The Bronze Age Collapse (approximately 1200 B.C.E.) — Transcript

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1. 0:03Some time around the year 1200 B.C.E., human civilization did an oopsie.
2. 0:09Within the short span one generation, the majority of Earth's most technologically advanced
3. 0:15civilizations faced an existential crisis.
4. 0:19Nearly all of them failed the test.
5. 0:21The resulting collapse was a turning point in human history, similar in scope to the
6. 0:27collapse of the Roman Empire.
7. 0:29The old world died, and the Bronze Age died with it.
8. 0:41The odd thing is that we barely understand why this happened.
9. 0:45There are a bunch of theories, but nothing definitive.
10. 0:48We'll get into that in a moment, but first, an introduction.
11. 0:54When the Bronze Age began in Western Asia, it brought to an end an old world of tiny
12. 0:59city-states ruled by an oppressive class of totalitarian priests.
13. 1:04The new world that came after was one full of possibilities.
14. 1:09Vast, sweeping empires grew up seemingly out of nowhere.
15. 1:14New religions, new systems of government, new cultures, new technology, all at once,
16. 1:19all at a breakneck pace.
17. 1:21Revolutions in farming lead to massive food surpluses which in turn allowed for these
18. 1:27huge, bustling, multicultural cities.
19. 1:30These new cities participated in dynamic system of international trade, totally unlike the
20. 1:37cloistered city-states that preceded them.
21. 1:43By the Late Bronze Age, the big players were Egypt, Cyprus, the Mycenaeans, the Hittite
22. 1:49Empire, Assyria, and Babylonia.
23. 1:52Each of these states, without exception, faced an existential crisis around the year 1200
24. 1:59B.C.E.
25. 2:00Within a generation, most of them were gone.
26. 2:04Here's what we know.
27. 2:05Some time around the beginning of the 12th century, the King of Ugarit, a city in the
28. 2:10Hittite Empire, wrote a letter to the King of Cyprus.
29. 2:14"My father, now the ships of the enemy have come.
30. 2:19They have been setting fire to my cities and have done harm to the land.
31. 2:24Doesn't my father know that all of my infantry and chariots are stationed in Khatte, and
32. 2:29that all of my ships are stationed in the land of Lukka?"
33. 2:32Khatte was another name for the Hittite capital, several hundred kilometers inland.
34. 2:37Lukka was several hundred kilometers to the west, on the Aegean coast.
35. 2:41"They have not arrived back yet, so the land is thus prostrate."
36. 2:47Defenseless.
37. 2:48"May my father be aware of this matter.
38. 2:51Now the seven ships of the enemy which have been coming have done harm to us.
39. 2:56Now if other ships of the enemy turn up, send me a report somehow, so that I will know."
40. 3:02The Hittites promised to send King of Ugarit reinforcements, but it was too late.
41. 3:08The last known letter to leave Ugarit reads, "when your messenger arrived, the army was
42. 3:14humiliated and the city was sacked.
43. 3:16Our food in the threshing floors was burnt, and the vineyards were also destroyed.
44. 3:21Our city is sacked.
45. 3:23May you know it!
46. 3:24May you know it!"
47. 3:30The King of Cyprus was well aware of what was happening on the mainland.
48. 3:34But he had problems of his own.
49. 3:37Cyprus was under attack at around the same time.
50. 3:40Several larger cities, especially on the western coast, were burned, and many of the smaller
51. 3:45cities further inland were simply abandoned.
52. 3:48Wealthy residents buried their valuables, with plans to return once the crisis had blown
53. 3:53over.
54. 3:54They never returned.
55. 4:00Things were different in Greece.
56. 4:02For the last hundred years, the Mycenaeans had been plagued by internal instability.
57. 4:07There are signs of destruction everywhere.
58. 4:10The ruins of these cities leave evidence of massive fires intermixed with arrowheads and
59. 4:16weapons, which paints a pretty clear picture of a series of battles in which the defenders
60. 4:21were ultimately defeated.
61. 4:23Other cities leave evidence of smaller fires confined solely to the palace structures in
62. 4:29the center of the cities.
63. 4:30This indicates some kind of popular uprising in which local kings were overthrown, not
64. 4:35just in one city by in many cities.
65. 4:38Still, other cities show signs of being abandoned, either because of famine or natural disaster
66. 4:43or both.
