: skilled artisans, envoys, they travelled widely, and royal courts corresponded
[4:38] Speaker 1: through well-preserved letters or clay tablets, much of which, due
[4:43] Speaker 1: to the easily preservable nature of such tablets, we have
[4:46] Speaker 1: with us today. Trade was the lifeblood of this age.
[4:53] Speaker 1: Critical resources, Especially copper to make tin, copper and tin, rather,
[4:58] Speaker 1: to make bronze, were exchanged over long distances. And don't
[5:03] Speaker 1: forget the foodstuffs and luxury goods. Can't go without the
[5:08] Speaker 1: lapis lazuli, of course. A dramatic example of this connectivity
[5:13] Speaker 1: is the Uluburun shipwreck from around 1300 BC. They found
[5:18] Speaker 1: that one off the coast of Turkey. Its cargo was
[5:22] Speaker 1: a microcosm of the Bronze Age economy. copper ingots from Cyprus,
[5:28] Speaker 1: tin from Central Asia, modern-day Afghanistan, glass from Egypt, pottery
[5:34] Speaker 1: and oil from Canaan, ivory and ebony from Africa, and gold, jewellery,
[5:42] Speaker 1: likely from Mycenaean Greece and Egypt. In fact, even the
[5:47] Speaker 1: ship's timber, cedar wood, came from Lebanon. Take a look
[5:53] Speaker 1: at the Lebanese flag. You might be interested to see
[5:56] Speaker 1: how that looks. As archaeologist Eric Klein notes, that one
[6:03] Speaker 1: ship is a microcosm of the international trade that was
[6:06] Speaker 1: going on in the late Bronze Age. In addition to goods,
[6:10] Speaker 1: ideas flowed along these routes. Writing systems, artistic styles, and
[6:15] Speaker 1: religious motives were shared across cultures. For example, the city
[6:21] Speaker 1: of Ugarit used multiple writing systems. that is cuneiform, and
[6:26] Speaker 1: the alphabetic script. They also hosted traders from the Aegean, Mesopotamia,
[6:34] Speaker 1: and Egypt. Cosmopolitan indeed. Diplomacy and alliances also knit the
[6:41] Speaker 1: great powers together. We have records of treatises and royal correspondence,
[6:48] Speaker 1: such as the famous Treaty of Kadesh between Egypt and
[6:52] Speaker 1: the Hittites. That was around 1259 BC. A great battle, too,
[6:58] Speaker 1: going with that one. But then we also have the
[7:01] Speaker 1: Amarna letters of the 14th century BC, in which Egyptian
[7:05] Speaker 1: pharaohs corresponded with other kings. The late Bronze Age rulers
[7:12] Speaker 1: often addressed each other as brother and exchanged gifts. Marriages
[7:17] Speaker 1: between royal families were common, and came with a good
[7:21] Speaker 1: amount of alliances and agreements with them too. After all,
[7:25] Speaker 1: a contract is a contract. It was a truly interconnected world,
[7:32] Speaker 1: a globalized economy, and a political system that would not
[7:36] Speaker 1: be rivaled for a long time. It sounds good. How
[7:43] Speaker 1: could it possibly go wrong? Well, this interconnectedness meant that
[7:50] Speaker 1: the prosperity and stability would become fragile. The great kingdoms
[7:57] Speaker 1: depended on one another for resources like tin, grain, and wood.
[8:03] Speaker 1: And they also shared vulnerabilities, reliance on bronze weapons and
[8:08] Speaker 1: chariot armies, complex bureaucracies with a little sprinkling of corruption,
[8:14] Speaker 1: don't forget, and the loyalty of far-flung vassals and subject peoples.
[8:22] Speaker 1: By around 1250 B.C., cracks were beginning to appear in
[8:26] Speaker 1: the system, and over the next half century, multiple crises
[8:32] Speaker 1: would shake the foundations of this Bronze Age civilization and
[8:37] Speaker 1: prepare the way for its doom. Even before the final
[8:45] Speaker 1: collapse around 1200 B.C., A debatable date, sure. There are
[8:51] Speaker 1: indications that the Bronze Age world was under a great strain.
[8:56] Speaker 1: One major factor was climate change. Scholars studying ancient climate proxies,
[9:03] Speaker 1: such as pollen analysis and tree rings, have identified a
[9:07] Speaker 1: prolonged drought, or even as they termed it, a mega-drought,
[9:12] Speaker 1: between roughly 1250 and 1100 BC across the eastern Mediterranean.
[9:18] Speaker 1: Pollen grains from sediments beneath the Sea of Galilee and
[9:22] Speaker 1: the Dead Sea show a decline in water-loving plant species
[9:27] Speaker 1: and an increase in drought-resistant plants like olive trees during
[9:30] Speaker 1: this period. Likewise, tree-ring studies in Anatolia reveal stunted growth
[9:36] Speaker 1: in the late 13th century. For example, trees grew at
[9:41] Speaker 1: only about 50% of nominal rates around 1190. What does
[9:46] Speaker 1: that indicate? Well, it indicates that there were severe dry years.
[9:53] Speaker 1: Not good news for anybody. As early as the reign
[9:57] Speaker 1: of the Hittite king Tudalia IV, that is, around 1237-1209,
[10:01] Speaker 1: letters and records speak of food shortages. The word biru, hunger,
[10:10] Speaker 1: appears in Ugaritic tablets, describing famine tearing the region apart.
[10:17] Speaker 1: Tudalia IV's successor, The last Hittite king, Superlilium II, also
[10:24] Speaker 1: faced worsening food crises. In a remarkable example of international cooperation,
[10:30] Speaker 1: and perhaps desperation too, the Hittites practically begged their rival
[10:36] Speaker 1: Egypt for grain shipments to avoid starvation in Anatolia. Letters
[10:44] Speaker 1: from Ugarit around this time record urgent appeals for grain.
[10:50] Speaker 1: In the letter it wrote, In the land of Ugarit
[10:55] Speaker 1: there is a severe hunger. May my lord save it,
[10:59] Speaker 1: and may the king give grain to save my life
[11:02] Speaker 1: and the lives of the citizens of the land of Ugarit.
