This was absolutely terrific. This is the kind of work RUclips history should be doing, connecting us with real experts and giving them a platform to teach leading edge concepts. Don't get me wrong, I love being told a story to get me interested in a topic, but once I'm interested I need this next phase to introduce me to the deep dive. Looking forward to more videos like your Bronze Age "Collapse" presentation, and interviews like this.
I really appreciate these kinds of videos. As lay people, we're not really in a position to judge which side is more right, but it at least exposes us to the opinions in academia, which is especially needed when the other side has been so vocal about their position
You've always got to consider too, that some things that may seem pretty obvious to us, from our perspective. May actually be totally off base. We can't truly put ourselves in their shoes, or truly consider ALL the possibilities when looking at some random evidence.
This channel is turning into my favorite, by its attention to academic history, not that everything needs to be delving into sources or histography(cant spell), but atm this attention to detail and being self critical is very unique on yt-history. I cant thank you enough, because history that is inaccurate is so damaging to the overall lessons learned that we need for the future as humans, and you are actually a force for the better by your amazing videos
@@gregorynixonAUTHOR agree, which is why examining how interpretations are constructed as well as their reasonableness must be done broadly, with attention to detail, a critical eye and a principle of charity - as well as continuously - which I think can be hard to balance, but is done well here. thinking about history like this (not a manual), what I mean by learning lessons
I’ve often been disappointed that so many history textbooks and online content fail to illustrate historical events in such detail as this video did. However, history classes would have to be much longer and I honestly don’t think many students would pay attention anyway. For those of us that really cherish a love of learning from well researched content by historians that are not afraid to admit they don’t know something, I say well done!
I always found it interesting that scholars always took “sea peoples” to mean that they must have come from far off or been completely foreign peoples. Why couldn’t it simply mean people who make their living from the sea or a local naval power. Similar to how the Phoenicians who would later become Carthaginians were viewed as “sea peoples” since so much of their culture and society was built around the sea. Another similarity is that the Carthaginians used primarily mercenary armies with soldiers who came from all over the known world. An ancient empire with trade posts throughout the Mediterranean could easily have called up forces from many different places to go to war with a neighbor like Egypt without there being a need for a mysterious foreign empire that nobody had ever run into before the end of the Bronze Age. Since only scattered documents have come down to us the description by the Egyptians could have been talking about a neighboring power with a brief summary of how that neighboring power had formed over the previous decades prior to the current war. They didn’t necessarily have to have only just then chosen to join together for the purpose of invading Egypt.
such an empire would have a NAME though. Sea Peoples really sounds like "Norsemen" when we get to the age of "Viking Raiders"... marauding attackers nobody really knows a lot about where they're from or what they are like at home...
Well obviously the Bronze Age ended when a giant monster emerged from the sea and began stomping around starting from Mycenaean Greece to Egypt. He was named Typhoon by the survivors of his attacks before disappearing under the waves. The creature would later emerge in the 1950s after the Americans began their nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll and would turn his ire towards Japan… There I made you a movie pitch.
@@NathanCassidy721 All Sindbad movies. Movies filming the books of 1001 Nights (or Arabian Nights) and Jules Verne, Travel to the centre of the Earth, all feature giant monsters. Jason and the Argonauts. Any more name drops needed? LUL
This was a great follow up to your initial video. Jesse adds further nuance to that which you discussed off the top and the talk shows that the Late Bronze Age period is a time where there was a lot of change taking place. A simple 'collapse' does not sufficiently describe the period in the same way that 'The Dark Ages' were a vacuum of human social activity. Highlighting academic works in a more popular venue is important for the academic side as well. A lot of the time academic works can be sequestered to purely academic consumption which is a lost opportunity. More of this please!
Have there been any studies, based perhaps on well understood Medieval sites, that reveal how much of a settlement is destroyed during a sacking? i.e. does only spotty destruction indicate that a site wasn't sacked? Also, fires were common, so are there any well understood comparisons to make about building destruction patterns due to fire?
Yes and jot just medivel sites. But for example you can tell if a city was burned jntentionally by the melting/damage of the stones/bricks versus say a building in conjunction with arrowheads etc to determine if a city burned from skmething else or was razed during a conflict. There's a lot of that so Im sure that I said something wrong 😆 but that's the overall very broad gesture.
@@WilliamSanderson86 troy is a famous example of what I just said. Its called "Archeology." And sometimes it does yeild answers. Like melted bricks with tons of arrowheads. Indicates a city was likely burned ti the ground during a conflict. Sometimes devistation leaves traces.
It's really easy to tell the difference. A city destroyed by an accidental fire has evidence of people trying to put it out (water, sand), as well as evidence of almost immediate repair and reconstruction soon afterward. A city destroyed by an invader has evidence of conflict (weapons/armor), and no attempt at reconstruction -- they let the buildings burn for much longer until there was nothing left.... and often cities razed completely were abandoned for years (or never again ie: Ugarit, Nimrud) before people came back.
@@Ishkur23 Don't know about the Bronze Age specifically, but I worked on excavation about late antiquity Europe last summer (specifially a gallic then gallo-roman temple, destroyed by fire in the IVth century AD) and it's bullshit to say it's "very easy to tell the difference". I'd say 70 to 80% of the time, you don't know the cause of a fire. You can only take guesses. Our site was burned down around 370, at the time emperors implemented active repression of paganism within the empire, so it could've been burned down (either by imperial authorities or by local pillagers) but it could very well have been accidental. Without proving elements, we couldn't tell. Most cities razed were actually resettled right awfterward, and evidence of people trying to stop the fire are very hard to spot in general. Either they don't preserve very well, or making the difference between that and the natural terrain is impossible. Also, people can try to stop a fire during (or most likely a couple hours later) a raid as well. Best element to determine to cause of a fire is finding multiple bodies presenting war traumas on the same level, or significant signs of combat (weapons, etc). But you don't always get these. History is all about what we don't know.
I am reading Eric Cline's book. I am glad that your video is thought provoking concerning how conclusions are drawn in research and archaeological digs.
Earthquakes may destroy cities, but not countries or kingdoms. External forces only win when internal strife is high. Not all cities destroyed in that time were caused by sea people. Fringe groups on the borders of these places are credited with them. Empires have always risen and fallen. Histories of all periods show this. When one system collapses, another one replaces it out of need. Population declines are the biggest difference. All we have are the records found that here wrote then. Questioning experts is good. They are human and have their own biases. The smart ones can accept new info and change their views when they are not fitting the evidence. We all only know a little. Human interactions are complicated, so would our history be. 10-minute videos do not do history any favors. Just gives people like me the illusion we know more than we do. 🤔
@@Joe-sg9ll Something in that line. Semites were all along the border with Babylon and the Lavant. I think the date of the Hebrew exodus may not correlate. Not sure. But you are in the ballpark.
