Why did the bronze age collapse?

>2200 BC
>cooler temperatures in the North Atlantic cool northern Europe
>cool artic/northern masses of air move into Aegean sea
>this cool atmospheric temperatures make Mediterranean SSTs (sea surface temperatures drop)
>the lower SSTs decrease evaporation and thus there is less available moisture for rain
>drought ensues
>hits the norther steppes hard
>refugees flood into Ur and Akkad
>destruction across Anatolia, Levant, and Mesopotiamia
>moves from north to south
>1200 BC
literally the same thing happens
>people in

Hittites were a number of peoples, they weren't a terrible well centralized Empire. Its interesting how long the political system of these independent states lasted. From early Babylonian empires, to the hittites, and eventually the Persians, Macedonians, Parthians, etc. all had these somewhat independent satrapies in the same region.

cos ur mum sat on it lad

The soil nutrient depletion/salinization of fields happened more in Mesopotamia than elsewhere. Also, just before the end of the Bronze age, sea level dropped a bit. This caused lots of coastal erosion and created a bunch of very marginal coastal land that expanding populations during the preceding warm/wet period moved into. When drought occured these lands became dry. There is evidence of dune mobilization in Negev israel (the only such example in the Holocene) and dust deposits in Yemen. In the earlier bronze age event (4.2k even, 2200 BC) this may have also occurred in southern mesopotamia. Contemporary sources mention salty fields and temple offerings show higher Barley to Wheat ratios, with barley being more saline soil friendly

*terribly centralized

They ran out of bronze mines.

The collapse started before the fall of Alashiya/Cyprus and Bronze production started almost right after the collapse in many places.

I remember from history class in Greece the cause was attributed to a combination of famine/plagues/natural disasters/invaders from the north.

The Minoan civilization got bumfucked by a huge tsunami, caused by a volcanic explosion originating in Santorini.

It makes you wonder what would have happened if the bronze age states had survived into the classical period and there hadn't been a 'dark age'. If Greece had retained its Mycenaean palace culture instead of developing the polis, would they have still managed the cultural achievements they produced later on? The power vacuum the collapse created in the Levant helped paved the way for Israel and the Phoenicians. Would our writing system in Europe and the West be derived from Linear A (by way of Linear B) instead of the Phoenician script?

I meant Linear B by way of Linear A*

wrong pic, wanted a still of Thera

>The Minoan civilization got bumfucked by a huge tsunami, caused by a volcanic explosion originating in Santorini.
the ash from the explosion also pretty much perfectly covered all crops in the known world at the time as well, causing massive famine and death of civilisation at the time

Our writing system would derive from whoever became dominant cultural power in Europe. Or systems if nobody managed such dominance. And the ones achieving that would be traveling, colonizing and/or conquering people like Phoenicians, Greeks or Romans. But without bronze age cultures' collapse who would be such powers? Would Greeks establish similar colonization system to ease population pressure from poor soil under palace economies?

>Minoans
thats not the Bronze age collapse bro
Don't forget Ugaritic language and writing ceased to exist. The Amorites and the Assyrians also benefitted from the power gap, as did the philistines.

Kek

See Personally, however, I think it's highly likely that it resulted from lack of food because people at the time simply didn't have the knowledge or technology to reintroduce minerals to the soil. The Sea Peoples, I think, were likely not a unified people or tribe but rather simply raiders from neighboring cities and countries trying desperately to grab whatever they could to save themselves.

>youtube.com/watch?v=bRcu-ysocX4
That was fucking great. I what to read his book, anybody have it in pdf to share with me?

gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=1177 B.C&open=0&res=25&view=simple&phrase=0&column=def

Thanks

>Mesopotamians unknowingly overfarming their lands, progressively reducing the nutrition in the soil and crop yields, in some cases even causing desertification, climate change exaspperated this
>A series of devestating earthquakes
>Breakout of famine and disease
>The highly interconnected nature of trade and foreign policy produced very wealthy yet very vulnerable cities that depended on trade to survive, disruptions were disasterous for the levantine trade cities

The sea peoples might have existed as an actual political/tribal group but I would say the devestation in the levant were mostly from bands of bandits fromed from desperate peoples trying to migrate someplace with food or safety from other bandits.

Also, the armies of the empires of the day featured chariots as their "thing". Who were manned by the nobility of the land. The wars and advancement in infantry tactics meant court noble chariots were getting killed left and right. Cities found themselves leaderless and defenseless as chariots and nobility are both difficult to replace.

Probably yes, the earliest written documents west of greece are in cypro minoan

no records from the time can really say for sure

from most academic works the general consensus is that a large scale famine took place that eventually depleted all food reserves that were stored, and resulting mass hunger led to revolt and raiding.

It was the sea peoples

A devastating war between Adytum and the Mekhanites.

The depletion of soils most certainly happened but Mesopotamians were well aware of the dangers. Dune mobilization and desertification happened in this era in uninhabited places too. In some places the 1200 BC drought was the worst in the entire Holocene.
Many of the "sea peoples" that the Egyptians are in fact believed just to be social outcasts and refugees, however the Meshwesh/Libyans invaded because of drought/famine, and the Philistines were definitely Mycenaean. The Sikila and Sherden were likely from Anatolia and Syria but that based on where we THINK they ended up having Syrian and Anatolian pottery (like Canaan having Mycenaean potter). Its believed that most of the Sea Peoples were ethnicity, although the Shose might be random desert people.
Also the change in warfare that has been postulated for the change isn't taken seriously. Robert Drews is basically the only one who's made that argument.

There is no way to know where the sea peoples came from exactly except for the Lukka, since the Hittites clarly state where they came from

Robert Drews, Jung, Sandars, basically anyone who has wrote about the sea peoples said they introduced new types of weapons to the Levant, thats why a good number of them probably came from the Aegean and beyond

I hope there's another collapse soon, anarcho-primitivism and forming your own rag-tag band of conquerors sounds fun.

Fucking faggot I came here to post this. To all you leftie's, skip forward to the part where he mentions Colin Renfrews four things that cause a total systems collapse. Enjoy suicide watch

here's your (you) faggot, bad bait but hey whatever

I would bet that they get hit by some fast spreading deadly disease.
There is not much in sources but if we compare Mezoamerican collapse to this it makes a lot of sense.
Drought, famine, rebellions usually are not so deadly to elites or culture. What we see on the other hand was total fall of civilization. Heck even writings was forgotten.
On the other hand diseases hit most hard urban centers and elites who live there(also craftsmen, intellectuals etc). Also usually they are followed by civil unrest, civil wars(as successions is interrupted) and foreign intrusions.
If there were some north barbarians that were resistant to disease it would not help either.
Even climate change looks like happen after population decline(there was some article that it happened around 200 years later) - the same thing that happened with Americas when human population fall.

the black people migrated to africa and brown/white mutts couldn't manage these lands without enlightened reign of black people

Nation of islam is satanic confirmed