[11:07] Speaker 1: The words of King Amurapi of Ugarit the pharaoh. Sounds
[11:12] Speaker 1: pretty desperate, doesn't he? These pleas show that drought-induced famine
[11:18] Speaker 1: was weakening societies even before the final collapse. Hunger would
[11:24] Speaker 1: have led to internal unrest, starving populations grow desperate, and
[11:30] Speaker 1: cities would have been vulnerable to outside attack. But there
[11:36] Speaker 1: was other signs of brewing trouble. The movement of peoples
[11:41] Speaker 1: and external invasions We go now to Egyptian records, which
[11:46] Speaker 1: tell us that in 1208 BC, that is year 5
[11:50] Speaker 1: of the Pharaoh Merneptah, Egypt had to fight off an
[11:54] Speaker 1: invasion from Libya, which was aided by groups of sea-born raiders.
[12:01] Speaker 1: Merneptah's Victory Stele in 1207 BC mentions these foreign names,
[12:08] Speaker 1: likely an early appearance of the so-called Sea Peoples, perhaps
[12:12] Speaker 1: the villain of our story, if we're going to find
[12:16] Speaker 1: one that we can point the finger at that is
[12:17] Speaker 1: actually breathing. Groups with names like Sherden, Shekelesh, Ekwesh, etc.,
[12:25] Speaker 1: who would later play a starring role in this collapse.
[12:29] Speaker 1: We'll talk a little bit more about them later. Around
[12:33] Speaker 1: the same time, on the opposite side of the Mediterranean,
[12:37] Speaker 1: the Mycenaean Greek world experienced their own upheaval. Many scholars
[12:42] Speaker 1: believe that the legendary Trojan War, immortalized in later Iliad
[12:47] Speaker 1: written by Homer, may echo a real conflict at the
[12:51] Speaker 1: city of Troy, Ileon, around this period. Archaeological evidence shows
[12:56] Speaker 1: that Troy was destroyed around 1180 BC, and one of
[13:01] Speaker 1: the destruction layers at Troy was being associated with warfare
[13:05] Speaker 1: or siege. Now, Troy's been around for a very, very
[13:09] Speaker 1: long time, and effectively every time it got destroyed it
[13:12] Speaker 1: was built on the ashes of the former site. The
[13:16] Speaker 1: excavations at Troy, once they found them I believe by
[13:19] Speaker 1: Heinrich Schliemann, well, that's a fascinating topic of its own.
[13:26] Speaker 1: Whether or not Mycenaean Greeks were involved in the actual
[13:29] Speaker 1: fall of Troy, the late 13th century saw increasing fortifications
[13:34] Speaker 1: on the sites and signs of conflict in the Aegean.
[13:39] Speaker 1: In one intriguing find, A clay tablet from the palace
[13:42] Speaker 1: of Pylos in Greece refers to, I quote, watchers guarding
[13:46] Speaker 1: the coast, suggesting that Pylos rulers were expecting an attack
[13:51] Speaker 1: from the sea. Soon after that tablet was written, Pylos
[13:57] Speaker 1: was violently destroyed by fire sometime around 1180 BC. But
[14:05] Speaker 1: there were also hints of weaknesses internally, and political instability, too.
[14:12] Speaker 1: The Hittites, for example, were they were likely struggling with
[14:16] Speaker 1: succession disputes and rebellions in their final era. Superlulium II's
[14:21] Speaker 1: few surviving inscriptions record him fighting wars against disloyal vassals
[14:27] Speaker 1: running amok, and even a naval battle against Cypriots. But
[14:33] Speaker 1: these victories were apparently pyrrhic. No site really gained an
[14:38] Speaker 1: advantage They just lost a lot of men. In one
[14:43] Speaker 1: Hittite letter, Tudalia IV wrote anxiously to his mother about
[14:48] Speaker 1: a serious rebellion near the heartland that was likely to
[14:51] Speaker 1: spread much farther. The royal family undertook a frantic building
[14:57] Speaker 1: program at Hattusa during these years, quickly putting up new walls,
[15:02] Speaker 1: new temples, and the best defences they could. Perhaps a
[15:06] Speaker 1: sign of insecurity. an attempt to solidify the kingdom, albeit
[15:12] Speaker 1: a very panicked one. It was as if one is
[15:17] Speaker 1: left with the uneasy feeling that the Hittite world was
[15:21] Speaker 1: living on the edge in its final days, clinging to life.
[15:29] Speaker 1: We should also consider natural disasters. A series of earthquakes
[15:33] Speaker 1: may have rocked the region in late 13th and 12th centuries.
[15:37] Speaker 1: Geologists and historians like Amos Noor have proposed an earthquake
[15:42] Speaker 1: storm theory, a sequence of major quakes striking various sites
[15:46] Speaker 1: over a span of decades, between roughly 1225 and 1175. Indeed,
[15:53] Speaker 1: archaeological levels of destruction around 1200 at some sites show
[15:57] Speaker 1: patterns consistent with earthquake damage. Walls collapsed without signs of
[16:02] Speaker 1: burning or warfare. For example, parts of Mycenae and Tiryns
[16:08] Speaker 1: in Greece weighed by earthquakes about this time. And while
[16:12] Speaker 1: those cities were reoccupied and rebuilt, sure, the disruption might
[16:17] Speaker 1: have made them more vulnerable or at least less able
[16:19] Speaker 1: to cope with other problems. And believe me, there were
[16:23] Speaker 1: plenty of other problems. Thus, on the eve of the collapse,
[16:29] Speaker 1: Bronze Age civilizations were being squeezed and rinsed out from
[16:34] Speaker 1: multiple directions, hit from all sides. Drought and famine were
[16:39] Speaker 1: undermining economies and morale, migrant or invading groups were probing borders,
[16:46] Speaker 1: and internal strife was weakening the once great kingdoms. In
[16:52] Speaker 1: modern terms, the entire system was losing its resilience. By
[16:59] Speaker 1: the turn of the twelfth century, it would only take
[17:03] Speaker 1: a spark to set off a conflagration. And now, the
[17:09] Speaker 1: several sparks that flew, let's talk about them. So when
[17:16] Speaker 1: we use the word collapse, I don't want you to
[17:20] Speaker 1: think of this very quick falling down. It is more
[17:26] Speaker 1: of a disintegration. It didn't occur in a single year,
[17:31] Speaker 1: at least not everywhere. but rather in waves over perhaps
[17:36] Speaker 1: 30 to 50 years. So let's talk about what set
[17:40] Speaker 1: everything off in the different regions. How about we start
[17:45] Speaker 1: with Anatolia, the Hittite Empire. Underrated. Everyone should talk about
[17:51] Speaker 1: them more. We love the Hittites over here. Now, the
[17:56] Speaker 1: Hittite capital, Etusa, in central Anatolia, was destroyed and abandoned
[18:00] Speaker 1: around 1200 B.C., and we've done a fair few excavations,
[18:05] Speaker 1: they show that Hattusa's royal palace and temples burned in
[18:09] Speaker 1: a single, simultaneous, violent destruction. Well, that's Hattusa out of
[18:18] Speaker 1: the way. Of course, that wasn't the only settlement of
[18:22] Speaker 1: the Hittites. Certainly the most important one, though. But curiously,
[18:27] Speaker 1: and it's worth interesting, it seems that much of the population...