"no dip in amount of tin" lower tin availability will not be visible when analyzing objects since they had to use precise recipes, and would have made fewer bronze objects instead of lowering the amount of tin in each
I’m just started the video. I am very excited for this topic and very happy for how much you are diving into it with your several videos/shorts Dr. Millken: thank you for your expertise. I’m excited to hear about your studies after 10 years of research. One side thing, I would encourage a different background because this one is too bright for the light you have on yourself. It makes you look more fake than the background. I apologize for this critique.
Excellent video, really impressive. But the collapse did occur: writing disappeared from Greece and international trade was disrupted, even if it did not stop entirely. In particular the disappearence of writing is telling: this kind of phenomenon did not occur anywhere else in history thereafter except during the spanish conquest of the Americas. It is a matter of fact that entire kingdoms crumbled. Probably there were multiple causes. Climate change can not be ruled out. There are evidences that the kingdom of Hatti experienced a severe shortage of grain just on the eve of its demise.. But invasions from abroad ( the Sea People and others, ) and civil unrests are probably the most relevant cause. I agree that earthquakes did not play a role. If they even occurred.
The earthquake explanation was always stupid. People don't abandon entire civilizations because of earthquakes. It might be a setback but they will rebuild. Famine and crop failure would be a more likely explanation.
@@Wowzersdude-k5c It probably doesn't help. The classical theory on Bronze Age collapse is factor-collusion, multiples destructives events happening roughly in the same time. And as we've seen in recent events, earthquakes in the northern Levant can make significant dammages. By the way, we do have examples of cities that were never significantly resettled after a major earthquake in the region. Take Antioch, the third largest city in the Roman empire in the IIIrd century. While it had been in decline for some times in the VIth century, it was still quite a significant regional city when the 526 earthquake destroyed it utterly (250 000 death according to Jean Malalas, of course these numbers must be taken with doubts, but it was an extremely violent event for sure) . Then the town was largely abandonned for a couple centuries and didn't reach its former size before the XXth century. It may have been a factor among others. Probably not the most important one, but a factor nevertheless.
I don't think invasion was the primary cause since instead of new empires being established people retreated into the hills and abandoned population centers which has happened before even the Bronze Age in the archeological record (spoiler alert: there were no destruction layers in these places at time of abandonment). Fear was likely a factor but famine and changing cultural/government structures also likely occurred. What *is* clear is that the trade networks slowed down and were not as robust as they were at the height of the Bronze Age until the Classical period, as well as writing either becoming more irrelevant or the scribes being killed off whether by the sword, starving, disease, etc.
Agreeing with the professor who is advising you on your thesis does make it easier to get a good grade. If you point out mistakes you think he made, he will look at your paper in a bad light. I once pointed out that my professor corrected my English and I had my father who was an English teacher proof read my paper before I turned it in, so I knew the English was correct.
What of the idea that “the seven ships of the enemy” is a colloquial bit of text from Ugarit? I find it not unreasonable that an emergency letter of aid request would be more concise than the monologuing of a victorious pharaoh on his monuments. For example it may have referenced a particularly troublesome group of 7 tribes or piratic groups that the ruler in Cyprus would have instantly recognized.
A great video illustrating the sources-citing-sources problem at 15:27 is CGP Grey's video on the name Tiffany. I don't recall the title and I'm pressed for time. It should be pretty easy to find through a search, though.
What about Crete (ie: Minoans)? Is there any truth to the claim that they abandoned their palaces at the coast and camped out in the mountains for a whole century out of fear of what might be coming for them? Did Bettany Hughes lie to me?
3:58 would both of you be able to talk to the channel Decoding the Unknown video titled Who were the Sea Peoples? Wondering if that video is also good or bad on the actual facts of the Bronze Age collapse. Please and thank you
I will say though in relation to the first video, while i 100% loved watching it and while there was certainly new information that i learned, a lot of it still treads the same ground as Eric Clines 1177 lectures which themselves have racked up 3.7+ million views so i think despite being academic in nature moves it well into the "pop history" side of things. And frankly I'd recommend people start there as its a more condensed video. But like i said i still very much appreciate the more up to date and more detailed look you guys did.
If Kurt Bittel just messed up his dating or said something that was misinterpreted as "this destruction of these cities marked the end of the Hitties" then how did the Hittite Empire collapse? If it was just the rulers relocating and then the locals people defacing temples and administrative buildings, then the rulers should have arrived somewhere else and be fine right? The theory they moved and then there was destruction implies they were not fleeing a rebel mob or whatever. They're still ruling from a nice new comfy capital and in charge of all this rich agricultural land to use as a tax base. Rome didn't fall when Mediolanum was made the new court location since that was a voluntary movement. Maybe the rulers in their new home got hit by earthquakes since there is a 50-year period where the Mediterranean was riddled by earthquakes and many cities were abandoned at a time that could have coincided with the quakes, but you said in your last Bronze Age video that there isn't any evidence that the earthquakes caused the destruction even if the destruction happened in the same decade as the earthquakes. If Bittel wasn't right, if earthquakres aren't the final answer, what happened to the rulers of Hati and why did their empire fall?
For the same reason so many other Empires fell over time but we don't call it a "collapse of a period" every time an Empire or even multiple Empires fall. Just look at the path of destruction the mongols left behind and how many empires/kingdoms/tribes etc it affected/destroyed. Does that mean there was a "collapse" of civilization when the mongols were around? The same is true for migration movement in general, just look at germanic tribes throughout the antique. If anything this "bronze age collapse" narrative might be a repeat of the "dark age" myth regarding the medieval age.
@@LinkesAuge About the Dark Age Comment... "Dark Ages" is pretty accurate for early medieval ages. Dark as in "less record keeping." "Dark Age" according to Wikipedia (and I'm just going to assume the page is accurate and isn't vandalized with bogus facts) originally meant "we don't have light on what happened here" not "everything sucked." During Roman times there were records of everything from literature to biographies, to tax records (lots of financial records). After Rome there was still all that stuff, but a lot less. We get to the point it took awhile to debunk Gildas' records of Britain because no one else at his time wrote any competing narrative. So in the original sense of the word, it is true that for early medieval ages were Dark record wise. In the "everything sucked" meaning of Dark Age... I wouldn't call it a myth either. Maybe not quite the apocalyptic total civilization collapse it is presented by pop culture, but Danes, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, and more Danes kept pouring into Western Europe and robbing people by Viking raids. That would suck compared to the Roman era which was peaceful most of the time until the Crisis of the third Century. After that, at least Italia and Africa (the regional area the Romans called Africa not the continent) were still not constantly being raided. Ok sure the Vikings weren't the only bands of robbers, but normal medieval bandits would not rob a church and kill those sheltering in it. At most they'd just check to see if anyone was hiding personal valuables there and if no one was they'd let the victims hide out while they rob the whole town. If you were a freeman in Rome, you were probably better off than an early medieval west European peasant. Remember that time spent rebuilding after a raid is time that could have been spent harvesting or even just enjoying life. Was the fall of Rome the collapse of civilization in Western Europe? No. Is there a reason to believe the early medieval period sucked if you were a farmer (which is the most common occupation) compared to Principate Roman Empire? Considering there isn't a reason to think Vikings were made up, I'd say so. I suppose in Gaul they were already suffering long before the formal collapse of the Roman Empire, so there isn't a clean breakpoint of "Roman great, medieval Europe bad" line but the security situation over decades had gotten worse.