67. 4:44On the whole, the picture is fuzzy, but it's fair to say that there was chaos in Greece.
68. 4:55It was even worse in Anatolia, the homeland of the Hittites.
69. 5:00Archeological evidence suggests that every major city in Anatolia may have been at least
70. 5:05partially destroyed during this period.
71. 5:08This was especially true up and down the coast.
72. 5:10In fact, we now know that the city of Troy was destroyed at this time.
73. 5:15Recent archeological digs there have found arrowheads still lodged in the ruined walls
74. 5:20of the city, and evidence of a fire.
75. 5:24Further inland, things get a little more mysterious.
76. 5:27The Hittite capital, which only a few years earlier was being protected by the the King
77. 5:31of Ugarit's army, was largely abandoned.
78. 5:34It would later be stormed and burned just like all the others.
79. 5:43For a long time this abrupt region-wide collapse was inexplicable.
80. 5:48Historians knew that it happened, but they couldn't tell you how or why it happened.
81. 5:53But in the second half of the 19th century, Egyptian archeological discoveries provided
82. 5:59a hair-raising and revolutionary explanation for this mysterious collapse.
83. 6:06This inscription was discovered in an Egyptian temple in Medinet Habu.
84. 6:11It changed our understanding of the Late Bronze Age forever.
85. 6:16Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses III describes several waves of foreign invaders arriving on the
86. 6:22shores of Egypt over the course of 30 years.
87. 6:26The inscription at Medinet Habu reads: "the foreign countries made a conspiracy in their
88. 6:32islands.
89. 6:33All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray.
90. 6:38No land could stand before their arms."
91. 6:41[...] "They were coming forward toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared before them."
92. 6:46[...] "They laid their hands on the land as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts
93. 6:52confident and trusting: 'Our plans will succeed!'"
94. 6:57The Egyptians had some guesses as to who these invaders were, but they couldn't be certain.
95. 7:02Historians have simply taken to calling them the Sea Peoples.
96. 7:07We now think that the Sea Peoples were loose coalition of groups from all across the Mediterranean.
97. 7:13We can't be 100% sure of this, but we can say with some confidence that most of them
98. 7:17were from Sicily, Sardinia, Crete, and the Aegean coast.
99. 7:21Maybe some other places too.
100. 7:23Some wore feathered headdresses, while others wore horned helmets or simple leather caps.
101. 7:31Some wore kilts, while others wore tunics.
102. 7:34Some went into battle wearing full body-armour, while others fought shirtless.
103. 7:40What united these groups was their reason for coming.
104. 7:44This was a migration.
105. 7:46We know that they came on boats and on wagons with their families and all of their worldly
106. 7:52possessions.
107. 7:53What brought them here is another question that we'll get into later.
108. 7:58By the time the Sea Peoples finally arrived down in Egypt, virtually every other Bronze
109. 8:03Age civilization had been overrun.
110. 8:06The Mycenaeans in Greece, the Hittites in Anatolia, Canaan in the Levant, Cyprus in
111. 8:12Cyprus, all gone.
112. 8:14Some states further inland were less affected by the invasions, but they were so weakened
113. 8:19by the collapse of their neighbours that their days were numbered as well.
114. 8:23When the Sea Peoples began their migration, they couldn't have imagined that it would
115. 8:27have been this successful.
116. 8:29All the way up until Egypt, every attempt to resist them failed.
117. 8:34Why?
118. 8:35In order to understand this, we need to talk about Bronze Age warfare.
119. 8:42Chariots.
120. 8:45Chariots chariots chariots.
121. 8:47Bronze Age warfare in Western Asia was all about chariots.
122. 8:52In the Early Bronze Age they were primarily used for transportation, but by the Intermediate
123. 8:57Bronze Age the militaries of every major state in the region were completely designed around
124. 9:02the use of the chariot.
125. 9:04A chariot in this period usually consisted of a team of two horses pulling a team of
126. 9:10two humans, one driver and one archer.
127. 9:13The humans, I mean.
128. 9:15The horses and the driver were trained for speed and maneuverability, and at full speed
129. 9:20could move roughly twice as fast as a human could run.
130. 9:23The archer wielded a composite bow.
131. 9:26Not as clumsy or random as a regular bow, it was smaller and lighter with better accuracy,
132. 9:32range, and firepower.
133. 9:34It was a state-of-the-art piece of technology.
