I'm stoked to have another channel putting out these historical videos. There's only so much information one historian, amateur or otherwise, can synthesize and internalize. So the more voices in the space the better.
We see the signs of them collapsing slightly later. For instance did the Indus script disappear around 1900 BCE and that is probably their intermediate period. They did have a comeback though and it took another 1000 years before they finally went extinct. So I don't think it was related.
This is absolutely great. I don't normally see videos of this quality from channels until they're in the mid-100,000s; I can't wait to see how this develops!
Sometimes channels come out of nowhere, fully baked and high quality, no period of slowly improving production value and research. This is definitely one of them. Continue with content like this and very quickly this channel will gain quite the following.
@dm55 I don't get your meaning, unless it was some kind of joke. I have loved learning about the Bronze Age Collapse & the various theories as to why it happened, since I was in middle school. This topic is practically a guaranteed watch, and my favorite videos go into a playlist for rewatching.
@@JimmyMatis-h9y all those things you mentioned were popular topics before internet , i was there so i know. Thats why you meet that much people interested and lot of paraphernalia collectors before internet was a thing.
I love the phrasing "it's not a collapse, it's just a post-urban period." Yeah uh, if we now entered a "post-urban period", I'm pretty sure we'd perceive that as one hell of a collapse.
Exactly. From my perspective (as an urban planner), cities or at least urbanized areas are the hallmark of civilization. A farming village is a little urbanized area and is the smallest, most rudimentary form of civilization. The bigger and more complex the city, the larger or more complex (typically both) the civilization that supports it is. Even if you retain agriculture and the same size population but the cities empty out, this a reduction in civilization because it is civilization that transmutes an agricultural surplus into other economic and cultural activity. A landscape entirely of farmers with no cities won't have scribes and scholars, warriors beyond militiamen, bureaucrats, trading centers, ports, great monuments etc. Sure, individual villages will interact and likely trade between each other, but that's still civilization, but a less complex, more diffuse, less intensive version of it. Therefore, a collapse.
Exactly, the collapse and decline of Rome in 300 AD to 500 AD was largely a post urban period. With cities in the West largely being depopulated and abandoned, and also in the east under the East Roman Empire we see a decline in Urban life. We all consider that a civilizational collapse so why wouldn't we consider this the same.
The moundbuilding cultures in North America went through pretty much the same thing, and there wasn't a mass die-off or anything that I am aware of, but everyone just moving out to live in smaller villages rather than large cities.
@slappy8941 let me put it this way: if you time-travelled to the year 2050 and the first thing you learned upon arrival was that all the big cities of the world have been deserted, you immediately know some major shit went down in the 25 years or so you missed and that civilization is basically over, even for the people who've been living in villages all along.
Excellent presentation. Clear and informed with enough sourcing to intellectually underpin it and enough appropriate illustration to keep it visually interesting and on point. The map background also keeps the viewer spatially positioned. I learnt a lot and have subscribed.
I have never made this connection before. Like, I knew about Egypt, and about the Hatti, AND about Summer. But I never made the connection that it was all happening at roughly the same time. Wild.
Interesting stuff. Small suggestion, don't punish people who watch until the end with a massive loud musical break. I almost broke my headphones ripping them off. You can use a compressor or normalize effect on the narration audio to bring it up to the same level of your music, or use clip gain (or your software's audio mixer) to lower the level of the end theme.
1:07 the paper says the total width of the fortification *system* was 40m. A 40m thick wall is insane; that would be thicker than the combined width of the Theodosian Walls.
@2:55 *The use of the word "pharaoh" to mean "king of Egypt" in that era is an anachronism.* It would finally came to mean just that, in the final dynasties, just before the Persian invasion. During the Old Kingdom, it was still taken essentially literally, and meant "great house" in reference to a palace or early temple. During the Middle Kingdom, it meant the physical, royal "great house" or "palace." During the New Kingdom it had taken on the wider meaning of "the [royal] government," much like we use "the White Houser" or "10 Downing Street." Only in that very late period did it come to mean "the king," which is why it is used that way in Greek and Roman texts, and in the Hebrew scriptures composed/edited around this time.
I remember reading about a large epidemic in Britain around this time as well. The builders of Stonehenge basically got wiped out and were replaced by a different material culture, possibly Indo-European speaking but possibly not.
Fascinating! So many questions remain open... in Greece I believe that the chaos can be related to the arrival of the Indoeuropean Greeks but they shouldn't have an impact anywhere else. Similarly if the chaos in Hatti was cause by the attacks of the Indoeuropean Anatolians (Hittites, Luwians, etc.) that should not be the case further south... I do wonder how this EBA collapse could be related to another EBA mystery in that region: the expansion of Western-derived dolmenic megalithism.
What if these groups turning up and causing trouble in turn caused people to move on, with the displacement and conflict rippling out. And/or some of the previously settled folk realising that invasion was a way to get ahead, and setting out to grab a slice for themselves.