Man I hope you follow up on these videos. They are amazing. It is sad that the war of egos in the scientific community does not let History be thought properly in Schools at all levels. @Invitca I hope you do another hot topic like the Hyksos and their conquest of Egypt. Something a bit less showcased the bronze age African civilizations. We know that the Nubians and Egyptians were far from being alone.
Very interesting. So, you say there was no collapse. But the Hittite empire still disappeared, or lost its status as a great empire. Maybe it just dwindled little by little, it's kinda hard to say after 3000+ years, right?
I kind of just always assumed it was a transitional period like most times in history. Much like how Rome declined over many decades as opposed to imploding instantly. The Sea Peoples are still new to me. I wouldn't doubt they were a major player. My guess is there were a lot of issues leading to system strain and recession. Rioting, raiding, looting, mismanagement, war, migration, disease, trade disruption etc. Very interesting anyways.
Hey, my question specifically got picked! Thanks for answering that one. So if I understood the answer correctly, the effect on the regular Joe depended on the place since some had a worse than the others time but essentially it wasn't too different from the usual wars and what other typical hassles were around.
I cannot speak to videos or books I have not evaluated. I feel this is more of a RUclips history video issue and less of an issue of books over exacerbating this topic. The books I have read have covered potential date discrepancies in detail and do not lump them together as a single event.
But what happened to Crete? A documentary says that the locals retreated further inland and to the heights for a while, and near the shore there were some kind of migrants for a while.
How does one know if a given pop-history channel is worthwhile? If its maker ditches a good story in favor of intellectual honesty and focúses more on the history part rather than the pop part.
Very interesting . Is there any information on the amount of bronze tools and weapons at around 1200 BC? If the tin amount was the same concentration, but if copper is cut off then there would be less bronze tools and weapons? This is the traditional narrative, is there evidence for this?
I thought the collapse was mainly related to the interconnected systems of trade. Getting sacked and raided cannot be pleasant and centers of power shifted afterwards. But collapse doesn't mean a 100% fatality rate.
I've always had it described as a dramatic decrease in complexity. That means a reduction in volume and variety of trade. Most pottery, tooling and structure becomes simpler. Along with highly variable but never the less almost unanimous population decline, whether its a site in attica, Lebanon, judea, Egypt, anatolia. Although. I do find this whole project valuable, regardless of their awkwardness with their use of collapse, if it was not the sea peoples what drove the decrease in societal complexity, and what was the order and causal chain of events.
I know that history is the topic of discussion. But I think the context of the time the historians wrote the reports and papers has a lot of influence as well. It is no real stretch that there is a political slant to frame foreign invasion as a great threat. Especially in the cold war, when most of the conclusions were written. It is also not a coincidence that rightwing xenophobes are highly fascinated with ancient Rome, which was threatened multiple times by barbarians. It is more than likely that historians put bias in all their work in times of great stress.
I don't really see how the percentage of tin in the artifacts being the same is indicative there wasn't lets say reduced supply or more expensive etc. You could still make a cake with a recipe even if the sugar is more expensive and your neighbor can't afford it. They keep making religous and decorative objects from my understanding with bronze which would inherently be more precious objects, just my two cents
Thank you, great presentation and summary. People love the fantastic being the reason. No proof otherwise will convice some. The mysterious sea-people and earthquakes are sexier sales.
It’s odd how moderns have decided that there was no Bronze Age collapse and no dark age after the fall of Rome. Seems like a both cope for the fact that we’re on the precipice of a dark age ourselves and trying to make the cyclical nature of the past line up to a linear progressive version of time. Really what happens is civilizations develop advanced supply chains with centralized nodes of production. At some point some of those nodes go down for various reasons and they are unable to maintain trade routes. The loss of imports and lack of local skills or materials causes a cascading effect across the civilization. This is usually coupled with a physical and spiritual decline of the urbanized population who are unable to cope with the problems or physically defend themselves.
I have noticed that "experts" often reject new theories out of hand even if you present evidence. The only satisfaction you'll get out of this is being able to say "Yes, that was what I said 20 years ago".
I could use the example from 2020 when the entire globe went mad, but youtube would just delete my comment. The conspiracy theories you are not allowed to talk about are 100% true. The most famous "conspiracy theory" will get you 5-10 years in prison in countries like Germany and Austria if you point out glaring inconsistencies or obvious lies in the official narrative.@@ufc990
Depends entirely on the nature of the "expert". Most scientists are very open to accept different ideas if given enough valid evidence. They might have a different idea of what they consider enough or valid than you or the one given them the alternative idea, but, by and large, scientists do accept changes in understanding, that is why science moves forward. The thing is, some history professors give the same lectures year after year on a topic they aren't currently researching. Like a history professor might give a lecture of the end of the bronze age to first year students while he himself works on early-medieval stuff, a guy like that is going to give the old spiel until someone tells him that the old idea of the bronze age collapse is being seriously questioned by current historians and archaeologists specialized in that field. He isn't refusing to accept the new findings, he hasn't heard them and if you as a student tell him after the lecture in public that he is wrong, he will probably react badly, because people do not like to be told they are wrong in public and he isn't presented the information to actually accept that the old hypotheses are perhaps incorrect. So if you want to change someone's mind don't drop it on them in public, but give them the information, let them read it and make up their own minds. Just telling people they are wrong in public without giving them the required information before hand is not going to make them accept your idea and may result in them rejecting your idea out of hand.
I don't know any professors so the only option I have is to tell them in public, like on the internet. The inability to admit that you were wrong is a major personality flaw that stops you from considering new information even when it is obviously true. I can give you a very clear example. It is accepted that tectonic movement can raise or lower a continent many thousands of meters (this is very local), and it is obvious to anyone with eyes that there are several former coastlines visible on satellite images both above and below current sea level, yet "experts" refuse to consider anything but global warming as a factor in sea level and that sea level rise is a uniform phenomena. Here the evidence is staring them right in the eyes, I don't have to provide anything new. Science moves forward at a very slow pace because theories that contradict the official story are combatted by entrenched members of the intelligentsia who refuse funding for studies that threaten the narrative. Thus we "amateurs" end up saying "I told you so" 20 years later.@@Kholdaimon
@@Kholdaimon Or professors could stay up to date on current research to ensure they're actually doing their jobs. Any teacher who is told they are wrong publicly, and it later turns out to be true, deserves any shame they suffer as a result of their laziness. It would take no more than having their lecture material reviewed by research colleagues once a year. There's no excuse for teaching outdated and incorrect information.
