Was Troy Destroyed by the Sea People? A Short Look at an Intriguing Hypothesis
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- Опубликовано: 14 апр 2024
- SOURCES:
The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction, Cline
1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed, Cline
The 'Mycenaean' Sword at Hattusas and its Possible Implications, Cline
The Trojans & their Neighbors, Bryce
The Odyssey, the journey's of Odysseus after the Trojan War, does seem like it might be an imperfect telling of the story of one band of Sea People.
It could equally be the story of an absentee king, who spent his time warring and raiding far from home, and returned to find his kingdom usurped in what we know as the collapse of the palatial system. In this case the Trojan War would predate the Sea People, with the Odyssey ending just before, or during the time of, the Sea People.
@@Dennis-vh8tz Or a mashup of events or people. Being told later, the timeline is not relevant.
Odysseus starts out as a king who refuses the call to arms. He pretends to be insane, sowing the land with salt until his baby son is put in the path of his plow. So an island king was content where he was until famine struck his land. It is so bad even his family is in danger, leading him to turn to a life of raiding and war - including the sacking of cities. That city or cities aren't necessarily Troy, changing it to Troy just punches up the story for later audiences.
This is the Odysseus of the Iliad - reluctant to go to war, a grudging participant driven by circumstance.
The Odyssey could itself be a mashup of many different raiding groups with the ending tacked on. Or the end is really about a raider king coming home to deal with local politics again.
@@Dennis-vh8tz I would like to add this: Herodotos mentions how the persians in the greco-persian wars invaded anatolia and the greeks claiming the ancient war against troy, was an attack on "their people", as casus belli. How this conflict is centuries old. With anatolia being the battleground between these two cultures. I believe it's in his accounts of Cyrus the great or something. But Its so long Im probably mixing everything up. So what if this "sea people invasion" is actually just this gigantic greek army going along the coast lines and raiding the percieved lands of the troyans and their allies? Or its after the armies were broken up and bands of greeks gather to go plunder after defeating the troyans and its allied armies. Only egypt managed to defeat them, because they did not take part in said war, and had kept their strength. Or what if the tale of the war against troy is just the tale of ONE of the major fronts in this massive war.
Well, my theory is probably full of holes. Cheers.
I've always felt that the Odyssey was a compilation of the stories of the sea people and their travels.
@@cognitivedisability9864
If I recall, various depictions of the Trojan War also indicate the Greeks raiding other lands throughout Anatolia and the Levant, once even accidentally landing near Tyre.
There's a lot of focus about the Iliad, but I feel it's worth mention that in Greek mythology troy was sacked twice; once by the coalition of Agamemnon, but also about a century before by herakles. The fact that there are two burn layers always seemed like a neat corroboration of that
@@Dr.Yalex. your mama is right smack in the middle of 1170 lbs on the scale
It's not just the Iliad but the Epic Cycle. There was more Trojan wars than just the two you mention.
@@koboldgeorge2140 That's uncalled for, apologize. This is an academic discussion and if you speak like this, it only makes you look like you use insults because you're not knowledgeable enough to debate. So take my advice...
There were two sea people events documented but it was more like a 1second0 year process for f the collapse of civilization. It wasn't just one thing that caused A dark age. The big sea people event was more like 1195 BC to 1190 BC because the battle with Ramses III was 1185BC, where he settled the Peleset in Gaza, the Philistines, who were Mycenaean Greeks from Caphtor or Crete. The name of the Minoans might have been Kapadhari, which in Sanskrit means Clothes people or craft people. Keftiu was the Egyptian name. However, the so called Minoans were defeated in 1450 BC the same time as the Assuwa rebellion, 200 years before the Trojan War of 1250 bc but this was a war with Ahhiyawa, Mycenaean Greeks vs Luwians and Hitties or the Greeks were involved in a Hittite civil war and the politics of the alliances were way more complex than we could imagine. I don't believe the Sea Peoples were their own group but rather mercenaries on all sides of this conflict. A guy named Piyamaradu may have inspired the mercenaries to become his independent and perhaps his son later was involved in organizing two huge slave revolts in 1209 bc and then a second successful revolt 15 years later. We know in the Iliad that while Kings were away at war, usurpers at home mismanaged their kingdoms. If drought, famine and earthquake storms occurred with plague, this is why civilization collapsed and there was widespread destruction and migration.