[18:32] Speaker 1: possibly the elite and the scribes too, had already fled beforehand,
[18:38] Speaker 1: perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, running for their lives.
[18:44] Speaker 1: One theory that we do have is that the Hittite king,
[18:47] Speaker 1: Superlulium II, evacuated his court to a safer location, possibly
[18:53] Speaker 1: the Hittite-controlled city of Karkemish in Syria before the final attack.
[18:58] Speaker 1: The invaders who delivered the final blow to Hattusa may
[19:01] Speaker 1: have been the Kaskan tribes from the northern mountains, traditionally
[19:06] Speaker 1: old enemies of the Hittites. Or, possibly, some of the
[19:12] Speaker 1: Sea Peoples, who had moved up through Anatolia. In any case,
[19:17] Speaker 1: no new Hittite king ever took throne in Hadusa again.
[19:21] Speaker 1: It was over. The loss of the capital, well, that
[19:26] Speaker 1: meant the end of the Hittite Empire, as a centralised state,
[19:30] Speaker 1: writing in Hittite-style cuneiform, ceased, and the land that had
[19:36] Speaker 1: been united under Hatti fragmented into small principalities. Some of
[19:44] Speaker 1: these neo-Hittite successor states, like Carchemish and others in northern
[19:49] Speaker 1: Syria well they'd survive a few centuries but the core
[19:54] Speaker 1: in Anatolia was all but gone thrown into the dustbin
[20:00] Speaker 1: of history like an empty Kit Kat wrapper now we
[20:07] Speaker 1: have Syria and the Levant Going down to the south,
[20:12] Speaker 1: the prosperous coastal cities fared no better. The kingdom of Ugarit,
[20:18] Speaker 1: that which had been pleading out for help, met their
[20:21] Speaker 1: violent and bloody end. Several letters found baked into the
[20:26] Speaker 1: ruins of Ugarit give us a chronological snapshot of its
[20:30] Speaker 1: final moments. In one letter, the Ugaritic king reported enemy
[20:34] Speaker 1: ships attacking his cities and noted that his own troops
[20:37] Speaker 1: were away, supporting the Hittites. Now this left him with
[20:42] Speaker 1: no one to defend the land. You can see how
[20:45] Speaker 1: this is a problem for the king of Ugarit. Another
[20:50] Speaker 1: letter from the governor of Cyprus, that being the old
[20:54] Speaker 1: term Alashia, rather, ominously replied that the destruction was caused
[21:01] Speaker 1: by your own people and ships. Now what does that mean? Well,
[21:10] Speaker 1: it possibly hints that Ugarit was going through a rebellion,
[21:15] Speaker 1: being attacked by local rebels, or perhaps a full-on coup
[21:20] Speaker 1: from mutinous forces. The most telling message is one of
[21:27] Speaker 1: the last tablets, probably written when Ugarit was under siege.
[21:33] Speaker 1: It reports bluntly, The enemy is at our gates. Our
[21:38] Speaker 1: city is sacked. Archaeology confirms that Ugarit was violently destroyed
[21:46] Speaker 1: and never inhabited again. In the destruction layer, excavators found
[21:52] Speaker 1: dozens of bronze arrowheads, spearheads, swords and armour scattered in
[21:57] Speaker 1: the streets, clear evidence of a battle within the city.
[22:02] Speaker 1: The conquerors of Ugarit were likely one of the sea
[22:04] Speaker 1: peoples moving along the coast. Ugarit's destruction has been dated
[22:08] Speaker 1: to around 1190 B.C., shortly after the death of the
[22:11] Speaker 1: pharaoh Mernetar, based on an Egyptian artifact that we found
[22:17] Speaker 1: among the debris. Other cities in Syria-Canaan suffered similar fates.
[22:24] Speaker 1: The great trading city of Byblos has signs of damage,
[22:30] Speaker 1: though it might have been recovered a little later, while
[22:35] Speaker 1: Tyre and Sidon in Lebanon also contracted. Inland, the city
[22:40] Speaker 1: of Emar on the Euphrates River, was destroyed around this
[22:43] Speaker 1: time too. Its temples deliberately burned while houses abandoned. It
[22:49] Speaker 1: suggests a targeted attack on the city's religious and administrative centers.
[22:54] Speaker 1: Farther south in Canaan, around modern Palestine-Israel, several cities that
[23:01] Speaker 1: had been under Egyptian rule were destroyed or abandoned. Widung, Hazor, Lakish, Megiddo,
[23:09] Speaker 1: They all show destruction layers around the early 12th century BC.
[23:13] Speaker 1: The pattern in the Levant suggests both external attacks and
[23:17] Speaker 1: internal uprisings. In some sites, only the elite structures burned,
[23:25] Speaker 1: hinting at possible revolts of local populations solely against the
[23:29] Speaker 1: ruling class, while in others there's clear evidence of outright
[23:34] Speaker 1: warfare and relentless conquest. But what about Mycenaean Greece? Well,
[23:45] Speaker 1: they copped it too. The fall of the Mycenaeans was dramatic.