It is entirely possible that the hyksos had a more complex material culture, but the resurgent near eastern empires attempted to clear them from history
How lucky for me, I just watched the prior video yesterday. So pulling this all together, to what extent does this undermine the idea of there having been a collapse at all?
No, Rameses III said that they were foreigners from the 'Islands of the Great Green' as he called the western Mediterranean Sea, if they had been Mycenaeans or Minoans (the Greeks arrived centuries later) he would not have said 'foreigners', as they knew the Minoans and Mycenaeans well since they traded a lot with them.
So what caused the collapse or is he saying there wasn't one? Or maybe it's something else entirely different or we're all living in the simulation, or....
I have a feeling that like most historical collapses a few cities are affected and the ruling class collapsed and even tho the everyday people are not really affected its seems like the world collapsed
It could also be that we lump together a bunch of different somewhat unrelated events into a narrative. There you have an earthquake, twenty years later there's been a serious pirate raiding events, some kingdom has a civil war two hundred miles away. If you're far enough both in time and space those might feel like they happened at the same time and place, but the locals may not see it this way at all.
@@MrWolfstar8 That, sadly, I can't disagree with. That kinda is the point of the video, the big dramatic capitalized Bronze Age Collapse was less of a dramatic event and more of a somewhat gradual shift.
What's his point? Nothing happened? No big deal? There was a reason no more writing in a 300 year period. Egypt is the only written documents we have during that time. Something obviously happened.
Bronze age collapse did happen, but likely isn't a singular reason why. Lots of little things combined with weak leadership caused the ruling class to be taken by someone else.
@@killerdrgnthe reason is pretty simple population and economic collapse. Complex systems handle war, natural disaster well because they facilitate large populations well developed economies. When those things go so does the civilization. Why the population and economy went to hell is harder to decode. There were indicators of Soviet Style economics with the palace manufactories that appeared shortly before the collapse. There’s also some evidence from the Bible, Egypt ordered the Hebrews to all make mud brick but the failed to deliver the straw needed to properly make the bricks. This sounds very much like a Soviet command economy that could never deliver raw materials inputs efficiently to work. The Egyptians also feared the Hebrews because they were having lots of children while the Egyptians were not. Why the Hebrews where reproducing despite harsh conditions but the Egyptians where not is unknown.
Maybe the evidence isn't as clear cut as all that. Maybe there was a rollback in different places at different times and not a dramatic mega cataclysm.
Egypt was not the only place that kept writing. Cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia also survived and continued to be used and even improved. The collapse mostly effected the peoples in Greece, Canaan, and Anatolia, while Egypt was thrown into an Intermediate Period but wasn't wiped out.
I haven't seen this video by now, but i would like to recommend a book by David Rohl, "A Test of Time". In it he suggests that the end of the bronze age was not around 1200 BCE, but around 900 BCE, according to archeological discoveries in egypt. It works not only with biblical texts but i had a brief look at the history of Troy, and it seems to fit either, with two major events of destruction till the end of the bronze age. One might have been the "homeric" war (after wich Mycene still existed) and the other by the sea people (after wich Mycene were mostly gone). Then there wouldn't have been several hundreds of years of "dark ages" wich are still hard to explain. Now i have seen the video i am stunned how false assumptions, misdatings and careless citations have blurred our view of history. And thats what David Rohl is stating too. Maybe it is about time to reconstruct the timeframe and see what happens, what coincidences might pop up. I also remember the books by Eberhard Zangger (i don't know whats available in english) about Troy, the eastern mediterranean and western Anatolia. He points out that there is much more to bronze age history that we might imagine.
This is interesting because, a while back, I stopped watching documentaries about the so-called Late Bronze Age Destruction: I had come to the conclusion that no such thing happened.
@@InvictaHistory Only teasing 😁 I love your videos. On the topic, one thing that I love about the Bronze Age Collapse is the mystery, there will be many more discoveries to unveil and help us piece together what actually happened and I guess that's the exciting part. I would love to see other alternate theories on what could have caused the bronze age collapse. From the remaining tablets from the period I feel despair and terror written in the words, as if their whole world is coming apart. I look forward to seeing if you have any more to share on the subject in future.
This was absolutely terrific. This is the kind of work RUclips history should be doing, connecting us with real experts and giving them a platform to teach leading edge concepts. Don't get me wrong, I love being told a story to get me interested in a topic, but once I'm interested I need this next phase to introduce me to the deep dive.
Looking forward to more videos like your Bronze Age "Collapse" presentation, and interviews like this.
This channel is putting in amazing work in this topic. Similar to the Spartan Myth video which I am a huge fan of, overall amazing work
I really appreciate these kinds of videos. As lay people, we're not really in a position to judge which side is more right, but it at least exposes us to the opinions in academia, which is especially needed when the other side has been so vocal about their position
You've always got to consider too, that some things that may seem pretty obvious to us, from our perspective. May actually be totally off base. We can't truly put ourselves in their shoes, or truly consider ALL the possibilities when looking at some random evidence.
This channel is turning into my favorite, by its attention to academic history, not that everything needs to be delving into sources or histography(cant spell), but atm this attention to detail and being self critical is very unique on yt-history.
I cant thank you enough, because history that is inaccurate is so damaging to the overall lessons learned that we need for the future as humans, and you are actually a force for the better by your amazing videos
@@gregorynixonAUTHOR agree, which is why examining how interpretations are constructed as well as their reasonableness must be done broadly, with attention to detail, a critical eye and a principle of charity - as well as continuously - which I think can be hard to balance, but is done well here.
thinking about history like this (not a manual), what I mean by learning lessons
Great to see this longer format
I’ve often been disappointed that so many history textbooks and online content fail to illustrate historical events in such detail as this video did. However, history classes would have to be much longer and I honestly don’t think many students would pay attention anyway. For those of us that really cherish a love of learning from well researched content by historians that are not afraid to admit they don’t know something, I say well done!
I always found it interesting that scholars always took “sea peoples” to mean that they must have come from far off or been completely foreign peoples.
Why couldn’t it simply mean people who make their living from the sea or a local naval power. Similar to how the Phoenicians who would later become Carthaginians were viewed as “sea peoples” since so much of their culture and society was built around the sea. Another similarity is that the Carthaginians used primarily mercenary armies with soldiers who came from all over the known world.
An ancient empire with trade posts throughout the Mediterranean could easily have called up forces from many different places to go to war with a neighbor like Egypt without there being a need for a mysterious foreign empire that nobody had ever run into before the end of the Bronze Age. Since only scattered documents have come down to us the description by the Egyptians could have been talking about a neighboring power with a brief summary of how that neighboring power had formed over the previous decades prior to the current war. They didn’t necessarily have to have only just then chosen to join together for the purpose of invading Egypt.
That’s as logical and probable as anything I’ve seen .
The egyptian list them.
They ugarits talk about them.
The mycenaeans were awaiting ppl from the sea ('the watchers are guarding the coast').