The first Sea people event was 1209 BC when Exodus too place which was probably a Canaanite revolt. In Exodus 2:23 it literally talks about a Pharaoh with a long reign and his death. The revolt failed in the end but it started the ball rolling towards Egyptian power decline in the Levant. The mistake many people make about this time period is the 12 tribes were a confederation of Canaanites who were sick of Egyptian tyranny, and not all proto Hebrews were enslaved, some still lived for n the Levant, thus making Merneptah's stele sound more plausible. This is why Merneptah mentions Israel in the group of tribes he subdued and why he would want to save face after losing a major battle resulting in mass exodus of Canadanite slaves. If there was an incursion against Egypt to free slaves and Egypt retaliated, those who escaped, moving south into the Sinai to avoid reprisal makes sense. If you remove the supernatural stuff in exodus and focus on this time period pragmatically, like the story of the Trojan horse as metaphor for Earthquake, it makes more sense that Exodus is a metaphor for a revolt. There also might have been a coordinated revolt against the Hittites, which did happen repeatedly.
I think you should check out the book THE BIBLE UNEARTHED BY ISRAEL FINKLESTEIN. I also bought the audio book. Try "reclaiming your time" by listening to books while you do other things like drive, cook, clean and work, if you can. I was able to finished 75 kindle books using Alexa and Audible plus 5 others using Ereader Prestigo and Google AI text to speech and I also listened to over 10 courses via Audible. If you're broke try using Zlibrary or Libgen for free books but I try to buy as many as I can. The Bible Unearthed is on Kindle unlimited. It's always important to read both Biblical minimalist and Maximalist views. As a conservative Jew, my sect mostly understands the Bible was written during Josiah's reformation and there's major issues with the historicity of the Tanakh.
The book 1177 BC revised edition is important to read as well. I have both editions and audio books . I listened to Archaeology and the Iliad 30+ times, 1177 BC OVER 10 and the Bible Unearthed twice. Ereader Prestigo's text to speech only works on Tablets. My Kindle Fire 10 is a good cheap tablet. You can pick one up refurbished but make sure it has an sd card port. If you take my advice then, these 2 books and audio course will help you. Nancy K Sandars book The Sea Peoples is good but I have a list of additional books to read. Trevor Bryce is another author to check out. Z library's recommendation lists that appear when you click on a book listing helped me more than reading bibliographies because it tells you what other people also downloaded.
Do yourself A favor and stop insulting people when you debate. It's how I know you're not as well read as you should be. There's a brand new book out today by Professor Cline about the aftermath after the late bronze age collapse. There's also an illustrated version of 1177 bc due out now too. These 3 books are just the start so if you can't concentrate to absorb the material, you'll continue to look ignorant.
Many problems with that. Nice try. It doesn't corroborate anything. Also, Troy was sacked by locals, not Achaeans earlier.
@@zaco-km3su Again, there was more than one battle of Troy. Troy was probably sacked by Greeks in 1250 BC, but once society began to break down after the Returns, it was probably chaos, but Hattusa was sacked by locals like the kaska, not Troy. Troy was probably overrun by people migrating down into the Balkans from the Danube region which is Ukraine, when crops failed multiple years but this was a process, not so much one event. It took 100 years for civilization to unwind, and trade almost halted. By the end of this 100 years, Egypt lost control of the Levant. There's a new book out yesterday on the aftermath by Eric H Cline. Trevor Bryce also cover the Neohittite era. This is important because an independent Israel couldn't have existed Assuwa before this time. The collapse of the LBA reverberates into today. Many people want to see the collapse as one or two events but it was a chaotic process that continued into the dark age and it's remembered by th Greeks as the Dorian invasion. However, it wasn't just the eastern Mediterranean that was affected. Many left Anatolia to settle and mix with local populations in Italy. All of this is remembered in various stories and legends that give us only a small glimpse into what happened because the changes were far too complex for primitive humans to remember especially when very little writing has been found during the geometric pottery age. We may have one story recorded in Lucian but the archaeologist involved was involved in shady deals and possible fabrication before these now lost panels containing a story about a king from SW Anatolia sacking cities in the Levant. People back then were adventurers whose culture was about glory of sacking and plundering. It's similar to the way Jihadists are to Islamic culture today in that many people glorify and revere extreme violence to further their religion agenda but in the LBA the agenda was treasure and money, which turns out to be Hamas leaders secret agenda via embezzlement of billion and corrupt behavior.
There have been DNA studies on the pigs the Philistines had, and they seem to be most related to Greek pigs from earlier times, so there is a possibility that the Peleset were ALSO Mycenian in origin
Or that the pigs were descended from loot. If the Sea Peoples were fleeing famine, etc they would have been short on food. Livestock could be used to restart their lives or eaten.