[23:50] Speaker 1: The palatial centres, Mycenae, Pylos, Thebes, Tiryns and others which
[23:55] Speaker 1: had dominated Greece for centuries, were mostly destroyed or abandoned
[23:59] Speaker 1: by 1200 to 1180. Pylos, as mentioned, was completely burned
[24:06] Speaker 1: around 1180. and its Linear B archives stop abruptly on
[24:11] Speaker 1: that date. Linear B and Linear A being their writing styles,
[24:16] Speaker 1: by the way. The Palace of Themes. Well, that was destroyed, too.
[24:21] Speaker 1: Layers of ash and arrowheads might have been found there
[24:24] Speaker 1: as well. Mycenaean Tyrians might have initially survived an earthquake
[24:29] Speaker 1: around 1200, but both sites show signs of conflict and
[24:34] Speaker 1: decline afterwards. By around 1150, Mycenae was no longer a
[24:40] Speaker 1: major power, and its population had dwindled to a fraction
[24:44] Speaker 1: of its previous level. One of the few major signs
[24:48] Speaker 1: to escape destruction was Athens, which actually shows continuity. Athenian
[24:54] Speaker 1: tradition later claimed that they were never conquered by the
[24:57] Speaker 1: Dorian invaders, and indeed, Athens may have weathered the storm,
[25:02] Speaker 1: at least better than most. Overall, Greece underwent a severe depopulation,
[25:09] Speaker 1: founded with a loss of literacy, a banishment of knowledge, too.
[25:15] Speaker 1: The Linear B script, used by Mycenaean bureaucrats to keep records,
[25:21] Speaker 1: completely disappeared. For the next few centuries, Greece entered what
[25:25] Speaker 1: is called a dark age of smaller, isolated settlements and
[25:31] Speaker 1: little monumental art or writings. This was a total collapse
[25:36] Speaker 1: of the economic and social order in the Aegean. Whatever
[25:40] Speaker 1: or whoever caused the destruction of the palaces, be it
[25:44] Speaker 1: invaders from the outside, the traditionally hypothesized invasions of the
[25:48] Speaker 1: Dorian Greeks, or just internal strife, whatever it was, the
[25:53] Speaker 1: result was that no Mycenaean king or palace system arose again.
[25:58] Speaker 1: It took about four hundred years, give or take, for
[26:03] Speaker 1: Greek civilization to re-emerge in the form of the archaic
[26:08] Speaker 1: Greek city-states. Now what about Cyprus? Well, this island, a
[26:17] Speaker 1: critical source of copper, they were not spared either. Its
[26:22] Speaker 1: coastal towns, like Enkonmi, showed destruction around 1200 BC. There's
[26:28] Speaker 1: evidence that some sites in Cyprus were attacked and rebuilt
[26:30] Speaker 1: by new populations. possibly the Sea Peoples again. The disruption
[26:35] Speaker 1: of the Cypriot copper production around this time would have
[26:39] Speaker 1: had wide rippling effects, given how important Cypriot copper was
[26:44] Speaker 1: to the bronze trade. But what about Egypt? Uniquely, among
[26:52] Speaker 1: the great powers, Egypt survived the Bronze Age collapse, but
[26:58] Speaker 1: it too was profoundly affected. It got out but not
[27:03] Speaker 1: without a few scratches and bruises. During the reign of
[27:07] Speaker 1: Pharaoh Ramesses III, 1186-1155, Egypt faced a massive onslaught of
[27:14] Speaker 1: the Sea Peoples, on top of earlier troubles with the
[27:18] Speaker 1: Libyan tribes, of course. In Ramesses III's eighth regnal year,
[27:24] Speaker 1: we're talking about 1177, the Egyptians fought a great battle
[27:28] Speaker 1: against the Sea Peoples, who were advancing by land and
[27:31] Speaker 1: sea towards the Nile Delta, Thanks to Ramesses' leadership and
[27:36] Speaker 1: Egypt's rather geographic advantage, with its own defensible frontiers and
[27:41] Speaker 1: food security along the Nile, the Egyptians managed to defeat
[27:46] Speaker 1: the invaders. Well done. Medinet Habu, Ramesses' mortuary temple and themes,
[27:54] Speaker 1: bears grand reliefs and inscriptions celebrating this victory. The inscriptions
[27:59] Speaker 1: describe how the Sea People's Confederation named groups like Peleset, Jekyll, Jekyllish,
[28:05] Speaker 1: Denyen and Weshish made a conspiracy in their islands and
[28:11] Speaker 1: swept through other lands, ultimately destroying the Hittites and Cyprus
[28:15] Speaker 1: and cities in Syria before coming to Egypt. Ramesses boasts
[28:21] Speaker 1: that he ambushed them at sea, overturning their ships, slaughtering
[28:26] Speaker 1: them on land. One relief shows foreign warriors tumbling from
[28:31] Speaker 1: their capsized boats as Egyptian archers rained down arrows on them.
[28:37] Speaker 1: Egypt's victory was real. The real deal, indeed. The Sea
[28:43] Speaker 1: Peoples were repelled, and many were captured, or later settled
[28:48] Speaker 1: in Canaan. For instance, the Pelliceta generally identified with the Philistines,
[28:53] Speaker 1: who settled in southern Canaan, by the way. However, the
[28:57] Speaker 1: cost to Egypt, well, that was pretty high, too, Like
[29:01] Speaker 1: I said, those scratches and bruises, perhaps even a few cuts.
[29:08] Speaker 1: Financial problems. The new kingdom's treasury was drained by the
[29:12] Speaker 1: constant war, and after Ramesses III, Egypt's power significantly declined.
[29:21] Speaker 1: By the mid-twelfth century, the reign of Ramesses IV, Egypt
[29:25] Speaker 1: had lost control of its Asiatic territories entirely. The pharaohs
[29:29] Speaker 1: of the subsequent third intermediate period, starting around 1070, would
[29:34] Speaker 1: rule a divided and weaker form of Egypt. The glory
[29:39] Speaker 1: days longed for them. behind them. So basically, while Egypt
[29:45] Speaker 1: did not collapse in the sense that it lost all
[29:47] Speaker 1: of its statehood and culture the way that Greece and
[29:51] Speaker 1: the Hittites did, it pretty much did take a beating,
[29:56] Speaker 1: receded greatly in influence and wealth, And that's not good.
[30:01] Speaker 1: That's not good at all. Thus, by 1150 BC, the
[30:09] Speaker 1: political map of the Near East had been utterly redrawn.