So yeah.
such an empire would have a NAME though. Sea Peoples really sounds like "Norsemen" when we get to the age of "Viking Raiders"... marauding attackers nobody really knows a lot about where they're from or what they are like at home...
The sea people might have been mercenaries gone rogue, like the saxons in britain.
So they wrote down everything germane to this known neighboring power right?
This was great work Invicta, thanks for putting this video together. Just bought Millek's book, can't wait for it to arrive and give it a read!
52:32 > "Recap of False Destructions"
57:15 > "Challenges to Dr. Jesse Millek"
I love these kind of in depth discussions, and I would love to see more of these from your channel. Great work!
Well obviously the Bronze Age ended when a giant monster emerged from the sea and began stomping around starting from Mycenaean Greece to Egypt. He was named Typhoon by the survivors of his attacks before disappearing under the waves.
The creature would later emerge in the 1950s after the Americans began their nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll and would turn his ire towards Japan…
There I made you a movie pitch.
No you made a movie reference. I believe typhoon came to be known as Godzilla.
@@voidtremor6329 The second half sure but don’t tell me that a Kaiju movie set in the Bronze Age wouldn’t be entertaining.
@@NathanCassidy721 All Sindbad movies. Movies filming the books of 1001 Nights (or Arabian Nights) and Jules Verne, Travel to the centre of the Earth, all feature giant monsters. Jason and the Argonauts. Any more name drops needed? LUL
@@kleinerprinz99 Not the same thing. I love those movies but they aren't Kaiju movies.
You have forgotten the ancient aliens.
This was a great follow up to your initial video. Jesse adds further nuance to that which you discussed off the top and the talk shows that the Late Bronze Age period is a time where there was a lot of change taking place. A simple 'collapse' does not sufficiently describe the period in the same way that 'The Dark Ages' were a vacuum of human social activity.
Highlighting academic works in a more popular venue is important for the academic side as well. A lot of the time academic works can be sequestered to purely academic consumption which is a lost opportunity. More of this please!
Have there been any studies, based perhaps on well understood Medieval sites, that reveal how much of a settlement is destroyed during a sacking? i.e. does only spotty destruction indicate that a site wasn't sacked? Also, fires were common, so are there any well understood comparisons to make about building destruction patterns due to fire?
Yes and jot just medivel sites. But for example you can tell if a city was burned jntentionally by the melting/damage of the stones/bricks versus say a building in conjunction with arrowheads etc to determine if a city burned from skmething else or was razed during a conflict. There's a lot of that so Im sure that I said something wrong 😆 but that's the overall very broad gesture.
@@WilliamSanderson86 troy is a famous example of what I just said. Its called "Archeology." And sometimes it does yeild answers. Like melted bricks with tons of arrowheads. Indicates a city was likely burned ti the ground during a conflict.
Sometimes devistation leaves traces.
@@StoneSailsSculpture Thanks!
It's really easy to tell the difference. A city destroyed by an accidental fire has evidence of people trying to put it out (water, sand), as well as evidence of almost immediate repair and reconstruction soon afterward. A city destroyed by an invader has evidence of conflict (weapons/armor), and no attempt at reconstruction -- they let the buildings burn for much longer until there was nothing left.... and often cities razed completely were abandoned for years (or never again ie: Ugarit, Nimrud) before people came back.
@@Ishkur23 Don't know about the Bronze Age specifically, but I worked on excavation about late antiquity Europe last summer (specifially a gallic then gallo-roman temple, destroyed by fire in the IVth century AD) and it's bullshit to say it's "very easy to tell the difference". I'd say 70 to 80% of the time, you don't know the cause of a fire. You can only take guesses. Our site was burned down around 370, at the time emperors implemented active repression of paganism within the empire, so it could've been burned down (either by imperial authorities or by local pillagers) but it could very well have been accidental. Without proving elements, we couldn't tell.
Most cities razed were actually resettled right awfterward, and evidence of people trying to stop the fire are very hard to spot in general. Either they don't preserve very well, or making the difference between that and the natural terrain is impossible. Also, people can try to stop a fire during (or most likely a couple hours later) a raid as well.
Best element to determine to cause of a fire is finding multiple bodies presenting war traumas on the same level, or significant signs of combat (weapons, etc). But you don't always get these.
History is all about what we don't know.
I am reading Eric Cline's book. I am glad that your video is thought provoking concerning how conclusions are drawn in research and archaeological digs.
I love these inndepth studies ❤
Earthquakes may destroy cities, but not countries or kingdoms. External forces only win when internal strife is high. Not all cities destroyed in that time were caused by sea people. Fringe groups on the borders of these places are credited with them. Empires have always risen and fallen. Histories of all periods show this. When one system collapses, another one replaces it out of need. Population declines are the biggest difference. All we have are the records found that here wrote then. Questioning experts is good. They are human and have their own biases. The smart ones can accept new info and change their views when they are not fitting the evidence. We all only know a little. Human interactions are complicated, so would our history be. 10-minute videos do not do history any favors. Just gives people like me the illusion we know more than we do. 🤔
That’s great buddy
@@Joe-sg9ll Something in that line. Semites were all along the border with Babylon and the Lavant. I think the date of the Hebrew exodus may not correlate. Not sure. But you are in the ballpark.
The Hebs/Jews did it!!! Lol😂😢
@@sergetkach LOL
Tell that to Ottomans who managed.to capture multiply fortified cities (from byzantine empire) just by earthquakes
"no dip in amount of tin"
lower tin availability will not be visible when analyzing objects since they had to use precise recipes, and would have made fewer bronze objects instead of lowering the amount of tin in each
And finding some artifacts in one place doesn't mean they are abundant there and everywhere else. It literally proves nothing.
See 1:08:45. That was considered. Academics might debate it, I haven't read the literature, but it's not like no one thought of that.
I’m just started the video. I am very excited for this topic and very happy for how much you are diving into it with your several videos/shorts
Dr. Millken: thank you for your expertise. I’m excited to hear about your studies after 10 years of research. One side thing, I would encourage a different background because this one is too bright for the light you have on yourself. It makes you look more fake than the background. I apologize for this critique.
this was a great follow up to your already amazing Bronze Age Collapse video
Excellent video, really impressive. But the collapse did occur: writing disappeared from Greece and international trade was disrupted, even if it did not stop entirely. In particular the disappearence of writing is telling: this kind of phenomenon did not occur anywhere else in history thereafter except during the spanish conquest of the Americas. It is a matter of fact that entire kingdoms crumbled. Probably there were multiple causes. Climate change can not be ruled out. There are evidences that the kingdom of Hatti experienced a severe shortage of grain just on the eve of its demise.. But invasions from abroad ( the Sea People and others, ) and civil unrests are probably the most relevant cause. I agree that earthquakes did not play a role. If they even occurred.
The earthquake explanation was always stupid. People don't abandon entire civilizations because of earthquakes. It might be a setback but they will rebuild. Famine and crop failure would be a more likely explanation.