I saw some additional links between their pottery and craft goods at the time of the Philistine settlement in the Levant. During the time of the noted agreement between the Egyptian Pharaoh and the newly "defeated" Sea Peoples to settle there. There were a few years of Mycenaean-like goods in the layer from that brief time found. They appear to have quickly mixed styles with those of the natives. Which makes sense since a mobile Sea People raider force, having been warring across an expanding territory for years, were likely few in number compared to the natives in the area they settled.
Of course, some would say those goods were just the result of trade. Yet the Mycenaean civilization had largely crashed by that point.
There is also e genetic study about the Philisteans, they came from Crete.
Myceanians and Danites (Tribe of Dan) were related peoples. Thats where the pigs would come from.
That seems likely, as the Peleset were settled in Canaan by the Egyptians. That would go to explain why the Hebrews (who were originally Canaanites themselves) hated the "Philistines", as they were pig-eating worshippers of foreign gods, although the YHWH-only worship seems to date from some time later.
Imagine the Romans hearing that it may have been their ancestors that destroyed Troy, possibly with no Greek involvement at all.
Except that, according to Virgil, the Romans were descended from Aeneas and his band, who escaped the fall of Troy. Thus his epic of the Trojan War and its aftermath was named "The Aeneid". All that "equo ne credite, Teucri" business is from Virgil. Homer barely mentioned the horse.
The first Romans where Italics with the R1b U-152 haplogroup in majority and theirs dna was 60% Early Neolithic Farmers (Tyrrhenian) and 40% Indoeuropeans Italo-Celtic (Bell Beakers)
Virgil has entered the chat
@@TheGabrielbowater "Umo? No umo gia fui. Io sono Virgilio . . . ."
They’d have scratched their heads and said: “yeah, yeah that sounds about right”
Me: *sees "a short look"*
Me: *sees the runtime*
Me: *rubs hands together gleefully*
Eight videos in the last month! What have we done to deserve this? This man must be stopped!
Or gifted more coffee
Haha aww. This is a super nice comment, you made me smile and I’m not even the one it was for, so I’m sure that made them feel really nice and appreciated😊👍🏽love ta see it!✨👌🏽
Intelligent discourse on the internet? What a horrible thought.
Again, you take wonderful care presenting the sparse evidence and conflicting hypotheses. Thanks.
The sea people destroyed my cabbages.
It was probably the Amazonians hungry for some cabbages🥬
They're like that.
No, that was just the Avatar.
"short"
30min
😁 man i love you historians
You beat me to it.. Short he says.. .. enters the longest video past 6 months
Overall a truly excellent video. I am impressed by the way it manages to weave together a myriad of very uncertain issues and extract some sort of sense from it. Well done.
I always liked how your voice and delivery kinda reminds me of the Exploring Series guy. Funny side effect is the way your voice drops at the end of every video reminds me so much of him I feel like I've just listened to an SCP and, long story short, I just got a lil bit scared of the Sea Peoples. Great video as usual
Great vid man, always learning new things wid this channel
My first sampling of this site... Outstanding work. Cuts through legend with the appropriate caveats. Thanks!
Assuming Homer's works fall into anything remotely resembling real world chronology, it occurred BEFORE the Dorians. And I don't recall the Acheaens looking for bread like the Dorians.
According to Eric Cline... there were no Dorians. Never happened
This is the stuff that myths and legends are made of.
Literally!
Fascinating! I wonder how much we'll ever be able to know about these events?
Well, we’re learning more and more every year. The Bronze Age is unusual for ancient history in that we have tons of sources surviving because it was all written on clay and fired. Compared to, say, Antiquity (both classical and late) where stuff was written on organic materials and it’s decayed
There are plenty of cuneiform tablets and the like awaiting translation. Of course sometimes this isn’t the case, like with the Urartians
The trouble with Troy is that we haven’t found the archive that all of these cities had, which is why a very small minority think that Hisarlik is *not* Troy. I recall reading somewhere that the archive and hence Trojan documents do actually exist but it’s in the back dirt of the original excavations because Schliemann used dynamite and destroyed a lot
Wasn't the historicity of the Trojan War debated in ancient times as well?
The author states this at the beginning
@@ralphstern2845 I hope something bad didn't happen before you were able to finish your post.
@@valmarsiglia Sea people got them.
@@JH-pt6ih Lol!
@@valmarsiglia the "of" is an unwanted addition
The Tomb of the Amazon is also mentioned in Homer; that should be investigated and found as it is near Troy, too. If found, would further cement the validity of Troy's archaeology.