134. 9:37In this period it could punch through 3 inches (7.62 cm) of metal.
135. 9:41So a full chariot team had everyone else beat when it came to speed, range, and firepower.
136. 9:49This is a bit of a tangent but it's said that the moment the HMS Dreadnought touched water
137. 9:55in the year 1906, every other ship in the ocean became obsolete.
138. 9:59The HMS Dreadnought was the best in the world when it came to speed, range, and firepower,
139. 10:05which meant that it could just sit back and pick off enemy ships at a distance, and then
140. 10:10outrun anybody who came too close.
141. 10:13Like the Dreadnought, Bronze Age chariots had speed, range, and firepower.
142. 10:18Like the Dreadnought, they could just sit back and pick off enemies at a distance.
143. 10:22Like the Dreadnought, they could outrun anybody who came too close.
144. 10:26An experienced group of chariots were capable of defeating an army 10 times its size.
145. 10:33This revolutionized Bronze Age warfare.
146. 10:36But they were expensive as hell.
147. 10:39Horses had to be specifically bred and trained, which cost a small fortune.
148. 10:43The equipment was all hand-crafted by artisans, and cost at least twice as much as the horses
149. 10:49did.
150. 10:50The loss of a single chariot was catastrophic, and so chariots went into battle with thousands
151. 10:57of inexpensive spearmen and archers deployed in a defensive line.
152. 11:01The infantry could protect friendly chariots that needed to repair or regroup, or they
153. 11:07could rush forward and destroy enemy chariots that were damaged or caught in a bad position.
154. 11:15As we get into the Late Bronze Age, the region was in the midst of a chariot arms race.
155. 11:21And then the Sea Peoples came.
156. 11:29Unlike the Bronze Age civilizations of Western Asia, the Sea Peoples fought on foot.
157. 11:35Instead of using spearmen and archers to form a defensive shield for their chariots, the
158. 11:40Sea Peoples wielded longswords and javelins, and they fought with an unmatched aggression.
159. 11:46I've seen the Sea Peoples described as skirmishers, but I don't think that quite covers it.
160. 11:51A much better word that I've seen used is "runners."
161. 11:54The Sea Peoples were runners.
162. 11:56They were highly mobile, and weren't locked down into tight little groups like the spearmen
163. 12:02were.
164. 12:03Instead, their way of fighting was to explode outwards in unexpected bursts.
165. 12:08This fact made the Sea Peoples chariot-killers.
166. 12:13The whole reasons chariots were effective was that they could outrun a person on foot.
167. 12:17But was the same true of 10 people?
168. 12:20100 people?
169. 12:21What if they were coming at them from different directions?
170. 12:24What if they got cut off from the main group?
171. 12:27Chariots couldn't exactly turn on a dime, so it only took 1 wrong move for the Sea Peoples
172. 12:32runners to overwhelm and destroy a chariot.
173. 12:35And like I said, the loss of a single chariot was catastrophic.
174. 12:40The defensive line of spearmen and archers were supposed to protect against something
175. 12:44like this, but in practice the highly mobile Sea Peoples were able to get behind their
176. 12:50lines quite easily.
177. 12:51As a response to these new tactics, defensive lines grew and grew and grew.
178. 12:57It appears that by the end of this period, the armies facing off against the Sea Peoples
179. 13:02were ten times larger than they were at the beginning.
180. 13:10As I said before, towards the end of this period Egypt was pretty much the last state
181. 13:15standing.
182. 13:16Virtually all of its neighbours had fallen to the Sea Peoples.
183. 13:20The inscription at Medinet Habu depicts the final battle against the Sea Peoples, at the
184. 13:26mouth of the Nile.
185. 13:27Look at how the inscription emphasizes how large the Egyptian army had become.
186. 13:32Here's a row of spearmen, and then a row of archers, and here's the Pharaoh Ramses III
187. 13:38personally leading the battle, standing on the bodies of his enemies.
188. 13:41And then of course here's the mighty chariot, prominently displayed, but not playing a decisive
189. 13:47role in the battle.
190. 13:49Clearly the bulk of the fighting was among the spearmen and archers.
191. 13:55In writing we are told that the Egyptians protected the mouth of the Nile by making
192. 13:59a wall out of ships, each loaded with archers.
193. 14:03We're also told that every spearman in Egypt was in position and waiting for the Sea Peoples
194. 14:10to landed on shore.