@@Wowzersdude-k5c It probably doesn't help. The classical theory on Bronze Age collapse is factor-collusion, multiples destructives events happening roughly in the same time. And as we've seen in recent events, earthquakes in the northern Levant can make significant dammages. By the way, we do have examples of cities that were never significantly resettled after a major earthquake in the region. Take Antioch, the third largest city in the Roman empire in the IIIrd century. While it had been in decline for some times in the VIth century, it was still quite a significant regional city when the 526 earthquake destroyed it utterly (250 000 death according to Jean Malalas, of course these numbers must be taken with doubts, but it was an extremely violent event for sure) . Then the town was largely abandonned for a couple centuries and didn't reach its former size before the XXth century.
It may have been a factor among others. Probably not the most important one, but a factor nevertheless.
I don't think invasion was the primary cause since instead of new empires being established people retreated into the hills and abandoned population centers which has happened before even the Bronze Age in the archeological record (spoiler alert: there were no destruction layers in these places at time of abandonment). Fear was likely a factor but famine and changing cultural/government structures also likely occurred. What *is* clear is that the trade networks slowed down and were not as robust as they were at the height of the Bronze Age until the Classical period, as well as writing either becoming more irrelevant or the scribes being killed off whether by the sword, starving, disease, etc.
Oakley you have come so far from those total war videos. Still watching… I’ll always remember winning one of those (Massive Battles) 😉
Such a fascinating period. More and more I find myself reading about the bronze age. Also, can't get enough of achaemenid persia...
I like how you do interviews with archaeologists and historians.
Agreeing with the professor who is advising you on your thesis does make it easier to get a good grade. If you point out mistakes you think he made, he will look at your paper in a bad light.
I once pointed out that my professor corrected my English and I had my father who was an English teacher proof read my paper before I turned it in, so I knew the English was correct.
So what did cause the fall? Everything, nothing, there was no fall?
very interesting subject.
i must say though that this book is very expensive.
What of the idea that “the seven ships of the enemy” is a colloquial bit of text from Ugarit? I find it not unreasonable that an emergency letter of aid request would be more concise than the monologuing of a victorious pharaoh on his monuments. For example it may have referenced a particularly troublesome group of 7 tribes or piratic groups that the ruler in Cyprus would have instantly recognized.
Wow, great interview, hope to see more on this format
Agreecwith Dr. Millek! Very extensive and thorough video. Job well done sir!!
Really appreciate the attention to detail and the tracking back of less than stellar assumptions that maybe subtle or not. FUN!
This was also really good. Thanks for this interview.
A great video illustrating the sources-citing-sources problem at 15:27 is CGP Grey's video on the name Tiffany. I don't recall the title and I'm pressed for time. It should be pretty easy to find through a search, though.
I am glad to see the research that is being done to look closer at this narrative we’ve all heard
This is great. I was just researching this topic and came across his name and then found this video.
Should buy his book, but it's expensive :)
What about Crete (ie: Minoans)? Is there any truth to the claim that they abandoned their palaces at the coast and camped out in the mountains for a whole century out of fear of what might be coming for them? Did Bettany Hughes lie to me?
I'm glad people are making videos about this, I need moar info.
Love the research dedicated to this topic - really bolsters confidence in your analysis and puts you up there as a top tier channel
Very cool video, thanks for this more in depth look apon this topic.
excellent work guys!
Great content, loving this format!
What're you trying to hide with that greenscreen Jesse!
3:58 would both of you be able to talk to the channel Decoding the Unknown video titled Who were the Sea Peoples? Wondering if that video is also good or bad on the actual facts of the Bronze Age collapse. Please and thank you
You can't go into battle with just 50 arrows, it's a silly idea. Finding 50 arrows cannot then be considered a battle either
I will say though in relation to the first video, while i 100% loved watching it and while there was certainly new information that i learned, a lot of it still treads the same ground as Eric Clines 1177 lectures which themselves have racked up 3.7+ million views so i think despite being academic in nature moves it well into the "pop history" side of things. And frankly I'd recommend people start there as its a more condensed video.
But like i said i still very much appreciate the more up to date and more detailed look you guys did.
If Kurt Bittel just messed up his dating or said something that was misinterpreted as "this destruction of these cities marked the end of the Hitties" then how did the Hittite Empire collapse? If it was just the rulers relocating and then the locals people defacing temples and administrative buildings, then the rulers should have arrived somewhere else and be fine right? The theory they moved and then there was destruction implies they were not fleeing a rebel mob or whatever. They're still ruling from a nice new comfy capital and in charge of all this rich agricultural land to use as a tax base. Rome didn't fall when Mediolanum was made the new court location since that was a voluntary movement. Maybe the rulers in their new home got hit by earthquakes since there is a 50-year period where the Mediterranean was riddled by earthquakes and many cities were abandoned at a time that could have coincided with the quakes, but you said in your last Bronze Age video that there isn't any evidence that the earthquakes caused the destruction even if the destruction happened in the same decade as the earthquakes. If Bittel wasn't right, if earthquakres aren't the final answer, what happened to the rulers of Hati and why did their empire fall?
For the same reason so many other Empires fell over time but we don't call it a "collapse of a period" every time an Empire or even multiple Empires fall. Just look at the path of destruction the mongols left behind and how many empires/kingdoms/tribes etc it affected/destroyed. Does that mean there was a "collapse" of civilization when the mongols were around?
The same is true for migration movement in general, just look at germanic tribes throughout the antique. If anything this "bronze age collapse" narrative might be a repeat of the "dark age" myth regarding the medieval age.
@@LinkesAuge About the Dark Age Comment... "Dark Ages" is pretty accurate for early medieval ages. Dark as in "less record keeping." "Dark Age" according to Wikipedia (and I'm just going to assume the page is accurate and isn't vandalized with bogus facts) originally meant "we don't have light on what happened here" not "everything sucked." During Roman times there were records of everything from literature to biographies, to tax records (lots of financial records). After Rome there was still all that stuff, but a lot less. We get to the point it took awhile to debunk Gildas' records of Britain because no one else at his time wrote any competing narrative. So in the original sense of the word, it is true that for early medieval ages were Dark record wise.
In the "everything sucked" meaning of Dark Age... I wouldn't call it a myth either. Maybe not quite the apocalyptic total civilization collapse it is presented by pop culture, but Danes, Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, and more Danes kept pouring into Western Europe and robbing people by Viking raids. That would suck compared to the Roman era which was peaceful most of the time until the Crisis of the third Century. After that, at least Italia and Africa (the regional area the Romans called Africa not the continent) were still not constantly being raided.