@@williamchamberlain2263 - But the troubles are happening in all places, so the climatic underlying reason (megadrought) makes sense. The Greeks would be involved in the LBA collapse but they did not reach beyong Greece itself in the EBA collapse, the Berbers were involved in the LBA collapse but they were not in the EBA one, etc.
This is a very interesting topic. Considerably earlier in the “long” third millennium bc, Neolithic agriculture and sedentary settlement just fades away on mainland Britain. Most of the island abandoned wheat and mostly even barley agriculture. People became pastoralists, and supplemented it with a higher level of hunting and foraging too. Forests regrew for as much as a thousand years in parts. (Intriguingly, though, some corners like the Western Isles, may have kept going with crops. Less raidable by desperate landlocked neighbors? Or had crop varieties already slowly toughened up out in these exposed places? Or they had retained maritime lifeways to fall back on and didn’t need to eat the last of their seed? Or they were saved by the Gulf Stream?) Around the 2200 mark is actually when things start rebooting on Britain, when the Beaker culture and population starts getting established. Wheat agriculture didn’t pick up properly until they showed up. No-one seems really sure yet whether the Neolithic population of Britain held on long enough to get overrun by the Steppe-descended incomers in any large-scale way, or if they had already 90% fizzled out. (Because most of the small Neolithic element in modern Brits is also continental, part of the Beaker mixture.)
Is this part of the general late neolithic decline, which also takes place in eastern Europe? It is generally associated with the decline of "Old Europe" and then the swooping in of Indo-European speakers in the second and late third millennium BC.
This video is an absolute gem! I love learning more about the early history in Mesopotamia and the NE. I am surprised by the many terminologies for the historical period of that era. Is there any specific study or subject that regulate the naming of these terminologies? How do we distinguish them exactly? Thank you so much
I agree with @YonatanZunger, that there is real quality here, and in the description of the site they state their credentials and dedication to using good (not cheap or trivial) tools to provide content. Let more quality content be made. I would like to see a reference list posted at the end of videos, while, yes, there are citations in the midst of the description. There is a voice used to deliver a quotation that is not that of the main speaker, but rather than being a distraction it's a nice contrast to the ongoing narration. Also, graphics have a nice flow and rhythm. Thanks!
The climatology is a bit shaky. While something definitely happened 4.2 years ago, it is unlikely to have been related to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Such an event would have left clear evidence in Greenlandic ice cores. Greenland is after all right next to the northernmost atlantic where the AMOC is. Conversely the Nile floods are mostly goverened by the East African monsoon, and should have been mostly unaffected. The 4.2 kyr event also shows up in south east asia, which again would have been far down stream of the north atlantic.
I've definitely seen more papers recently that are skeptical of the 4.2 kyr event as being causal for the socio-political developments around this time but it's still the most commonly cited explanation in the archaeological literature. Definitely room for more archaeological research.
I expect only bright future for this channel, AT LEAST several hundred thousand subscribers. Excellent quality, can't believe I'm seeing the beginning of a great channel that I'll follow for sure.
This is really informative. New about the fall of Akkad but never really thought about Egypt or the other places in the area. Forget how vital weather and even small climatic change can affect empires. Definitely not really talked about thanks for making this video. Will be subscribing
Correction: 2:53 Map. There was never a town/city called Herakleopolis during the 9th & 10th Dynasties...but there was however a town/city called nn nswt, meaning Child of the King (Henen-Nesut or Hut-Nen-Nesut) in that very spot.
I picked up Tainter’s book on a whim a year ago, I’m a few chapters in reading some here and there. So it’s pretty crazy for me to see it referenced here
The 4.2ka event was marked by a major fall in lake levels and a change to drier forest types throughout eastern Africa, which accords with the decline in Nile flood levels.
Would have to look it up to be sure that the trade routes were established that early on - but the British isles was a hotspot for tin, which is much needed for the bronze of the Bronze Age. So at the very least, maybe some indirect contact between the EEF Neolithic Stonehenge builders and the middle Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean kingdoms through trade
Great informative video. Your narration voice is not easy to understand and maybe helped through AI augmenter to increase quality. Loved everything else. Much needed history of this era for more people. Thanx.
We are glad you enjoyed the video! Thank you for your feedback. We do care about sound quality and will take this into consideration for future videos. Stay tuned!
@@SchoolforHackers At times there's significant mumbling and swallowing of syllables going on. Better enunciaction would be a big boon. That doesn't mean that the whole voiceover is unintelligble, but there's enough words that are garbled here and there. I shudder to think what it would be like listening to this as a non-native speaker. Just re-recording those few sentences where words got garbled would go a long way, although I do think that better enunciation and intonation across the board would be something to practice and strive for.
Heya, I enjoyed the video, liked it, considering subscribing, like how you state you don’t use ai for the info. But I am a bit confused as to why your shorts are indistinguishable to ai slop, especially as the video is high quality and gives zero hints of it.
Glad you enjoyed the long form video! The shorts were an experiment 10 months ago. We were not thrilled with them either and decided not to continue making them. Thanks for your feedback.