195. 14:12The inscription at Medinet Habu tells us the result of the battle.
196. 14:17Here are some Sea Peoples taken captive and being lead away.
197. 14:21Here is some unspeakable carnage.
198. 14:25Of course this is a piece of Egyptian propaganda, but we have no reason to doubt that this was
199. 14:30the result.
200. 14:32After so many incredible successes, the Sea Peoples were finally defeated in Egypt.
201. 14:39But even in victory, Egypt suffered.
202. 14:42From this moment forward Egypt was a second-rate power, and even after a thousand years it
203. 14:49had not yet fully recovered.
204. 14:52The fact that Egypt was so badly damaged by the collapse of international trade is a clue.
205. 14:59There has to be more to the story than the Sea Peoples.
206. 15:07Scholars have been pulling at this thread for the last few decades, and the evidence
207. 15:11is convincing.
208. 15:12Bronze Age civilizations needed bronze.
209. 15:16Obviously.
210. 15:17Without a constant supply, many of their cutting-edge technologies began to deteriorate.
211. 15:22Bronze is made by combining 9 parts copper with 1 part tin.
212. 15:27Copper is a relatively common metal, but it's difficult to mine.
213. 15:31Most of these Bronze Age civilizations ran their own small mining operations, but the
214. 15:35real action was in Cyprus.
215. 15:37Cyprus was absolutely swimming in copper, and mining it was dead easy.
216. 15:44This transformed the island into a fabulously wealthy hub of international trade.
217. 15:51That brings us to tin.
218. 15:53Tin is funny, because it's actually extremely rare, and it's not evenly distributed across
219. 15:59the Earth.
220. 16:00There was a tiny tin mine in Anatolia, controlled by the Hittites, but it didn't produce nearly
221. 16:05enough to supply the entire region.
222. 16:08After that, there weren't that many options.
223. 16:09The next closest major source was all the way over in modern Afghanistan, more than
224. 16:153,000 kilometers away.
225. 16:16You can just imagine how expensive and dangerous it was to haul tin all the way from Afghanistan
226. 16:23to Cyprus.
227. 16:24There were alternative sources, but it was tough.
228. 16:28There was a smaller mine in Italy, and another small mine in Spain, but these alone couldn't
229. 16:33meet demand.
230. 16:34There wasn't another deposit on the scale of the Afghanistan mine until you get all
231. 16:39the way to Cornwall on the Island of Britain.
232. 16:42It might shock you to learn that people actually made this trip.
233. 16:46It was a risky voyage, but if you made it back it was worth it.
234. 16:50So as you can see, any disruption in this supply chain meant that it was no longer possible
235. 16:56for Bronze Age civilizations to produce bronze.
236. 17:00Which by very definition was a problem.
237. 17:03So the argument goes that the Sea Peoples attacks disrupted international trade, slowed
238. 17:09down the production of bronze, and weakened every state in the region.
239. 17:13It was a vicious cycle.
240. 17:15More attacks meant less trade.
241. 17:17Less trade made everybody even more vulnerable to additional attacks.
242. 17:22As the Bronze Age states collapsed, the situation grew more and more dire.
243. 17:28But there might have been more to this story.
244. 17:31Even if you put the whole international trade angle to the side, this entire region may
245. 17:36have been much weaker than it seemed.
246. 17:39According to experts, the migration of the Sea Peoples coincided with a 50-year period
247. 17:45where Western Asia was riddled with massive earthquakes.
248. 17:48I'm no scientist, but that seems bad.
249. 17:52It's possible that these earthquakes were absolutely wrecking the economy in the region.
250. 17:59Some of the cities that were abandoned for mysterious reasons may have in fact been abandoned
251. 18:04after a seismic event.
252. 18:06There's at least some evidence of earthquakes destroying cities in Greece, Anatolia, the
253. 18:11Levant, and Cyprus.
254. 18:13Greece seems to have got the worst of it.
255. 18:15Egypt got off easy, which is an interesting fact considering that they were the only major
256. 18:21state left standing.
257. 18:22Maybe the earthquakes played a role.
258. 18:29So what brought the Sea Peoples here?
259. 18:32For a long time, scholars guessed that some kind of famine in northern Europe caused a
260. 18:39domino effect of southward migrations, culminating with the Sea Peoples packing up and fleeing
261. 18:45across the Mediterranean Sea.
262. 18:47This always made sense on paper, but there was very little evidence to support this theory.