Ok sure the Vikings weren't the only bands of robbers, but normal medieval bandits would not rob a church and kill those sheltering in it. At most they'd just check to see if anyone was hiding personal valuables there and if no one was they'd let the victims hide out while they rob the whole town. If you were a freeman in Rome, you were probably better off than an early medieval west European peasant. Remember that time spent rebuilding after a raid is time that could have been spent harvesting or even just enjoying life. Was the fall of Rome the collapse of civilization in Western Europe? No. Is there a reason to believe the early medieval period sucked if you were a farmer (which is the most common occupation) compared to Principate Roman Empire? Considering there isn't a reason to think Vikings were made up, I'd say so. I suppose in Gaul they were already suffering long before the formal collapse of the Roman Empire, so there isn't a clean breakpoint of "Roman great, medieval Europe bad" line but the security situation over decades had gotten worse.
Man I hope you follow up on these videos. They are amazing. It is sad that the war of egos in the scientific community does not let History be thought properly in Schools at all levels. @Invitca I hope you do another hot topic like the Hyksos and their conquest of Egypt. Something a bit less showcased the bronze age African civilizations. We know that the Nubians and Egyptians were far from being alone.
So it sounds to me like the real cause of the Bronze Age Collapse was "everything, everywhere, all at once".
Super interview! Thanks! got my sub!
I am really interested in this topic thank you fot making a video about this
i love Jesse's zoom background setup, he almost looks photoshop in
I believe the background is a photo. It is a feature of Zoom. The background is way sharper and higher resolution than his image (from web cam).
I remember a few years back some guy made a book about why the Greek dark age didn't make sense. He was British and posted videos about it.
Maybe Ugarit didn't record the names of the sea peoples that attacked them, even though they were aware of them, because it was a surprise attack?
Awesome stuff
Now interview Eric H. Cline.
Good interview!
Very interesting. So, you say there was no collapse. But the Hittite empire still disappeared, or lost its status as a great empire. Maybe it just dwindled little by little, it's kinda hard to say after 3000+ years, right?
I kind of just always assumed it was a transitional period like most times in history. Much like how Rome declined over many decades as opposed to imploding instantly. The Sea Peoples are still new to me. I wouldn't doubt they were a major player. My guess is there were a lot of issues leading to system strain and recession. Rioting, raiding, looting, mismanagement, war, migration, disease, trade disruption etc. Very interesting anyways.
Hey, my question specifically got picked! Thanks for answering that one.
So if I understood the answer correctly, the effect on the regular Joe depended on the place since some had a worse than the others time but essentially it wasn't too different from the usual wars and what other typical hassles were around.
I cannot speak to videos or books I have not evaluated. I feel this is more of a RUclips history video issue and less of an issue of books over exacerbating this topic. The books I have read have covered potential date discrepancies in detail and do not lump them together as a single event.
What a coincidence, I just go around to the other video a day ago and finished it today!
love your videos
Great video thank you
Oh boy, the comment section is going to become a hurricane for this video.
But what happened to Crete? A documentary says that the locals retreated further inland and to the heights for a while, and near the shore there were some kind of migrants for a while.
How does one know if a given pop-history channel is worthwhile? If its maker ditches a good story in favor of intellectual honesty and focúses more on the history part rather than the pop part.
Jesse has such a nice home
Very interesting . Is there any information on the amount of bronze tools and weapons at around 1200 BC? If the tin amount was the same concentration, but if copper is cut off then there would be less bronze tools and weapons? This is the traditional narrative, is there evidence for this?
I thought the collapse was mainly related to the interconnected systems of trade. Getting sacked and raided cannot be pleasant and centers of power shifted afterwards. But collapse doesn't mean a 100% fatality rate.
I've always had it described as a dramatic decrease in complexity.
That means a reduction in volume and variety of trade.
Most pottery, tooling and structure becomes simpler. Along with highly variable but never the less almost unanimous population decline, whether its a site in attica, Lebanon, judea, Egypt, anatolia.
Although. I do find this whole project valuable, regardless of their awkwardness with their use of collapse, if it was not the sea peoples what drove the decrease in societal complexity, and what was the order and causal chain of events.
I know that history is the topic of discussion. But I think the context of the time the historians wrote the reports and papers has a lot of influence as well. It is no real stretch that there is a political slant to frame foreign invasion as a great threat. Especially in the cold war, when most of the conclusions were written. It is also not a coincidence that rightwing xenophobes are highly fascinated with ancient Rome, which was threatened multiple times by barbarians. It is more than likely that historians put bias in all their work in times of great stress.
I don't really see how the percentage of tin in the artifacts being the same is indicative there wasn't lets say reduced supply or more expensive etc. You could still make a cake with a recipe even if the sugar is more expensive and your neighbor can't afford it. They keep making religous and decorative objects from my understanding with bronze which would inherently be more precious objects, just my two cents
Is there anyway i can get from Jesse the letters from Ugarit for the destruction by the Šekelesh allegedly??
So it means the scale of destruction might've been smaller but at the end of that period some of the Great ancient empires still "suddenly" vanished?
Please make a video on Hunnic Invasions of India ❤❤❤
Thank you, great presentation and summary.
People love the fantastic being the reason. No proof otherwise will convice some. The mysterious sea-people and earthquakes are sexier sales.
It’s odd how moderns have decided that there was no Bronze Age collapse and no dark age after the fall of Rome.
Seems like a both cope for the fact that we’re on the precipice of a dark age ourselves and trying to make the cyclical nature of the past line up to a linear progressive version of time.
Really what happens is civilizations develop advanced supply chains with centralized nodes of production. At some point some of those nodes go down for various reasons and they are unable to maintain trade routes. The loss of imports and lack of local skills or materials causes a cascading effect across the civilization. This is usually coupled with a physical and spiritual decline of the urbanized population who are unable to cope with the problems or physically defend themselves.
I have noticed that "experts" often reject new theories out of hand even if you present evidence. The only satisfaction you'll get out of this is being able to say "Yes, that was what I said 20 years ago".
Any recent examples of this you'd care to point out?
I could use the example from 2020 when the entire globe went mad, but youtube would just delete my comment.
The conspiracy theories you are not allowed to talk about are 100% true. The most famous "conspiracy theory" will get you 5-10 years in prison in countries like Germany and Austria if you point out glaring inconsistencies or obvious lies in the official narrative.@@ufc990
Depends entirely on the nature of the "expert". Most scientists are very open to accept different ideas if given enough valid evidence. They might have a different idea of what they consider enough or valid than you or the one given them the alternative idea, but, by and large, scientists do accept changes in understanding, that is why science moves forward.
The thing is, some history professors give the same lectures year after year on a topic they aren't currently researching. Like a history professor might give a lecture of the end of the bronze age to first year students while he himself works on early-medieval stuff, a guy like that is going to give the old spiel until someone tells him that the old idea of the bronze age collapse is being seriously questioned by current historians and archaeologists specialized in that field. He isn't refusing to accept the new findings, he hasn't heard them and if you as a student tell him after the lecture in public that he is wrong, he will probably react badly, because people do not like to be told they are wrong in public and he isn't presented the information to actually accept that the old hypotheses are perhaps incorrect.
So if you want to change someone's mind don't drop it on them in public, but give them the information, let them read it and make up their own minds. Just telling people they are wrong in public without giving them the required information before hand is not going to make them accept your idea and may result in them rejecting your idea out of hand.