I appreciated, the Toto reference, those Egyptians definitely missed the rains down in Africa. So should we expect another collapse about 4.2 kiloyears after 2200 B.C., which would be roughly, errrr, last Tuesday?
I do have to wonder if the discussion of ma'at was due to a lacking of it in the first intermediate period, or if that's what caused the first intermediate period. It's possible that the collapse was because of decadence and a failure to properly perform the ritualistic uses of ma'at. Then the dynastys that came out of it are seen as lesser than because of their non-royal origins after the people needed a new group to bring ma'at.
Excellent video, subscribed. One question: if we assume that some natural events are often ascribed to mythical forces, such as gods, are there any references to the gods/myth from this time period that can be interpreted to describe natural events? I think it's might be a worthwhile thread to follow.
That's a great question. I'm working on something that is related to this right now, but I'll have to do some digging into this and see if I can incorporate it.
How the heck did u manage to get so lucky in 8 days? U had to have deleted videos or something. Look. All I'm saying is, I'm glad I stumbled upon your page today. I really enjoy your content/style
A recent massive study of horse DNA in Nature ('The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes') has identified a sudden homogenisation of horse populations spreading out from the Eurasian steppe, potentially indicating the initial development and spread of horse riding (supplanted fairly swiftly by chariotry). _Guess when it seems to have happened._
3:22 This original papyrus manuscript was missing the initial section of the work, beginning in the middle of the man's monologue. In 2017 Papyrus Mallorca II was identified as belonging to Berlin papyrus 3024. This new addition to the text is an introduction of the characters in third person which was common to literature of the time. The introduction identifies the primary speaker of the text as "the sick man" and a woman named Ankhet who is now thought to be an audience for the debate that would follow.
"A discussion between a man and his Ba" - first published in 2024 A.D. Macabre humor aside, it indeed sounds like a region wide, very prolonged drought. Scarcity causes breakup of large population and scattering as smaller and smaller populations can be maintained on the same land. Scattering also helps to reduce conflict over those resources. The simpler nature of construction indicates less permanent settlement, a sign that no area could long sustain a population and that migration was necessary. Very much sounds like drought.
I may be a cynic, and I may well be projecting current socio-political trends onto historical times, but it sounds very much to me like 'The Survival of the Richest'. Even back in the Bronze Age, where there was no coinage or money as we know it, there was wealth. And there was Kingship and aristocracy. There has always been the tendency within the human race to acquire more and more wealth (and therefore power over others) without end. Kingdoms and Empires which started off with relatively modest levels of wealth inequality would soon have fallen prey to the avarice of the richest in society (the aristocracy). Those Kingdoms would then suffer from an ever increasing disparity between the wealthy and the poor - just as we see in todays world. The rich would get ever richer, and the poor would be increasingly destitute until they had absolutely nothing, and trade ceased as a result. Then the entire Kingdom would collapse, and the palace centres with their incumbent aristocracies would be burned and looted, just as we see in the archaeological record on many occasions. And as the aristocracy required interbreeding from those of similar social status, they would regularly interbreed with other aristocrats from different, neighbouring Kingdoms and Empires. It was only they who had the wealth and means to be able to do this. Therefore the aristocracies formed an 'international elite' where the upper strata of society was all related across entire regions of the globe, encompassing many different states. Thus the wealth inequality would be like a virus, spreading across all the states in that region, and those states would, largely, fall during the popular uprisings which sprang from the inequality. Hence (I believe) the region-wide collapses of the Bronze Age. I hope we are not facing that same end.
You’re trying to push a modern Marxist ideology in the Bronze Age as though they were an industrial world with bourgeoisie and proletariat in a class struggle. You’re totally wrong, wealth wasn’t accumulated in any way that could result in such gaps between the rich and the poor because there was no capitalist system in place to produce it.
That’s why Capitalism is a death cult and the crypto aristocracy in power right mean “our democracy” when you hear them remark upon democracy, they mean any threat against their power.
I think this one gets less focus because we have no Homeric tale about it, much less writing from the time about it, and it doesn't tie into the Bible like the late Bronze Age collapse
An alternative title might have been how climate shift destroyed the civilizations of the bronze age. It would be interesting to see if any of the copper mine at Isle Royale in Lake Superior made its way to this area. To this day we have no idea where it went. There have been carvings found around the great lakes shorelines clearly showing older sailing vessels.
Correction, I think, to the reading 11:51 - "Who was king - who was NOT king?" was how I remember this line. It's a famous line that gets quoted a lot. Although maybe it was wrong like the attribution of that Akkadian mask.