Actually, it probably exists, too. The discoverer of Troy found it largely by asking the local farmers and peasants if they knew anything about Troy. They pointed to the great mound that he eventually plowed through. I'm sure some local legends exist concerning the Tomb of the Amazon. Who knows what Scythian warriors might have ventured into the lands of ancient Turkey. Since, also, the sea levels were at the shores of old Troy, there might me naval artifacts under the soil around it to be found. Lydar anyone?
One of the 81 Turkish provinces is named "Amasya", it is named after the Amazon. It's located far away from the province of Çanakkale, where the ruins of Troy is, in the northeastern part of the country.
@@Kenan-Z Let's find out this province's naming history!
I’ve often thought that the generally accepted date of 1250 BC (50 years BEFORE the Bronze Age Collapse) seemed a little off and that it more likely was a half remembered account of the Collapse itself and the Sea Peoples.
Absolutely fascinating, loved it..
Another really interesting video. Love this area of history - interpreting ancient oral histories
I have thought for decades that the tale of the Illiad was a tale of the Sea Peoples as viewed by the Sea People themselves.
I would bet you were right.
i agree
Great stuff. Thank you!
It drives me crazy that no one looks at the wider region. Troy was a regional power under the protection of the Hittites. During this time, there were extensive trade networks from the Black Sea, to the Baltics, to Spain, Italy, and even further out. The Greeks didn't just roll up on a single city with no problems. It probably did take 10 years to attack the lands and allies of Troy before getting to the cities shores safely.
During this same period, large sieges and city massacres were the norm in Mesopotamia. And also the use of mercenaries. A long war is going to attract a lot of people looking to profit from it.
The Greeks probably overextended their resources, and suffered rebellion back home. Meanwhile, the power vacuum left by Troy, led to a lot of traders and mercenaries coming in from distant lands to see what could be salvaged.
There is evidence of material wealth increasing in Sardinia and northern Italy during the same period, with a more warrior culture in art. With the fall of Troy, the rebellion of overtaxed Greek peasants, and migrants like the Phrygians, I think its pretty obvious the war happened and it led to the collapse of the power structures in the region.
That's certainly a pretty interesting idea that would tie it all together.
Totally agree, well said. All these complex theories about the Trojan War (and the Bronze Age Collapse) are trying to reinvent the wheel imo. We have oral tradition, archaeological evidence and textual evidence all pointing in roughly the same direction. We'll never get a definitive answer, but the most sensible scenario is staring us directly in the face, and has been for thousands of years
Certainly plausible, I wonder if some ancient world war was the cause of the Bronze Age collapse, and homers description of alliances sure seems to have similarities to the sea peoples .
@@jonthehermit8082 I think the Phrygians and Lukka are mentioned in the alliances and they are people from the region that became more prominent later. The Phrygians taking over former Trojan lands, and the Lukka being explicitly mentioned as one of the sea peoples in Egypt. The Lukka/Cilicians being notorious pirates up until Roman times.
the trojan war did and might have happen but the way homer describes it may not Match the historically context.
You have to love the camp that says "You know, if we didn't have the evidence, we wouldn't even be talking about it."
ha! that was exactly my first thought.
Yeah, but what if it was 2000 years from now and people said Harry Potter was a true story in _some_ way because we have to train station that matches the story perfectly, and we even have ACTUAL RECORDS of people named Harry Potter, so one of them was _probably_ the really one who the stories are based on….but surely these stories of “magic” are just a layer of myth….i could go on.
I understand that it is tantalizing to speculate, but the truth is, we don’t know much besides there was,in fact, a city where the ancient myths say a city was, and therefore, they probably did call that city Troy….but that itself doesn’t prove the stories about Troy to be true.
People have always told stories that are based in the real world around them that they then add fictional elements to, and given that this was the ancient past, the didn’t really have a firm distinction between fiction and non-fiction when it came to storytelling….(like, they weren’t dumb. They likely had a concept of a distinction between true lived events that individuals could recall and made up stories, but they didn’t have the language of math, science and history where someone telling a story would neatly fall into fiction or non-fiction)
@@davidnotonstinnett I mean, I don't know of any scholar who would say that Apollo was firing arrows at the Greeks or anything like that. But some of the stuff in the Illiad and Oddessy is consistent with what we know of Mycenaean Greece. If Harry Potter were the only thing to survive form our society 2000 years from now there would probably be scholars trying to learn about our society from it, even if they knew it was entirely fiction (and it’s a bad example because it doesn’t even pretend to talk about real events). They would be right about at least SOME of the cultural tidbits they got from it. But we know that historians in ancient Greece (and in many other premodern societies like medieval Europe) would mix supernatural events with perfectly good history. So supernatural elements don’t automatically rule out the truth of other events in a source. My point is not that it’s obvious that the Trojan War happened (I don’t know if it did), but that it is ridiculous to dismiss the evidence without engaging with it. At least acknowledge evidence is evidence, and that it is valid to engage with the evidence we have.