I don't know any professors so the only option I have is to tell them in public, like on the internet. The inability to admit that you were wrong is a major personality flaw that stops you from considering new information even when it is obviously true.
I can give you a very clear example. It is accepted that tectonic movement can raise or lower a continent many thousands of meters (this is very local), and it is obvious to anyone with eyes that there are several former coastlines visible on satellite images both above and below current sea level, yet "experts" refuse to consider anything but global warming as a factor in sea level and that sea level rise is a uniform phenomena. Here the evidence is staring them right in the eyes, I don't have to provide anything new.
Science moves forward at a very slow pace because theories that contradict the official story are combatted by entrenched members of the intelligentsia who refuse funding for studies that threaten the narrative. Thus we "amateurs" end up saying "I told you so" 20 years later.@@Kholdaimon
@@Kholdaimon Or professors could stay up to date on current research to ensure they're actually doing their jobs. Any teacher who is told they are wrong publicly, and it later turns out to be true, deserves any shame they suffer as a result of their laziness. It would take no more than having their lecture material reviewed by research colleagues once a year. There's no excuse for teaching outdated and incorrect information.
It is entirely possible that the hyksos had a more complex material culture, but the resurgent near eastern empires attempted to clear them from history
Next video: The Fall of Rome That Wasn't...
He was summoned from the bronze age itself into a modern living room
Good spelling of the German names. Thank you.
How lucky for me, I just watched the prior video yesterday. So pulling this all together, to what extent does this undermine the idea of there having been a collapse at all?
Writing disappeared entirely in larger section of the Bronze Age civilizations. Generally a pretty good indication of collapse.
@@MrWolfstar8 That is a good answer.
What program are you using to display the information?
Miro
@@InvictaHistory Thank you.
After 1200 BC Cyprus is shipping copper to the sea peoples.
that guy is filming on a potato and then puts the weirdest background in it a 1988 ranch hoose living room in florida
were the Seapeople basically some Greeks ? or do I miss understand the map ?
No, Rameses III said that they were foreigners from the 'Islands of the Great Green' as he called the western Mediterranean Sea, if they had been Mycenaeans or Minoans (the Greeks arrived centuries later) he would not have said 'foreigners', as they knew the Minoans and Mycenaeans well since they traded a lot with them.
So what caused the collapse or is he saying there wasn't one? Or maybe it's something else entirely different or we're all living in the simulation, or....
The interviewee here looks like the famous "This Man" drawing of that face people report to have seen repeatedly in their dreams.
Glad you're looking at this period without promoting a Creative Assembly game ..
lol his last video was sponsored by it
I have a feeling that like most historical collapses a few cities are affected and the ruling class collapsed and even tho the everyday people are not really affected its seems like the world collapsed
It could also be that we lump together a bunch of different somewhat unrelated events into a narrative. There you have an earthquake, twenty years later there's been a serious pirate raiding events, some kingdom has a civil war two hundred miles away. If you're far enough both in time and space those might feel like they happened at the same time and place, but the locals may not see it this way at all.
The population declined by 90% in some areas. Where there was once might cities there was only left small villages or a burned out ruin.
@@MrWolfstar8 You could say the same thing about Detroit and the rust belt, doesn't mean America fell.
@@TheStephaneAdam hasn’t fallen, yet. But a lot of our cities are starting look like Detroit.
@@MrWolfstar8 That, sadly, I can't disagree with.
That kinda is the point of the video, the big dramatic capitalized Bronze Age Collapse was less of a dramatic event and more of a somewhat gradual shift.
The only pop history worth anything is that which is the least like pop history.
Once plastics were developed, the Bronze age was essentially over.
Smh we are truly in a bronze age era
You should interview professors to hold like lecture series at 300+ level course, that would be super cool 😅
(God not 100/200 level it’s basic)
What's his point? Nothing happened? No big deal? There was a reason no more writing in a 300 year period. Egypt is the only written documents we have during that time. Something obviously happened.
Bronze age collapse did happen, but likely isn't a singular reason why. Lots of little things combined with weak leadership caused the ruling class to be taken by someone else.
@@killerdrgnthe reason is pretty simple population and economic collapse. Complex systems handle war, natural disaster well because they facilitate large populations well developed economies. When those things go so does the civilization.
Why the population and economy went to hell is harder to decode. There were indicators of Soviet Style economics with the palace manufactories that appeared shortly before the collapse.
There’s also some evidence from the Bible, Egypt ordered the Hebrews to all make mud brick but the failed to deliver the straw needed to properly make the bricks. This sounds very much like a Soviet command economy that could never deliver raw materials inputs efficiently to work. The Egyptians also feared the Hebrews because they were having lots of children while the Egyptians were not. Why the Hebrews where reproducing despite harsh conditions but the Egyptians where not is unknown.
Maybe the evidence isn't as clear cut as all that. Maybe there was a rollback in different places at different times and not a dramatic mega cataclysm.
Egypt was not the only place that kept writing. Cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia also survived and continued to be used and even improved. The collapse mostly effected the peoples in Greece, Canaan, and Anatolia, while Egypt was thrown into an Intermediate Period but wasn't wiped out.
$60 is like the college bookstore price.
41:33
I haven't seen this video by now, but i would like to recommend a book by David Rohl, "A Test of Time". In it he suggests that the end of the bronze age was not around 1200 BCE, but around 900 BCE, according to archeological discoveries in egypt. It works not only with biblical texts but i had a brief look at the history of Troy, and it seems to fit either, with two major events of destruction till the end of the bronze age. One might have been the "homeric" war (after wich Mycene still existed) and the other by the sea people (after wich Mycene were mostly gone). Then there wouldn't have been several hundreds of years of "dark ages" wich are still hard to explain.
Now i have seen the video i am stunned how false assumptions, misdatings and careless citations have blurred our view of history. And thats what David Rohl is stating too. Maybe it is about time to reconstruct the timeframe and see what happens, what coincidences might pop up. I also remember the books by Eberhard Zangger (i don't know whats available in english) about Troy, the eastern mediterranean and western Anatolia. He points out that there is much more to bronze age history that we might imagine.
Doc . . . Ditch the background! Lol.
This is interesting because, a while back, I stopped watching documentaries about the so-called Late Bronze Age Destruction: I had come to the conclusion that no such thing happened.
The Roman Empire wasn't destroyed. Just redistributed leadership.
I believe that is close to Goldsworthy's remark that the Empire was delegated out of existence
@@InvictaHistory Only teasing 😁 I love your videos. On the topic, one thing that I love about the Bronze Age Collapse is the mystery, there will be many more discoveries to unveil and help us piece together what actually happened and I guess that's the exciting part. I would love to see other alternate theories on what could have caused the bronze age collapse. From the remaining tablets from the period I feel despair and terror written in the words, as if their whole world is coming apart. I look forward to seeing if you have any more to share on the subject in future.