[30:14] Speaker 1: The Hittite Empire, once great, was gone. Mycenaean Greece, in ruins.
[30:24] Speaker 1: The wealthy trading cities of the Levant, if not in decline.
[30:29] Speaker 1: completely devastated. Only Egypt and Assyria remained as significant powers,
[30:37] Speaker 1: and even they were shadows of their former selves. Assyria
[30:41] Speaker 1: experienced a brief decline due to Aramean incursions before resurging later.
[30:46] Speaker 1: In the aftermath, new peoples emerged to fill the void.
[30:49] Speaker 1: They always do. Power vacuums always get stuffed full of something.
[30:55] Speaker 1: Among them were the Philistines, likely descendants of the Pellicet
[31:00] Speaker 1: Sea peoples, who settled along the southern Levantine coast, and
[31:04] Speaker 1: the Arameans who spread across Syria. In the hill country
[31:08] Speaker 1: of Canaan, small tribal groups coalesced, possibly giving rise to
[31:12] Speaker 1: early Israelites around this time, as inferred from the Merneptah's
[31:16] Speaker 1: still mention of Israel in Canaan. In Anatolia, Phrygian and
[31:23] Speaker 1: other new cultures took over former Hittite lands. Crucially, The
[31:28] Speaker 1: Iron Age was dawning. With the collapse of long-distance trade,
[31:33] Speaker 1: the supply of tin for bronze was cut off, and
[31:37] Speaker 1: this forced society to turn to iron, a metal that
[31:40] Speaker 1: was harder to work, but ultimately more widely available locally.
[31:46] Speaker 1: In Cyprus, archaeologists notice a pretty big shift after the
[31:52] Speaker 1: bronze trade had faltered. Cypriots became early adopters of ironworking,
[31:57] Speaker 1: transitioning from masters of copper to innovators in iron technology.
[32:03] Speaker 1: Iron farming tombs and weapons slowly spread, eventually giving those
[32:07] Speaker 1: who mastered iron an advantage. The human cost of the
[32:12] Speaker 1: collapse was high. Populations in many areas plummeted, as cities
[32:16] Speaker 1: were destroyed, and people either died or migrated. Large-scale building
[32:22] Speaker 1: projects halted, Literacy dropped. For example, the art of writing
[32:28] Speaker 1: in Linear B was lost for centuries. Only a tiny
[32:32] Speaker 1: elite had been literate, though, and when the palaces fell,
[32:36] Speaker 1: they lost that ability after the collapse, not regaining it
[32:39] Speaker 1: until the Phoenician alphabet arrived much later. Indeed, across the
[32:43] Speaker 1: formerly interconnected world, knowledge and complexity were reduced. That's why
[32:49] Speaker 1: we call it a dark age. Yet, It's pretty important
[32:55] Speaker 1: that we note that the collapse was uneven in its effects,
[33:00] Speaker 1: which is part of the question of why some were
[33:03] Speaker 1: hit harder than others. The Mycenaeans and the Hittites suffered
[33:08] Speaker 1: complete political collapse, losing their entire governing structure and their
[33:13] Speaker 1: cultural continuity in their cases, their specific cases. Everything from
[33:20] Speaker 1: writing systems to art styles had to be relearned or
[33:23] Speaker 1: reinvented by the people who came along after. But on
[33:27] Speaker 1: the other hand, Egypt and Assyria survived as entities, albeit weakened.
[33:33] Speaker 1: Why did Egypt and Assyria escape total collapse then? Geography
[33:39] Speaker 1: and institutions likely played a role. Egypt's heartland was protected
[33:45] Speaker 1: by deserts and sustained by the reliable Nile floods. providing
[33:50] Speaker 1: a food buffer during those drought years. Egypt famously had
[33:54] Speaker 1: grain reserves, and in later biblical tales of Joseph, a
[33:59] Speaker 1: fact echoed by some historians who suggest Egypt managed its
[34:02] Speaker 1: food better than others. In fact, even all the way
[34:05] Speaker 1: to Roman times, it was known as a breadbasket. Assyria,
[34:11] Speaker 1: for its part, was a militarized state, with a homeland
[34:15] Speaker 1: in northern Mesopotamia, less directly exposed to the Sea People's onslaught.
[34:21] Speaker 1: It's a long way to walk. Also, the collapse of
[34:24] Speaker 1: rivals like the Hittites, Mitanni, and Babylonia briefly gave Assyria
[34:28] Speaker 1: an opportunity once it stabilized. By the 10th to the
[34:33] Speaker 1: 9th centuries BC, Assyria dramatically rebounded, and all of a sudden,
[34:40] Speaker 1: the dominating power was the Neo-Assyrian Empire. But in short,
[34:48] Speaker 1: by 1100 BC, the old order of the world was
[34:53] Speaker 1: completely gone. A centuries-long dark age or recovery period lay ahead.
[35:00] Speaker 1: No one really knew what was going to happen. But
[35:04] Speaker 1: the bigger question remained. How did this all come to pass?
[35:09] Speaker 1: What caused the perfect storm that brought the world to
[35:13] Speaker 1: its knees nearly simultaneously Well, now we have a good
[35:21] Speaker 1: idea about how things happened, where they happened. But let's
[35:26] Speaker 1: talk about the different factors, talk about the climate change,
[35:30] Speaker 1: the invasions, the economic disruption and the rebellions, shall we?
[35:36] Speaker 1: We'll start first at the climate change and drought theories.
[35:41] Speaker 1: One of the earliest contributors, as evidenced by the modern
[35:44] Speaker 1: science and the ancient text, is climate-induced drought. The Late
[35:50] Speaker 1: Bronze Age coincided, rather, with a prolonged dry period across
[35:55] Speaker 1: the Eastern Mediterranean. You can't help it. It just happens.
[36:01] Speaker 1: As noted earlier, tree rings and pollen data indicate severe
[36:05] Speaker 1: drought from 1250 BC onward, lasting in some areas for
[36:09] Speaker 1: over a century. Such an aptly termed mega-drought, which sounds terrible,
[36:18] Speaker 1: would have led to repeated crop failures and famine. Famine,
[36:23] Speaker 1: I'm sure you can imagine, erodes the foundations of society.