@@Richardiii2I mean, does it really not pretend to talk about real events?
Like, you and me understand it is fiction, but does anything in the text itself state it to be fiction?
I think Harry Potter is an apt example, honestly. It is a blend of real and magical elements to tell a story that became the foundation for the “mythic cycle” of both of their eras of writing. Ancient authors cribbed from Homer, and we are just now finally getting out of the era of books and movies where the entire premise was basically “Harry Potter, but…” (example, Percy Jackson is Harry Potter but Greek mythology rather than Euro-folk magic.)
I’m not saying it is 1:1, and personally I think the Iliad leans more towards “real events” than Harry Potter does, but I will say that Harry Potter is a form of modern mythology whose imagery has permeated our entire culture in the same way the elements of the Mythoc Cycle did and still do.
And sure, I don’t disagree that there is a lot to learn about the real world of the people who read that story, but I think you find that by looking at the Iliad as 80-90% fictional with the 10-20% that is real being remembered names of kings, the names of cities, the names of tribes/nations, and from there, you can learn so much by wondering why they found these stories interesting. Why did Troy last long enough to be so important that it is the name of the city that the Greeks sacked?
One thing I will give the Iliad that makes me think it has more truth to it than a lot of myths: it isn’t just a retelling of then current events with old names. Romans were lousy with this kind of thing. There may be real kings in the king list, but the Romans were so obsessed with the then current-day political drama that they instead chose to tell those stories with dead people’s names.
It appears that the Sea Peoples got new "recruits" from the places they raided. Makes sense, there were people living in villages who didn't have anything to steal from but were desperate. Those joined them.
Great analysis
The fall of the city had such a traumatic impact it coined the term destroyification.
I think you just coined that term when you typed this
I think the word that describes what you're trying to describe would be 'destruction'
I for one have never understood sports teams or a certain birth control item being named for the Trojans. After all. They were losers.
We know that there were mycenean mercenaries in the eastern mediterranean. With social turmoil in Greece, their ranks may have grown, and started raiding left and right their former middle-eastern employers.
I remember reading something like the story of Weyamun and it had a merchant in the story saying that when times were good they were traders and when times got bad they became pirates
Very interesting. I do think the Hittite Letter remain more convincing than the Trojan Horse being an earthquake, but it is most interesting!
It seems that the story told in Homer's Odyssey-which details Odysseus's journeys after the Trojan War-may not accurately reflect the experiences of a particular crew.
Awesome video sir!
Excellent, thank you.
Very interesting, thank you
Your channel always has the best material. I'm grateful it exists.
there's an Adana region in Turkey , and south of it is an island known as Dana island. There's evidence on the island of it being used as a shipyard around the time of the collapse. It was able to construct and launch over 200 ships at once which makes it large than the naval yard at Carthage.
INTERESTING 😎🤔 THANKS FOR VID.😊. Archeology is rarely cut and dry.
I read the Iliad several months ago and as far as i remember, Poseidon was not favorable to Greek invaders. If his horses had meant earthquakes and the earthquakes had wrought havoc on the Trojan VI, an auspicious sign for Greek soldiers, Homer would have described that Poseidon had sided with Greek forces. If there were earthquakes really, it was unlikely that the ransackers after that disasters were Greeks
Thanks for the video
Traces of the Mycenaeans were found on the coast of Asia Minor, immediately after 1177 (I think the Miletus area), and this fit with the idea that they were (part of) the Sea People.
Aren't the Pelasgians amongst the mycenians considered suspects for being the Peleset amongst the Sea people ?
In the region of Southern Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia are located many volcanoes, most of which were active already in antiquity.
Could a volcano or several volcanoes this field have erupted and destroyed the land, or made agriculture impossible for a longer period, forcing the people to search for new ground?
No, we would see it in soil layers, though we do now know there was a long period of regional drought just before collapse
I predict a comment section full of many self-proclaimed Bronze Age experts. Mention "Sea People" and ....
...here I am! Sea People = Bronze Age Vikings. Prove me wrong 🤓
and Homer will respond "I wish I could See People"
tyvm for another upload, eh
🦬🇨🇦😁
No problem neighbor! 🦅 🇺🇸
It seems very clear to me that Homer’s writings are a somewhat misremembered take on the bronze age collapse (aka the original 1st world war). Greeks and their allies vs everyone else in the eastern mediterranean. Troy was just one of the locations the Greeks invaded; Odysseus’s journey is an attempt to recall the Greeks warring around the eastern mediterranean. Timing lines up, players line up, outcome lines up. Someone tell me why I’m wrong.