That section of the King List has some notable variants so that may very well be. Same with the "Mask of Sargon" - some think it depicts Sargon but others make a case that it is meant to depict someone else. It's such an interesting period with a lot still to sort out! Thanks for your comment!
man it is worrying to realise both bronze age collapses, and the chaotic transition of late anqituity, and the late middle ages, and many dynastic changes in china, and etc. etc. etc. were all strony driven by rapid climate change. im sure this wealth if data is totally not a warning for us right now :||
the reason it probably isn't as well known as the Bronze Age collapse is because there have been many collapses of empires throughout history. the Bronze Age collapse is interesting because it is not only a collapse of the entire Mediterranean world but of the entire structure of society. It directly coincides with the start of the Iron Age. so while this is an interesting look at a widespread collapse of empire, it is not quite the same as THE Bronze Age collapse. as an aside, i think it is pretty clear that (among other factors) the widespread use of iron allowed lower classes to upend society with much easier access to weapons. bronze was incredibly scarce comparatively, and in fact the entire Mediterranean trade routes throughout the Bronze Age that gave us the first truly interconnected world relied extremely heavily on the acquisition and trade of scarce tin and copper. even without any help from the lower class wanting to up end society, it is likely that this switch to iron collapsed trade routes, bringing about the end of the world as most knew it at the time.
A great survey of archaeological evidence, climate data and sparse historical records. What does the ancient DNA say about population movements in this time?
It's thought that the story of Moses' exodus, Homer's Illiad etc were inspired by episodes of Bronze age collapse. I wonder if intermediate age Bronze age collapse inspired something similar. Epic of Gilgamesh?
Epic of Gilgamesh is older and the first pieces of it are from the Neo-Sumerian period, although they center more on his father Lugalbanda and the first king of Uruk, Enmerkara. Its part of the reestablishment of "Sumerian culture" after the Akkadian period.
Some evidence (shocked quartz in sediments from the region and high concentration of Iridium) suggests that (maybe) a meteor impact or atmospheric explosion may have occurred near the northeastern region of the Akkadian Empire (around present-day Iran or Iraq), which may have contributed to its collapse.
02:52 _"Multiple dynasties of Pharaohs claimed control over upper and lower Egypt, but none was able to actually exert control over the United Kingdom"_ Not yet, but once the time machine is complete we will have doned* it (past-er tense of done when time travel was used to do it) TL:DR Scotland is just Very Northern Egypt
That's odd everyone talks about this at the parties I go to.
Where are those parties? I need a invitation
@@HD-mp6yy Same. So few people I know have any idea or interest about this age of history.
You find the best parties, I see
Nice but I really prefer a bit EB II atm?
Can I come to those parties?
I'm stoked to have another channel putting out these historical videos. There's only so much information one historian, amateur or otherwise, can synthesize and internalize. So the more voices in the space the better.
We agree! Our aim is to produce videos using the knowledge and expertise of our own PhD's and collaborate with PhD experts in other fields.
The Indus Valley Civilisation also disappeared around that time.
They dont care about the Indus Valley Civilization it doesnt fit into their narrative.
Their declined began around that time but they only disappeared like 900bce
No about 1900-1700 BCE
Not at all.
We see the signs of them collapsing slightly later. For instance did the Indus script disappear around 1900 BCE and that is probably their intermediate period.
They did have a comeback though and it took another 1000 years before they finally went extinct. So I don't think it was related.
This is absolutely great. I don't normally see videos of this quality from channels until they're in the mid-100,000s; I can't wait to see how this develops!
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it. We are excited about our upcoming videos! Stay tuned!
I've recently seen plenty pre 100k sub channels with excellent quality, some rather new.
Sometimes channels come out of nowhere, fully baked and high quality, no period of slowly improving production value and research. This is definitely one of them.
Continue with content like this and very quickly this channel will gain quite the following.
If you keep making Bronze Age videos, I see a bright future for you on RUclips!
This is sarcasm right?
@@dm55huh? why would it be?
@dm55 I don't get your meaning, unless it was some kind of joke.
I have loved learning about the Bronze Age Collapse & the various theories as to why it happened, since I was in middle school. This topic is practically a guaranteed watch, and my favorite videos go into a playlist for rewatching.
I agree tho I don't understand why WW2/Nazis, history and conspiracies are such popular topics on yt
@@JimmyMatis-h9y all those things you mentioned were popular topics before internet , i was there so i know. Thats why you meet that much people interested and lot of paraphernalia collectors before internet was a thing.
I love the phrasing "it's not a collapse, it's just a post-urban period." Yeah uh, if we now entered a "post-urban period", I'm pretty sure we'd perceive that as one hell of a collapse.
Exactly. From my perspective (as an urban planner), cities or at least urbanized areas are the hallmark of civilization. A farming village is a little urbanized area and is the smallest, most rudimentary form of civilization. The bigger and more complex the city, the larger or more complex (typically both) the civilization that supports it is. Even if you retain agriculture and the same size population but the cities empty out, this a reduction in civilization because it is civilization that transmutes an agricultural surplus into other economic and cultural activity. A landscape entirely of farmers with no cities won't have scribes and scholars, warriors beyond militiamen, bureaucrats, trading centers, ports, great monuments etc. Sure, individual villages will interact and likely trade between each other, but that's still civilization, but a less complex, more diffuse, less intensive version of it. Therefore, a collapse.
Exactly, the collapse and decline of Rome in 300 AD to 500 AD was largely a post urban period. With cities in the West largely being depopulated and abandoned, and also in the east under the East Roman Empire we see a decline in Urban life. We all consider that a civilizational collapse so why wouldn't we consider this the same.