[36:30] Speaker 1: Starving people might simply flee to other lands, become marauders,
[36:36] Speaker 1: or rebel against authorities who can no longer provide. We
[36:41] Speaker 1: saw how the Hittites and Ugarit needed emergency grain imports,
[36:46] Speaker 1: when even those could not suffice. Hunger likely ignited unrest
[36:52] Speaker 1: and panic, desperation. Egypt and Mesopotamia anchored by the Nile,
[36:58] Speaker 1: Tigris and Euphrates River, but they were relatively less affected
[37:02] Speaker 1: by regional drought, which may explain why those states did
[37:05] Speaker 1: not completely collapse. But in more rain-dependent regions like Anatolia,
[37:11] Speaker 1: Greece and the Levant, drought was completely devastating. The climate
[37:17] Speaker 1: factor is somewhat a new theory, in that only in
[37:21] Speaker 1: recent decades have scientists produced concrete evidence of the Bronze
[37:26] Speaker 1: Age droughts. You see, earlier historians somewhat underplayed the climate issues,
[37:32] Speaker 1: but it's now widely accepted as a pretty crucial one.
[37:35] Speaker 1: The climate change at the time created a stress test
[37:40] Speaker 1: that many Bronze Age societies simply couldn't pass. It strained
[37:45] Speaker 1: food production. state finances, and population movements. And then there's
[37:53] Speaker 1: the invasions and migrations. The Sea Peoples. Now, the boogeyman
[38:00] Speaker 1: of the Bronze Age collapse, we may call them, those
[38:02] Speaker 1: famous culprits, according to popular accounts, are the Sea Peoples indeed.
[38:08] Speaker 1: This confederation of seaborne invaders slash migrants who appear in
[38:12] Speaker 1: the Egyptian records. These groups were credited, or rather blamed,
[38:19] Speaker 1: with destroying cities all over the region. Indeed, archaeological evidence
[38:24] Speaker 1: of widespread violence and destruction around 1200 BC aligns with
[38:29] Speaker 1: the idea of foreign invasions. Ramesses III's inscription clearly states
[38:35] Speaker 1: that the Sea Peoples had already laid their hands upon
[38:40] Speaker 1: the lands of Hatti, Arazawa, Al-Ashir and others before they
[38:45] Speaker 1: attacked Egypt. The unanswered historical question is who were the
[38:52] Speaker 1: Sea Peoples? And further to that, why did they migrate
[38:58] Speaker 1: and attack? There is one leading theory. That was that
[39:03] Speaker 1: they were not a single people, but just multiple groups
[39:07] Speaker 1: uprooted from their homes, possibly by that drought, famine or
[39:11] Speaker 1: political turmoil. who it took to raiding and migrating in
[39:15] Speaker 1: search of new lands just to survive. Some have originated
[39:20] Speaker 1: in the Aegean, or perhaps the western Mediterranean. For instance,
[39:25] Speaker 1: the Sheridan and Shekelesh could be linked to Sardinia and Sicily.
[39:31] Speaker 1: and the Denean perhaps to the people of Greece or Anatolia. Others,
[39:35] Speaker 1: like the Pellicet, the Philistines, seem to have Aegean origins.
[39:40] Speaker 1: Their pottery and culture in their new home, Philistia, show
[39:43] Speaker 1: ties to Mycenaean style, so that gives us a little
[39:47] Speaker 1: bit of a hint Thus, the Sea Peoples can be
[39:51] Speaker 1: seen as both a cause and an effect of the collapse.
[39:55] Speaker 1: They were a force that destroyed cities. But they may
[39:58] Speaker 1: have been on the move in the first place due
[40:01] Speaker 1: to the broader collapse of the systems elsewhere. So it's
[40:05] Speaker 1: more of a chicken and egg question. What came first?
[40:10] Speaker 1: The Sea Peoples? Or the collapse? Perhaps we'll know one day.
[40:18] Speaker 1: In any case, These invasions dealt direct blows. They sacked ports,
[40:25] Speaker 1: cut off trade routes, and toppled governments. However, it's critical
[40:29] Speaker 1: to realize that not all destructions can be attributed solely
[40:33] Speaker 1: to outside invaders. Some evidence suggests internal rebellions or civil
[40:37] Speaker 1: war during this chaotic time, etc. There's that letter from
[40:41] Speaker 1: Cyprus accusing Ugarit's own people of causing destructions or signs
[40:45] Speaker 1: of class revolt in Canaan. Still, the Sea Peoples remain
[40:51] Speaker 1: that boogeyman. They've loomed large in explanations of the collapse.
[40:56] Speaker 1: And while they were certainly a factor, well, these days,
[41:01] Speaker 1: scholars mainly agree that they were as much of a
[41:03] Speaker 1: symptom of the collapse as they were a cause. Of course,
[41:07] Speaker 1: different people have different opinions about that. But I tend
[41:11] Speaker 1: to agree with that statement. What do you think? Maybe
[41:15] Speaker 1: you tell me in the comments. I don't know. Well
[41:19] Speaker 1: let's talk about the broader economic disruption and the collapse
[41:23] Speaker 1: of the systems. We already know that the late Bronze
[41:28] Speaker 1: Age kingdoms were highly interdependent. Complexity theorists and others have
[41:33] Speaker 1: suggested that the collapse was essentially a systems failure, a
[41:36] Speaker 1: breakdown of a tightly interwoven political and economic framework. So
[41:43] Speaker 1: imagine a scenario where one node in the network fails.
[41:47] Speaker 1: For instance, if Trade routes for tin from distant places
[41:50] Speaker 1: like Afghanistan and even Cornwall, believe it or not, were cut,
[41:56] Speaker 1: either by barbarians, lost ships, or, well, whatever it was,
[42:02] Speaker 1: suddenly the vital ingredient for bronze became scarce. And how
[42:06] Speaker 1: can you have a Bronze Age without bronze? Bronze being
[42:12] Speaker 1: the strategic metal for weapons and tools would become hard
[42:16] Speaker 1: to obtain. undermining armies and agriculture. Similarly, if major ports
[42:23] Speaker 1: like Ugarit and coastal Emporia were destroyed, the flow of goods, grain,
[42:28] Speaker 1: metal and textiles, it all would come to an end,
[42:32] Speaker 1: causing supply shocks in multiple kingdoms. We saw this with grain.