I think you're right, the odyssey is like a story of a group of sea people running around
I believe Troy was sacked and burned by the Sea Peoples over a series of raids.
That sounds like some shadowy legend.
And I believe Zeus did it personally.
intriguing indeed
Your video sits well to a different reading of Ramses III inscriptions .According to some scholars the sea peoples did not destroy Hatti,Carchemish etc but came from there.
We now that at that time the Hittite empire were in crisis,being in a civil war against two branches of the royal family (Hattusa and Tarhuntassa).Maybe the subject peoples of the empire rebelled and invaded the loyal Hittite cities (like Troy) or even Egypt (ally since Hattusili )
As you said in the vide most of sea peoples names are very similar to places in Anatolia or around it:
Danuna- Adana
Lukka- Lydia
Paleset (Philistines)-Padasitini
Another three sea peoples may well be Mycenaean greek refugees: Eqwesh (Achaeans?),Sherden and Tjekker.
We know by archaelogy that myceneans started their settlement in Cyprus shortly before the collapse.According to greek mythology itself Cyprus was conquered by the hero Teucer (Tjeker sound very similar,no?) who founded the city of Sardis (Shardana?)
Was the Narrator of this video :Sam the Eagle" from the Muppets?
I wonder if the Peleset could have been Pelasgian Greek peoples, possible from Crete or of a mixed Pelasgian Greek/Crete mix of peoples.
The sea people and the Achaeans are the same people. In the Odyssey, the story the disguised Odysseus tells the swineherd is more or less identical to the Egyptian account of the sea people invasion (apart from the obvious bias).
Which time?
Never occured to me that Homer might actually have been a composite of different people. Interesting thought, seems plausible, given the distance of time we are talking about.
good vid
I believe multiple wars and raids happened. Spread across 800 years of late Bronze Age, early Iron Age. I think both, the Greco-Trojan war happened. With later reiterations of Trojans, occupying later layers built on top of the earlier destructions. That were raided and defeated by the sea peoples late in the sea people’s active time period. Prior to 1000bc . So Greco-Trojan War. In the 1300’s. And Sea People Victory in 1100 bc. Give or take a few decades. Also, The Mycenae we’re not the only “Greek” population or power for that matter in the tine period. There were Greeks in Anatolia, The Isles, and multiple kingdoms on the mainland. So, if one dynasty says no, whose to stop the other, perhaps lesser rival dynasties and their populations, from trading with the survivors, remnants, or replaced population of the city and region?
The veracity of the Trojan War, it seems, has been debated at least two and a half centuries. Just yesterday I ran across a passage in Voltaire in which he expressed doubt about it. It's in the "Philosophical Dictionary."
Intriguing stuff.
I love this presentation in concise summaries of the various ideas floating around. Best of all open ended. No dogmatism.
This, Hancock fans, is how academic historians work. Consider all the evidence and think and discuss. Hancock has no evidence at all. He has admitted as much. Just fanciful ideas.
12:55 clearly the most scientific and thoughtful thing we can say is that Poseidon is responsible for the earthquakes, even though Zeus told him save that noise
The main hypothesis is that the Greeks were affected by a prolonged drought, civil war broke out and then they migrated and attacked other areas. The Philistines, a group of Sea People had constructions, pottery, and especially DNA from the Aegean area.
Arzawans and Mycenaens were allies. Piyama Radu (Priam) an Arzawan warlord attacked wilusa but Hitties backed them. Alaksandu (Paris) became the king of Wilusa after the events. Then sea people sacked Wilusa and Hittite country. Lukkans joined them from Anatolia. They sacked everwhere all to Egypt. That events inspired the epic İliad.
I have wondered of the Peleset and Philistines could be the Pelasgians, the people the Greeks thought resided in Greece before them?
I think the Minoans also were in this mix
Of COURSE it was!
There was just noone around to write about it, and most of the survivors died fighting somewhere else, like Egypt!
The Troad was key real estate, and got attacked MANY times!
Heracles showed up an breeched the walls, when Priam was a youth; then (probably ~50 years later), the Acheans showed up, and really tore it up, and evacuated anyone they didn't kill!
One would have expected the Acheans to leave some people behind as a colony, but, they had all been gone, so long, who knows...?
People from neighboring areas could have moved in, if there was no opposition....
The poet who composed the Ilyiad and the Odyssey probably never had that information...
So, some years later, probably, less than a generation, a struggling colony is still vulnerable to the marauders...remember, the Acheans worked hard, throwing down the walls!