The moundbuilding cultures in North America went through pretty much the same thing, and there wasn't a mass die-off or anything that I am aware of, but everyone just moving out to live in smaller villages rather than large cities.
@slappy8941 let me put it this way: if you time-travelled to the year 2050 and the first thing you learned upon arrival was that all the big cities of the world have been deserted, you immediately know some major shit went down in the 25 years or so you missed and that civilization is basically over, even for the people who've been living in villages all along.
Excellent presentation. Clear and informed with enough sourcing to intellectually underpin it and enough appropriate illustration to keep it visually interesting and on point. The map background also keeps the viewer spatially positioned. I learnt a lot and have subscribed.
Thanks for the feedback! Glad it was helpful!
I also found it engaging when you quoted from original documents
Very coherent, and focused, too. No Red Bull-driven dash through the presentation with "distracting squirrel moments".
Yes, I subscribed as well.
Finally a channel that realises there almost 3000 years of history prior to 1200 BC...
Try the channel, OSP. The history guy in there, Blue, also have a few videos about the earliest of civilizations
Guess what… add many thousands more
theres even more before that! wow!
Even more than that if we go back to, say, Gobekli Tepe, the Natufians, etc.
@@SyndicShadow Isn't history it's prehistory buddy
wow very early youtube channel, im happy i found it! gonna absolutely share this with my peers and friends, please keep up the great work!
Thank you! We appreciate the support!
I have never made this connection before. Like, I knew about Egypt, and about the Hatti, AND about Summer. But I never made the connection that it was all happening at roughly the same time.
Wild.
It's such a fascinating time period and there's more we had to cut for time! Thanks for your comment!
@@dig.archaeology Sounds like a second video as good as this one is needed 😀
Excellent presentation of an underrepresented period of history.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it
New history is made everyday, nothing is set in stone, there nothing wrong in re learning controlled history ( his- story)
Interesting stuff.
Small suggestion, don't punish people who watch until the end with a massive loud musical break. I almost broke my headphones ripping them off.
You can use a compressor or normalize effect on the narration audio to bring it up to the same level of your music, or use clip gain (or your software's audio mixer) to lower the level of the end theme.
Thanks for the warning
Thank you for the nice overview--would you be able/willing to include your academic sources in the description above the transcript?
I just added some of the works cited to the description. I totally forgot to add them! I'll add more - thanks for comment!
@@dig.archaeology that helps a lot, thank you.
1:07 the paper says the total width of the fortification *system* was 40m. A 40m thick wall is insane; that would be thicker than the combined width of the Theodosian Walls.
Good catch thanks!
Moar of this heavily researched Bronze Age content please-this is the sort of thing I miss and love to see revived
We are glad you enjoyed it! We are working on more content. Please stay tuned!
@2:55 *The use of the word "pharaoh" to mean "king of Egypt" in that era is an anachronism.* It would finally came to mean just that, in the final dynasties, just before the Persian invasion. During the Old Kingdom, it was still taken essentially literally, and meant "great house" in reference to a palace or early temple. During the Middle Kingdom, it meant the physical, royal "great house" or "palace." During the New Kingdom it had taken on the wider meaning of "the [royal] government," much like we use "the White Houser" or "10 Downing Street." Only in that very late period did it come to mean "the king," which is why it is used that way in Greek and Roman texts, and in the Hebrew scriptures composed/edited around this time.
Siper interesting! I hope you'll make a video where you broaden the scope East to Elam, Transoxiana, and the Indus valley!
Great video. Just the facts and a little scholarly analysis. No pseudo bs! Instant follow.
Finally someone on RUclips is talking the first Bronze Age collapse.
The location of Troy had a wall larger and grander in 2200 than that which existed during the Trojan war around a thousand years later.
Incredible video! Thank you for going into the culture and lives of people in this topic more than mere political history!
I remember reading about a large epidemic in Britain around this time as well. The builders of Stonehenge basically got wiped out and were replaced by a different material culture, possibly Indo-European speaking but possibly not.
The poem would fittingly describe modern times.
Fascinating! So many questions remain open... in Greece I believe that the chaos can be related to the arrival of the Indoeuropean Greeks but they shouldn't have an impact anywhere else. Similarly if the chaos in Hatti was cause by the attacks of the Indoeuropean Anatolians (Hittites, Luwians, etc.) that should not be the case further south...
I do wonder how this EBA collapse could be related to another EBA mystery in that region: the expansion of Western-derived dolmenic megalithism.
Great points! Definitely room for a lot more research.
What if these groups turning up and causing trouble in turn caused people to move on, with the displacement and conflict rippling out. And/or some of the previously settled folk realising that invasion was a way to get ahead, and setting out to grab a slice for themselves.
@@williamchamberlain2263 - But the troubles are happening in all places, so the climatic underlying reason (megadrought) makes sense. The Greeks would be involved in the LBA collapse but they did not reach beyong Greece itself in the EBA collapse, the Berbers were involved in the LBA collapse but they were not in the EBA one, etc.