[42:37] Speaker 1: Once Ugarit could no longer receive grain and the Hittites
[42:40] Speaker 1: couldn't get supplies, well, it all hit the fan. Famine intensified.
[42:48] Speaker 1: The collapse had a domino effect. One city's fall led
[42:52] Speaker 1: to trouble for those around it, leading them to fall
[42:55] Speaker 1: in turn. A house of cards, slowly crumbling down. Administratively,
[43:03] Speaker 1: these states were geared for a high degree of complexity,
[43:07] Speaker 1: writing redistributive economies, long-distance communication. When that complexity could not
[43:13] Speaker 1: be sustained, due to, well, any of the crises discussed already,
[43:19] Speaker 1: the system unraveled swiftly. Essentially, the civilization became a victim
[43:26] Speaker 1: of globalization in antiquity. Its strength, connectivity, turned into a
[43:32] Speaker 1: weakness once multiple stressors hit it at once. This theory
[43:38] Speaker 1: doesn't oppose others. Rather, it ties them together by explaining
[43:42] Speaker 1: how a trigger, an invasion, drought, etc., is one part
[43:46] Speaker 1: of the system cascaded across the whole, then we have
[43:52] Speaker 1: internal rebellions, social upheaval, and all the goodies that come
[43:56] Speaker 1: with it. There's evidence to suggest that some collapses were
[44:02] Speaker 1: aided or even caused by the revolts of the underclasses
[44:05] Speaker 1: or subject peoples. For example, in Canaan, the destruction of
[44:09] Speaker 1: elite palaces alongside the survival of some commoner housing could
[44:13] Speaker 1: imply that peasants were dissatisfied and torched the seats of power.
[44:21] Speaker 1: In Hathi, for example, as we noted, internal rebellion was
[44:25] Speaker 1: already stirring before the external attack. Perhaps they were helped.
[44:30] Speaker 1: Who knows? Mercenaries in garrisons might have gone rogue, if unpaid,
[44:36] Speaker 1: due to economic strain, turning into marauders. That concept of
[44:41] Speaker 1: the Sea Peoples could include mercenary groups who had once
[44:47] Speaker 1: been hired soldiers of the Great Kings. Once the central
[44:51] Speaker 1: governments faltered, these fighters could become independent raiders. The late
[44:57] Speaker 1: 13th century world also had a refugee problem from prior wars,
[45:01] Speaker 1: for instance. When the Egyptian and Hittite empires fought, or
[45:05] Speaker 1: the Assyrians attacked parts of Anatolia, people could have been displaced,
[45:10] Speaker 1: and they have to go somewhere, later joining the general tumult.
[45:15] Speaker 1: Internal strife is harder to document, of course, than an invasion,
[45:19] Speaker 1: but there's plenty of hints. as in the Cypriot letter,
[45:23] Speaker 1: and in the differing patterns of the destruction that we
[45:25] Speaker 1: see between different cities. An older but equally intriguing theory
[45:34] Speaker 1: suggests that a fundamental change in military technology and tactics
[45:38] Speaker 1: contributed to the collapse. Late Bronze Age armies were built
[45:42] Speaker 1: around the chariot, manned by an aristocratic warrior class. Chariots
[45:48] Speaker 1: dominated open battlefield warfare for centuries, you see, But around
[45:52] Speaker 1: 1200 BC, some populations began using new tactics. Massed infantry,
[45:59] Speaker 1: with javelins and swords, and perhaps the early use of
[46:03] Speaker 1: iron weapons and armour, which could outmatch chariotry in certain terrains.
[46:09] Speaker 1: If bands of well-armed infantry engaged the chariot-based armies, they
[46:14] Speaker 1: might have a good shot at overwhelming them, leading to
[46:17] Speaker 1: the defeat of traditional armies and the sacking of cities.
[46:22] Speaker 1: There's limited direct evidence from this from the military revolution standpoint,
[46:27] Speaker 1: but we do see the increased prominence of infantry weapons, i.e.,
[46:33] Speaker 1: just for one example, the widespread distribution of bronze swords
[46:38] Speaker 1: of the Naui II type in the 12th century BC,
[46:42] Speaker 1: and eventually iron swords too. The collapse of palace economies
[46:47] Speaker 1: could also mean the end of large-scale chariot production. leveling
[46:51] Speaker 1: the playing field for foot soldiers. In essence, the military
[46:56] Speaker 1: advantage of the Great Kingdoms had eroded, making them more
[47:00] Speaker 1: vulnerable to upstart groups. This theory complements the invasion narrative, too.
[47:07] Speaker 1: It gives us a possible reason why the Seabees and
[47:10] Speaker 1: others were so militarily successful. And then we have disease
[47:16] Speaker 1: and epidemics. Plenty of people have speculated that that epidemics
[47:21] Speaker 1: like plague might have contributed to the Bronze Age collapse
[47:24] Speaker 1: by decimating populations and weakening states, but this idea was
[47:28] Speaker 1: largely circumstantial. We know earlier in the 14th century a
[47:33] Speaker 1: plague hit the Hittites, but for 1200 BC, there's no
[47:37] Speaker 1: clear textual evidence of the pandemic, and you'd think it
[47:41] Speaker 1: would be something that they'd write about. Nevertheless, one scholar
[47:47] Speaker 1: has championed bubonic plague as the primary cause, noting that
[47:50] Speaker 1: plagues can cause sudden population drops and were recorded later
[47:54] Speaker 1: in history. But modern analysis finds this hypothesis interesting, but
[48:00] Speaker 1: lacking in positive evidence. If there was a plague, it
[48:06] Speaker 1: was just one more stress factor. But by itself it's
[48:10] Speaker 1: hard to pin down a major cause without direct records
[48:13] Speaker 1: or DNA evidence from burials, something researchers are still, admittedly,
[48:19] Speaker 1: trying to get to the bottom of. In truth, it
[48:25] Speaker 1: was probably all of them. All these factors were at
[48:28] Speaker 1: least interconnected. The collapse can be understood in the case
[48:32] Speaker 1: of multiplier effects. If drought led to famine, famine led
[48:38] Speaker 1: to migration and rebellion, migration led to invasions, which led
[48:42] Speaker 1: to the destruction of trade networks, which caused further famine,
[48:47] Speaker 1: and loss of resources to other regions, and so on.