Plenty of room for lots of action.
I side with the side that the Homeric story is a story as described in Hamlet’s Mill from the same roots. The war is 10 years long just like the other wars with gods, etc
For more info on the legends infused into Homer's version of a long-known and transferred story, see video "A Hittite Version of the Trojan War." I know we are presented the thesis that Homer's version records elements of a sea people's invasion; however, incidents can occur and when they are talked about, it's not uncommon that a memory of another story is used to explain a current event. People link ideas as they progress in experience; often the link is forgotten, and the newly envisioned concept is thought to be the first version. The effect of time on memory and the re-association of ideas into a new vision is very common. Twelve witnesses can see an accident, and each can have a slightly different take on the accident. We are talking about thousands of years of reuse and use of ideas to express the current events of a society. We will suffer wars and invasions in years to come; how will they be remembered and applied to future generations who, in turn, will experience the same type of events? We must remember ultimately that Homer is discussing the honor of heroes, their failings, their triumphs, and their ends within the culture of Greece (how it existed at the time) that, like any people, will want to affirm their values and ideals through the lens of literature and art.
The thesis of the video we are commenting on posits the theory that the Iliad could be partly a recounting of invasion by the "sea people."
Plus i heard earliest greek alpha bet writing has now been pushed back to 1000 bc. From asia minor
Linear b is already known of had been used from 1450 bc
Did the destruction of Troy in Homer mean that the site was left uninhabited?
I mean, if a system of warring city states collapses, then what might the survivors do to see to their own survival? Something about what happens when you only have a hammer...
Nice video, the earthquake and Horse metaphor seems VERY plausible......that definately seems at home with the mindset of those times as well as with how things get passed down orally (using logic to 'clean' things up). The minotaur/labyrinth (knossos) the tale of Atlantis (the Thera eruption) etc.
I think the Minoans were to the Mycenaen/Greeks the same as the Greeks were to the Romans. At the timeline stated for the Trojan war the obvious party were the Mycenaen/Minoan peoples.
Achilles' nickname was "sacker of cities". He could have been a part of the whole Late Bronze Age collapse. When maritime trade stopped so did many skilled trade cults .
"Oh come angel band"
Or possibly the Greeks were the sea people when it suited their needs at different times as other people did ? A group of people's that over time becomes known as the Sea people? A form of migration if you will? Wonderful story none the less. 👍
We need an effort and pressure for all the ancient texts we have be translated, and made available online in the original for translation. Imagine what we could leanr about our past. 🤷♂️
How does anyone know that the city discovered by Heinrich Schliemann is in fact Troy?
From the legends description of being close to Mount Ida.
Roman inscriptions found on the site prove that its the same Troy mentioned as inhabited in Classical sources but that's the best we can do since that city was rebuilt post Alexander based on being where the Macedonians thought Troy was.
this is what I have always said....the siege is right at the beginning of the Bronze Age Collapse........I think that's WHY the story was so important to the Greeks....so they could remember the Before Time
One problem with your thesis, the Trojan War was clearly fought in Finland and the Baltic Sea. /s
Baltic Origins of Homer's Epic Tales
@@chrisnewbury3793Homer Simpson was never more based
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
But I thought the Trojans were actually Formosans and the Greeks were the Celtic heroes who conquered and replaced them!
Also, not one word about the Sea People building pyramids on Greenland! This is an outrage!
I think longhorn helmets, technology,tradition and iconography can help locate who the coalition of sea people's were.
A very interesting analysis.
I would like to post a personal interpretation.
Whoever ruled Troy, or the ruins we deem as Troy today, was very strategically situated at entrance to the only sea route to the Sea of Marmara. Obviously this was an important route for all sea faring peoples. A rather interesting thing was that the other side of that entrance was named Helles back in the day. If Troy conquered Helles this would allow them control over that very sea route.
This might be the very Hellen of Troy. that was taken from the Mycenaeans, that triggered that war.
As all sea faring kings had a clear interest in Helles and thus the route being open for trade they went to war. The legends do tell of a pact between the kings done at Hellens wedding if I recall. A guarantee that the trade route was open to all and establishing Helles as the clear property (marriage) of the Mycenaeans (Menelau).
War starts and ends in an Achaean victory.
Weirdly this does not end there as per the Odyssey and assumes another 10 years for the fleets to travel back a distance that is honestly a week at worst. An no they did not get lost either.
What it may hint at is the weird position that the Acheans found themselves in after the war, they just assembled the largest fleet in the Mediterranean and there was no other.