@@dig.archaeologyso ummm with what’s happening to the west
Are we heading for a collapse
Great video. Definitely subbed. Looking forward to more
It's always nice to find a good channel before they blow up. It's been a while.
Well done sir!
15:52 Did you hide a small reference of TOTO there?
Super cool new channel, interested to see what else you upload.
This is a very interesting topic. Considerably earlier in the “long” third millennium bc, Neolithic agriculture and sedentary settlement just fades away on mainland Britain. Most of the island abandoned wheat and mostly even barley agriculture. People became pastoralists, and supplemented it with a higher level of hunting and foraging too. Forests regrew for as much as a thousand years in parts.
(Intriguingly, though, some corners like the Western Isles, may have kept going with crops. Less raidable by desperate landlocked neighbors? Or had crop varieties already slowly toughened up out in these exposed places? Or they had retained maritime lifeways to fall back on and didn’t need to eat the last of their seed? Or they were saved by the Gulf Stream?)
Around the 2200 mark is actually when things start rebooting on Britain, when the Beaker culture and population starts getting established. Wheat agriculture didn’t pick up properly until they showed up.
No-one seems really sure yet whether the Neolithic population of Britain held on long enough to get overrun by the Steppe-descended incomers in any large-scale way, or if they had already 90% fizzled out. (Because most of the small Neolithic element in modern Brits is also continental, part of the Beaker mixture.)
Is this part of the general late neolithic decline, which also takes place in eastern Europe? It is generally associated with the decline of "Old Europe" and then the swooping in of Indo-European speakers in the second and late third millennium BC.
Fascinating topic
This video is an absolute gem!
I love learning more about the early history in Mesopotamia and the NE. I am surprised by the many terminologies for the historical period of that era. Is there any specific study or subject that regulate the naming of these terminologies? How do we distinguish them exactly? Thank you so much
I agree with @YonatanZunger, that there is real quality here, and in the description of the site they state their credentials and dedication to using good (not cheap or trivial) tools to provide content.
Let more quality content be made. I would like to see a reference list posted at the end of videos, while, yes, there are citations in the midst of the description.
There is a voice used to deliver a quotation that is not that of the main speaker, but rather than being a distraction it's a nice contrast to the ongoing narration.
Also, graphics have a nice flow and rhythm.
Thanks!
This video deserves a bronze 🥉
Hope to see more bronze age stuff from this channel
Glad you enjoyed our bronze age videos! We do plan to have more!
Interesting video, subbed!
I like your narative. Thanks for putting this together.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Always nice to see more archaeology content
Thank you!
The climatology is a bit shaky. While something definitely happened 4.2 years ago, it is unlikely to have been related to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Such an event would have left clear evidence in Greenlandic ice cores. Greenland is after all right next to the northernmost atlantic where the AMOC is. Conversely the Nile floods are mostly goverened by the East African monsoon, and should have been mostly unaffected. The 4.2 kyr event also shows up in south east asia, which again would have been far down stream of the north atlantic.
I've definitely seen more papers recently that are skeptical of the 4.2 kyr event as being causal for the socio-political developments around this time but it's still the most commonly cited explanation in the archaeological literature. Definitely room for more archaeological research.
Glad to have found you. Keep it up.
Thank you! We appreciate your support!
Subbed, this channel is great; please keep going bro!
I expect only bright future for this channel, AT LEAST several hundred thousand subscribers. Excellent quality, can't believe I'm seeing the beginning of a great channel that I'll follow for sure.
This is really informative. New about the fall of Akkad but never really thought about Egypt or the other places in the area. Forget how vital weather and even small climatic change can affect empires. Definitely not really talked about thanks for making this video. Will be subscribing
Thank you! We are glad it was helpful!
Fascinating.
Correction: 2:53 Map. There was never a town/city called Herakleopolis during the 9th & 10th Dynasties...but there was however a town/city called nn nswt, meaning Child of the King (Henen-Nesut or Hut-Nen-Nesut) in that very spot.
Excellent video. Concise and well put together. Keen to see your future videos.
Thank you! We are excited as well!
Makes sense why my forefathers migrated now before the more common Bronze Age age
I picked up Tainter’s book on a whim a year ago, I’m a few chapters in reading some here and there. So it’s pretty crazy for me to see it referenced here
The 4.2ka event was marked by a major fall in lake levels and a change to drier forest types throughout eastern Africa, which accords with the decline in Nile flood levels.
Stonehenge was built through this period but without any written record. Was there interaction with the Levant that we know of?
Would have to look it up to be sure that the trade routes were established that early on - but the British isles was a hotspot for tin, which is much needed for the bronze of the Bronze Age. So at the very least, maybe some indirect contact between the EEF Neolithic Stonehenge builders and the middle Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean kingdoms through trade
Great informative video. Your narration voice is not easy to understand and maybe helped through AI augmenter to increase quality. Loved everything else. Much needed history of this era for more people. Thanx.