[48:51] Speaker 1: Just a snowball. rolling down the hill, a perfect storm
[48:55] Speaker 1: of calamities striking in succession. In fact, no single blow
[49:01] Speaker 1: would have been enough to topple any one of these civilizations.
[49:06] Speaker 1: After all, it wasn't their first time facing a crisis.
[49:10] Speaker 1: They'd each faced their own trials and recovered. We know
[49:14] Speaker 1: that much. But this time, the combination and timing changed.
[49:20] Speaker 1: and the scale, simply made it impossible. Eric Klein notes,
[49:27] Speaker 1: Imagine drought, famine, invaders, earthquakes, internal revolt, all within the
[49:32] Speaker 1: span of decades. The system simply couldn't cope with that
[49:36] Speaker 1: level of stress. Yes, palaces were burned. But even those
[49:43] Speaker 1: palaces not burned were abandoned, because the economic system that
[49:48] Speaker 1: had sustained them for so long was simply no longer there.
[49:54] Speaker 1: The very complexity of the Bronze Age world, which had
[49:57] Speaker 1: been its strength, meant that collapse in one part spread
[50:01] Speaker 1: quickly to others, a phenomenon recognisable in our modern globalised
[50:07] Speaker 1: world as well. Perhaps you can see more than a
[50:10] Speaker 1: few parallels. Everything relies on something else. And so, we
[50:20] Speaker 1: come to somewhat of a conclusion. A cautious one. The
[50:27] Speaker 1: Late Bronze Age collapsed. No matter how it happened, well,
[50:32] Speaker 1: we can say that it was a turning point in history.
[50:36] Speaker 1: Often called that first Dark Age, because of the loss
[50:39] Speaker 1: of technology, literacy, and interconnectedness that followed. We've seen that
[50:46] Speaker 1: its causes were manifold. All the things we talked about,
[50:51] Speaker 1: they all played a role. Some civilizations fell harder to
[50:55] Speaker 1: others due to their particular circumstances, the poor old Hittites
[50:59] Speaker 1: and Mycenaeans lacking resilience of abundant food supplies or strong
[51:04] Speaker 1: geographic defenses. They just couldn't withstand the blows. They vanished
[51:09] Speaker 1: entirely as states. The Egyptians and the Assyrians, a little
[51:15] Speaker 1: bit more fortunate, they managed to survive, albeit as shadows
[51:20] Speaker 1: of them former selves. It's sobering to consider that the
[51:25] Speaker 1: thriving international order of the 13th century BC, that was
[51:29] Speaker 1: there for so long, and seemed to be so solid,
[51:34] Speaker 1: unraveled within a few decades, One could stand in the
[51:38] Speaker 1: ruins of Ugarit or Mycenae around 1150 and literally see
[51:43] Speaker 1: the end of an era scattered in charred debris and
[51:46] Speaker 1: broken tablets. But, for all the ashes of this, the
[51:53] Speaker 1: new societies eventually arose. The Iron Age peoples would lay
[51:58] Speaker 1: the foundation for the next phase of humanity. Archaic Greece, Phoenicia,
[52:04] Speaker 1: and so on. Human culture did not vanish, but it transformed.
[52:12] Speaker 1: The collapse also taught lessons that resonate even now. It
[52:15] Speaker 1: showed how complex societies are not immune to environmental and
[52:19] Speaker 1: social shocks, and how a global economy can amplify a crisis.
[52:26] Speaker 1: A drought or war in one corner of the Bronze
[52:29] Speaker 1: Age world sent ripples everywhere. Much as shocks in today's
[52:36] Speaker 1: global system can have worldwide effects. So once again, we
[52:41] Speaker 1: ask the question, why did the Bronze Age collapse? Well,
[52:49] Speaker 1: the best thing I can tell you is it was
[52:52] Speaker 1: because of a convergence of catastrophic events and structural weaknesses
[52:58] Speaker 1: hitting all at once, overwhelming the finely tuned but fragile
[53:03] Speaker 1: states of the late second millennium B.C., Before I leave
[53:08] Speaker 1: you today, there's a poetic ancient Egyptian account, the Harris Papyrus,
[53:13] Speaker 1: that describes in hindsight the turmoil of these times. It
[53:17] Speaker 1: goes like this. The land was in great affliction. No
[53:22] Speaker 1: one had a surplus in anything. The storehouses were empty.
[53:27] Speaker 1: Each man robbed his companion. Ultimately, the story of the
[53:36] Speaker 1: Bronze Age is a cautionary tale of how independent civilizations
[53:41] Speaker 1: can unravel when multiple stresses collide, but also a testament
[53:47] Speaker 1: to human resilience. For even after civilization collapsed, the people
[53:53] Speaker 1: lived on. They found ways to adapt. They migrated. And
[54:00] Speaker 1: they rebuilt a changed world. Therefore, the end of the
[54:04] Speaker 1: Bronze Age was not the end of the world. but
[54:08] Speaker 1: just another dramatic turning of the page in the story
[54:12] Speaker 1: of humanity. Thank you very much for listening, everyone. Wasn't
[54:19] Speaker 1: that enjoyable? Well, unless you're a Hittite or a Mycenaean listening.
[54:25] Speaker 1: Sorry if I dug up old wounds there. Now, let
[54:29] Speaker 1: me thank my patrons and supporters, who assure that this
[54:33] Speaker 1: channel does not collapse. Hopefully this channel does not go
[54:37] Speaker 1: through any droughts, famines, or rebellions. We shall see. Touch wood. Dark, Kimberly, Christine, Sally, Ember, Susan, Cameron, Legitmus, Gary, Lintory, Scatiana, Nicholas, Ulf, Edneer, Alexander, Charles, Christine, Dr. Neuronerd, Aaron, Jaden, Jim, Jeffrey, Jessica, Madeline, Melissa,
[55:02] Speaker 1: Orthodox Review, Scott, Thank you so much. So I leave
[55:19] Speaker 1: you here today. And I hope that you learned something.
[55:24] Speaker 1: If you did, like and subscribe. Consider checking out the Patreon.
[55:29] Speaker 1: And have a good rest, wherever you are in the world,
[55:32] Speaker 1: as always. I wish you all the best and lots
[55:36] Speaker 1: of love to you all.

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