If they did afterwards what i think they did, then they are the Sea Peoples and ended up plundering the Mediterranean for some years until settling somewhere, legends claim Italy.
one question, if the Greeks fought Ilirians ( hence the Ilaiad) , what are the Ilirians - a tribe from the Balkan Adriatic coast doing in Asia minor?
The name Iliad derives from Ilios, the Greek name of the city that we currently conveniently call Troy. The Greeks knew of Troes, the inhabitants of Ilios. Nothing to do with Illyria. Iliad translates as [poem] of Ilios.
Where does Homer say that the Trojan war took place 800 years before his writings?
It is interesting that you consistently refer here to Sea People in the singular, rather than Sea Peoples
I had some sea people I bought them out of the back of my comic book it took six weeks for them to show up. They where cool but they didn't invade anyone.
There's a possibility that the date given for the Sea People is wrong. According to David Rohl "A Test Of Time", the egyptian chronology is possibly prolongated about 300 Years. So Ramses III, who wrote about the fighting against the Sea People, might have lived 300 years later, around 900 BCE, not around 1200, as it's the date given by the greeks for the homeric trojan war. So maybe Schliemann was right about the destruction of Troy II.
The Egyptian chronology could be off some, but not that far. And remember that we have independent means of verifying a series of destructions in the 12th century BC. Troy II is Early Bronze Age, way before the time of the Trojan War.
Sardinia, and Sicily, are only related by name, speculatively. They were not sufficiently developed in that era, rather, the Sea people arrived there after being defeated by Egypt.
To be suspected of being part of the Sea People, you should have already had a land army and a naval one that had already participated in conflicts and had experience. You had to have ports, and to have navigated current in the areas you attack. The only ones who qualify are the Greeks. We have drawings on ceramics in which their ships are exactly like those in the Egyptian bas-reliefs, and their soldiers had helmets with horns or feathers, they had bronze swords and two spears each.
You should also look up whenever the Homer video comes into question, the issue with Bronze Age Chronology which had a PhD work on it (forget his name currently). The main thrust is that the frankenstein assembly of the immediate post collapse calendar is jumbled due to being comprised of multiple sources which may have been simultaneous, not sequential. So Homer could be 600 years removed from the events he was either directly mythologizing or reinterpreting, or he may be as little as a century removed from the end of the Bronze Age.
Due to the fact that the description of panoplies in the Iliad is so on point for the end of the Bronze Age though, I find it impossible to discount the Iliad as a quasi-historical source/mythologized history in lieu of the Romance of Roland or the like. Armor of what was likely Homer's time in any case was of totally different, much heavier construction than the late Bronze Age, which was light small cuirasses with armored belts and the like. Certainly if Homer is as far removed as commonly thought now, iirc in the Archaic age, the panoplies he'd be familiar with were entirely different beasts.
My hypothesis is that the sea people's were from Troy and after the fall of Troy the founded both Rome and London (formerly Londinium, formerly Trinoventis (sp? New Troy).
Most probably it was the Bronze age collapse. Such tragedy is good fuel for mythology and legendary.
Hmm, I thought years ago that the Sea Peoples were perhaps Greeks and their allies returning from Troy who got sidetracked along the way (ala Odysseus) and ended up raiding other places, before either returning home or settling elsewhere. Which would mean this hypothesis is correct, but not that the Sea Peoples did it instead of the Greeks, but that the Greek coalition and the Sea Peoples are just different names for the same people.
Sardinia
Using an ancient epic as historical reference is akin to using “Gone with the Wind” as a historical narrative of the American Civil War
We should really wonder how much bronze age recorded history was destroyed by the Roman's destruction of Carthage. They were a powerful sea-going culture that could have been had close origins as these enigmatic "Sea Peoples".
just as ancient religions combine pantheons based on altering primacies of differing cultures, so too might the "trojan war" have evolved a series of conflicts into a single event. the glory of folk traditions to rewrite history to its convenience...
Paris was a guest of the Greeks before making off with Helen so there was a good relation with Troy before the war.
3:20 just ask my man Nestor #MenOfRenown
Given uncertainties about the time line, and the oral basis of the text in the Iliad, who says the Greeks weren't part of the 'Sea People' collective. Seems the late Bronze Age Collapse was more like a climate change-driven late Bronze Age Migration.
Great video. Thanks.
Troy was destroyed so many times... Just take a ticket and wait for your turn.
WE WANT THE DOG! WE WANT THE DOG!
Weren't the Mycenaeans part of the Sea People? It is hard to believe they were not, especially since Philistines (=Peleset, listed by Egyptians as one of the Sea People tribes) turned out to be Greek.