Interesting. I find his enunciation clear, his word separation distinct, and his volume reasonable.
@ when other narrators spoke in video clarity was improved for my ear.
We are glad you enjoyed the video! Thank you for your feedback. We do care about sound quality and will take this into consideration for future videos. Stay tuned!
@@SchoolforHackers At times there's significant mumbling and swallowing of syllables going on. Better enunciaction would be a big boon. That doesn't mean that the whole voiceover is unintelligble, but there's enough words that are garbled here and there. I shudder to think what it would be like listening to this as a non-native speaker. Just re-recording those few sentences where words got garbled would go a long way, although I do think that better enunciation and intonation across the board would be something to practice and strive for.
Nice video 👍
Great content
Thank you!
And I subscribed
Nice video, recently i studied a lot about 1200 BC bronze age collapse, and have no idea about this. And hopefully i'm 1000 of your sub.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the sub!
Heya, I enjoyed the video, liked it, considering subscribing, like how you state you don’t use ai for the info.
But I am a bit confused as to why your shorts are indistinguishable to ai slop, especially as the video is high quality and gives zero hints of it.
Glad you enjoyed the long form video! The shorts were an experiment 10 months ago. We were not thrilled with them either and decided not to continue making them. Thanks for your feedback.
I appreciated, the Toto reference, those Egyptians definitely missed the rains down in Africa. So should we expect another collapse about 4.2 kiloyears after 2200 B.C., which would be roughly, errrr, last Tuesday?
Nice video, I like it.
Ps. That's the wrong context to use the word "pious", as I understand it.
Great job.
I love your animated presentation and your intro for dig, its so cool. How do you do it? 😍
Thank you! We are very pleased with it.
Curious how those in the future will speak on documentries of this current age of information..
Hopefully nothing like "Little did they know..."
Keep this up and you'll be a household name in 2 years
Thanks! We appreciate your encouragement!
Wow. That is exactly how I feel right now.
I do have to wonder if the discussion of ma'at was due to a lacking of it in the first intermediate period, or if that's what caused the first intermediate period. It's possible that the collapse was because of decadence and a failure to properly perform the ritualistic uses of ma'at. Then the dynastys that came out of it are seen as lesser than because of their non-royal origins after the people needed a new group to bring ma'at.
Excellent video, subscribed. One question: if we assume that some natural events are often ascribed to mythical forces, such as gods, are there any references to the gods/myth from this time period that can be interpreted to describe natural events? I think it's might be a worthwhile thread to follow.
That's a great question. I'm working on something that is related to this right now, but I'll have to do some digging into this and see if I can incorporate it.
My Bronze Age knowledge is getting thicc
good video man new subscriber here
can you make a tutorial how to make this videos?
How the heck did u manage to get so lucky in 8 days? U had to have deleted videos or something.
Look. All I'm saying is, I'm glad I stumbled upon your page today.
I really enjoy your content/style
To be honest, we don't really know. But we are excited. Glad you enjoyed the channel.
Please dial back the volume of the music at the end.
Overall, an interesting video.
Thank you for your feedback. We care about sound quality and will be working to improve.
How many Pharaoh's were found inside a pyramid?
How many hieroglyphics were found in same pyramids?
Prescient to have watched this the day after the American election
A recent massive study of horse DNA in Nature ('The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes') has identified a sudden homogenisation of horse populations spreading out from the Eurasian steppe, potentially indicating the initial development and spread of horse riding (supplanted fairly swiftly by chariotry). _Guess when it seems to have happened._
3:22 This original papyrus manuscript was missing the initial section of the work, beginning in the middle of the man's monologue.
In 2017 Papyrus Mallorca II was identified as belonging to Berlin papyrus 3024.
This new addition to the text is an introduction of the characters in third person which was common to literature of the time.
The introduction identifies the primary speaker of the text as "the sick man" and a woman named Ankhet who is now thought to be an audience for the debate that would follow.
Nice video
Thank you!
Great!
You forgot about Elam what happened to them during the first collapse?
"A discussion between a man and his Ba" - first published in 2024 A.D.
Macabre humor aside, it indeed sounds like a region wide, very prolonged drought. Scarcity causes breakup of large population and scattering as smaller and smaller populations can be maintained on the same land. Scattering also helps to reduce conflict over those resources. The simpler nature of construction indicates less permanent settlement, a sign that no area could long sustain a population and that migration was necessary.
Very much sounds like drought.
Maybe because they are trying to repeat it...
This is a very actual warning.