263. 18:53Until now.
264. 18:55We now know that around this time there was some kind of environmental emergency.
265. 19:00It turns out that, as predicted, northern Europe was badly affected by this, which would
266. 19:06have caused that domino effect.
267. 19:09But the surprising thing is that the effects were even more severe in the eastern Mediterranean.
268. 19:15We now have ancient pollen samples from northern Syria, which seem to point towards a "dry
269. 19:22event" lasting for 300 years, beginning just before the Bronze Age Collapse.
270. 19:27Pollen samples have also been taken from Cyprus, where things were even worse.
271. 19:33These samples indicate that environmental changes were so severe in Cyprus that there
272. 19:38was no longer enough rainfall to sustain even basic agricultural activity.
273. 19:44This would have been catastrophic.
274. 19:45It may explain why some of the cities were abandoned before the Sea Peoples came.
275. 19:51Similar things have been found in the Levant, Anatolia, and Greece.
276. 19:55In fact, in Greece there's evidence that over hundreds of years, plants that were evolving
277. 20:00to survive a desert-like environment.
278. 20:05Some of the letters we find in the city of Ugarit support this finding.
279. 20:09Apparently during one of the invasions there were crop failures across the entire Hittite
280. 20:14Empire.
281. 20:15One letter to from the Hittite King to the King of Ugarit makes an urgent request for
282. 20:20grain, ending with "it is a matter of life and death!"
283. 20:25There's another letter from the nearby city of Emar, written during one of the later invasions.
284. 20:30It reads, "there is famine in [our] house; we will all die of hunger.
285. 20:36If you do not quickly arrive here, we ourselves will die of hunger.
286. 20:41You will not see a living soul from your land."
287. 20:48If these reports of an environmental emergency are true, and we think they are, the Bronze
288. 20:53Age civilizations may have been in a state of crisis before the Sea Peoples even arrived.
289. 21:03The best current analysis of the Bronze Age Collapse has landed on something called the
290. 21:08Systems Collapse Theory.
291. 21:10According to the Systems Collapse Theory, the arrival of the Sea Peoples was actually
292. 21:15a medium level threat.
293. 21:17Under normal circumstances, the Bronze Age civilizations should have been able to fight
294. 21:22them off.
295. 21:23But they weren't living under normal circumstances.
296. 21:26Changes to the climate had resulted in widespread famine across the region.
297. 21:31This resulted in the depopulation of key cities.
298. 21:34The famine and the depopulation then lead to internal instability, where some local
299. 21:39populations rose up and overthrew their ruling classes.
300. 21:44We have evidence that this happened with some frequency over this period, especially in
301. 21:48Greece.
302. 21:49These factors and the Sea Peoples invasions caused a collapse in the international trade
303. 21:55system, which just made everything all the worse.
304. 21:58Oh yeah, and the region was absolutely riddled with earthquakes.
305. 22:04The Bronze Age civilizations in Western Asia were dealing with 5 crises at once, with each
306. 22:10crisis creating a multiplier effect for all the other ones.
307. 22:14And then the Sea Peoples came.
308. 22:19We still don't fully understand how or why the Bronze Age abruptly ended, and perhaps
309. 22:25we never will, but the Systems Collapse Theory is pretty good.
310. 22:29One thing that I will point out though is that for all over its clever work collecting
311. 22:33pollen samples and studying ancient seismology, the Systems Collapse Theory does slightly
312. 22:39de-emphasize the destruction wrought upon the Bronze Age civilizations.
313. 22:44The fact that countless cities were destroyed is undeniable.
314. 22:49We have the physical evidence.
315. 22:51The Systems Collapse Theory argues that less of these were destroyed by the Sea Peoples
316. 22:56than originally thought.
317. 22:58And this might be right!
318. 22:59We have all that evidence of environmental changes and earthquakes.
319. 23:03But we don't know for sure.
320. 23:05Scholarship in this area is ongoing.
321. 23:08There have been significant breakthroughs just within the last 10 years.
322. 23:13We may see some definitive answers in our lifetimes.
323. 23:17But for now, we don't know.
324. 23:18We see the aftermath of the Bronze Age collapse, but when it comes to the root cause, all we
325. 23:25have are theories.
326. 23:35Upon closer examination, I think these guys are still alive, and I think they're licking
327. 23:47somebody's foot.
328. 23:49Nasty!