I may be a cynic, and I may well be projecting current socio-political trends onto historical times, but it sounds very much to me like 'The Survival of the Richest'. Even back in the Bronze Age, where there was no coinage or money as we know it, there was wealth. And there was Kingship and aristocracy. There has always been the tendency within the human race to acquire more and more wealth (and therefore power over others) without end. Kingdoms and Empires which started off with relatively modest levels of wealth inequality would soon have fallen prey to the avarice of the richest in society (the aristocracy). Those Kingdoms would then suffer from an ever increasing disparity between the wealthy and the poor - just as we see in todays world. The rich would get ever richer, and the poor would be increasingly destitute until they had absolutely nothing, and trade ceased as a result. Then the entire Kingdom would collapse, and the palace centres with their incumbent aristocracies would be burned and looted, just as we see in the archaeological record on many occasions. And as the aristocracy required interbreeding from those of similar social status, they would regularly interbreed with other aristocrats from different, neighbouring Kingdoms and Empires. It was only they who had the wealth and means to be able to do this. Therefore the aristocracies formed an 'international elite' where the upper strata of society was all related across entire regions of the globe, encompassing many different states. Thus the wealth inequality would be like a virus, spreading across all the states in that region, and those states would, largely, fall during the popular uprisings which sprang from the inequality. Hence (I believe) the region-wide collapses of the Bronze Age. I hope we are not facing that same end.
@mdf3006 i wish i had your positive outlook. But i see no evidence. 2020 and the coof was the greatest rug pull of all time.
You’re trying to push a modern Marxist ideology in the Bronze Age as though they were an industrial world with bourgeoisie and proletariat in a class struggle. You’re totally wrong, wealth wasn’t accumulated in any way that could result in such gaps between the rich and the poor because there was no capitalist system in place to produce it.
That’s why Capitalism is a death cult and the crypto aristocracy in power right mean “our democracy” when you hear them remark upon democracy, they mean any threat against their power.
We are. Communist revolution came to the East and are coming to the West now.
Love your st ligature!
very interesting
Please please make long videos
We are working on more! Stay tuned!
I think this one gets less focus because we have no Homeric tale about it, much less writing from the time about it, and it doesn't tie into the Bible like the late Bronze Age collapse
An alternative title might have been how climate shift destroyed the civilizations of the bronze age. It would be interesting to see if any of the copper mine at Isle Royale in Lake Superior made its way to this area. To this day we have no idea where it went. There have been carvings found around the great lakes shorelines clearly showing older sailing vessels.
3:40 maybe a better analogy would be guardian angel, or his genius?
Yeah, great analogy!
The demise of the Akkdian empire
WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE WERE TWO OF THESE!?!?
@11:00, did creteans "not suffer" bc these caused "the suffering?"
Correction, I think, to the reading 11:51 - "Who was king - who was NOT king?" was how I remember this line. It's a famous line that gets quoted a lot.
Although maybe it was wrong like the attribution of that Akkadian mask.
That section of the King List has some notable variants so that may very well be. Same with the "Mask of Sargon" - some think it depicts Sargon but others make a case that it is meant to depict someone else. It's such an interesting period with a lot still to sort out! Thanks for your comment!
man it is worrying to realise both bronze age collapses, and the chaotic transition of late anqituity, and the late middle ages, and many dynastic changes in china, and etc. etc. etc. were all strony driven by rapid climate change. im sure this wealth if data is totally not a warning for us right now :||
Collapse or societal stagnation - such as we see today?
the reason it probably isn't as well known as the Bronze Age collapse is because there have been many collapses of empires throughout history. the Bronze Age collapse is interesting because it is not only a collapse of the entire Mediterranean world but of the entire structure of society. It directly coincides with the start of the Iron Age. so while this is an interesting look at a widespread collapse of empire, it is not quite the same as THE Bronze Age collapse.
as an aside, i think it is pretty clear that (among other factors) the widespread use of iron allowed lower classes to upend society with much easier access to weapons. bronze was incredibly scarce comparatively, and in fact the entire Mediterranean trade routes throughout the Bronze Age that gave us the first truly interconnected world relied extremely heavily on the acquisition and trade of scarce tin and copper. even without any help from the lower class wanting to up end society, it is likely that this switch to iron collapsed trade routes, bringing about the end of the world as most knew it at the time.
This could happen to us too 😢
A great survey of archaeological evidence, climate data and sparse historical records. What does the ancient DNA say about population movements in this time?
It's thought that the story of Moses' exodus, Homer's Illiad etc were inspired by episodes of Bronze age collapse. I wonder if intermediate age Bronze age collapse inspired something similar. Epic of Gilgamesh?
Epic of Gilgamesh is older and the first pieces of it are from the Neo-Sumerian period, although they center more on his father Lugalbanda and the first king of Uruk, Enmerkara. Its part of the reestablishment of "Sumerian culture" after the Akkadian period.
@@Flozone1All except Gilgamesh are actually Uruk Period Kings.
Some evidence (shocked quartz in sediments from the region and high concentration of Iridium) suggests that (maybe) a meteor impact or atmospheric explosion may have occurred near the northeastern region of the Akkadian Empire (around present-day Iran or Iraq), which may have contributed to its collapse.
every time i see, the Egyptian empire is only around the nile valley i immediately dislike...
02:52 _"Multiple dynasties of Pharaohs claimed control over upper and lower Egypt, but none was able to actually exert control over the United Kingdom"_
Not yet, but once the time machine is complete we will have doned* it (past-er tense of done when time travel was used to do it) TL:DR Scotland is just Very Northern Egypt