What caused the end of the Bronze Age?

Barry Strauss argues convincingly that the Trojan War probably took place between 1210/1180 BC which is when all of these places begin to crumble. It is in the realm of myth because the collapse devastated literacy and record keeping until the likes of Homer appear in Greece. If you analyse Iliad and Odyssey like historical fiction, you can imagine a time where a large scale war could have destablised mainland Greece while its best men were away. We know that more Southern locations began to fortify their cities at this time, before they were sacked - suggesting they were bracing against a known quantity, unsuccessfully. Perhaps Homer's 'suitors' are an allegory for moral and civil decay.

The evidence just isn't all there, but what remains in archeology and the earliest literature is suggestive.

There's like half a dozen times Troy had been burned down.

An infography just to demonstrate the scale and spontaneity of the collapse. Like dominoes, as I have said already. Now, if we believe in the Trojan War happening at about the same time, then we have to believe that they have some involvement in the turmoil.

Why is there not enough movies or vidya set in this period? It's always fucking Rome or the middle ages instead and I find the BEC more impressive.

How long till we get another bronze age/Rome style collapse. How long will the dark age last?

It makes me angry to such an interesting time in human history

Its collapse.

/thread

>all this shit happening almost at once
That's... a very, very disturbing coincidence.

Sometimes excrement impacts a spinning blade

It was a crop failure m8. Trojan war couldn't have an impact that big.

The events that inspired the story about Moses / Exodus happened in the same time as well.

Because we don't know a whole lot.
I'm trying to write some historical fiction in the Greek Dark ages and I ain't got shit besides generalizations about centralized farming communities eventually forming the polis system, a number of ruined, cities left abandoned and raided, and that there weren't that many large states to do much of anything. The world is reduced to small, local systems of tribal warfare over property and supplies, and is eventually going to recover as iron is made more available and populations recover enough to develop into city-states.

The dark ages are not as interesting as the collapse itself.

>large refugee columns of ethnic groups migrate through the Med
B-but politicians said that refugees are net positive and will help us when we grow old.

If I may be permitted to speculate about what interesting things may be happening in post-Mycenean, dark-age Greece.

Phoenician traders arriving with their purple sails, bearing exotic goods from Mesopotamia. Somewhere, a clever Greek notices their alphabet and begins writing.

Poor Greeks upping sticks to begin a new life in the East, island hopping across the Aegean and meeting new cultures before setting down in Anatolia - or turning to a life of piracy. Everywhere, humble young men and boys are putting their fate into the lap of Poseidon, perhaps inspired by the bards wandering Attica, Thessaly and the Peleponese who recall in song an Age of Heroes, hundreds of years gone, of people from now-ruined cities whose crumbling cyclopean remains were suggestive of giants.

I may add more if it occurs to me, but while it does seem a difficult world to write fiction in, there is always the tradition of Homer to draw on, particularly The Odyssey which can be read as a window into his own times of approx 800BCE.

Just thought about this: what if the mythology about Agamemnon being cucked by Aegisthus represented cities being overthrown by internal forces while their kings where away fighting?
A similar thing happened to Odysseus...

Maybe the events survived in this form.

>Shardenu weren't a net positive

You mean that Parchment about Egyptian distastes people will use as an argument for the exodus happening?

Well in all seriousness any one that's knows a bit of history could tell you that's a load of bs

Certainly the Odyssey suggests that while the Kings and fighting men were away for years in Anatolia, home was being left to rack and ruin. Look at the story of the suitors eating Odysseus' son, Telemachus, out of house and home, and plotting to kill him. Elsewhere, the custodians of Greek cities are elderly old men like Nestor and Peleus because all the best men died in Troy and the Aegean. We see a cultural memory, recorded by Homer, of a society coming apart at the seams.

It's not THAT big of a coincidence. Some historians have placed a volcanic eruption at the center of it all. A super-volcano goes off that affects local environments can lead to crop failure. The instability from famine easily can spread. Imagine what the world would be like if Yosemite went off and broke the midwest's ability to feed the US and the nations that receive her grain surplus.

Some historians say that the tidal wave caused by the eruption may have destroyed the navies of some north african powers, who historically would have slapped around the sea peoples. But they had a moment of weakness when the sea peoples had a moment of desperation.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_eruption

Stuff that could cut through bronze.

That volcano was so bad that it might have caused crop failures in China. From the same article

>A volcanic winter from an eruption in the late 17th century BCE has been claimed by some researchers to correlate with entries in Chinese records documenting the collapse of the Xia dynasty in China. According to the Bamboo Annals, the collapse of the dynasty and the rise of the Shang dynasty, approximately dated to 1618 BCE, were accompanied by "yellow fog, a dim sun, then three suns, frost in July, famine, and the withering of all five cereals".[8]

IRON ARROWS CANNOT PIERCE BRONZE SHIELDS

I'm not sure if this post's a meme or a fact written in an obnoxious way.

The Thera/Santorini eruption is conventionally placed at 1642-1540 BCE and would have effected the Minoans in Crete. However the Late Bronze Age collapse is placed in the area of 1200 by archeology, a good 350+ years later. I consistently view this belief on Veeky Forums threads concerning the Bronze Age collapse and I just can't believe in it.

It is more likely, in my view, that a natural disaster took the form of localised earthquake 'storms' off the coast of Canaan, and that the resulting tsunamis had the potential to wipe out the local navies of the superpowers.

I say this with the caveat that it is speculation on my part, but this is more probable to influence events at 1200BC than a volcanic eruption three hundred years prior.

Fucking volcanoes. Also took out the dinosawrs.

Plebs don't know shit about any of those guys, apart from Egypt.

I would love to test this with you holding the shield.

So you're imagining some kind of age of the aegean, as refugees sail looking for home, adventures pine for lost relics and glory in the abandoned cities, pirates plague the coasts, and the sea people's legacy lives on?
That sounds like a pretty fun setting.
What kind of boats did they have during those days? Did they have any single person boats capable of managing the seas (for a lone adveturer?) or is the Aegean too unsteady for that, and they needed galley teams to work alongside their sails?

Massive population transfers are never good for the natives.

That is pretty much what I imagined. It seems like there was very little going on in post-collapse Greece. The past would seem like a mysterious place, but the riches would be evident in the ruins of the cities, and the burials of the old warriors. I think if I was the son of a poor shepherd or a sheep farmer, living in a humdrum that is periodically raided, I would consider going East; especially if I had heard the stories from the wandering bards and tradesmen. That is where the action seems to be at this point, in the Aegean and the coast of Anatolia. Around this time, The Kingdom of Lydia is emerging and they are a byword for luxury.

As for ships I know little, except that boats still kept closely to the shoreline for hundreds of years to come because it was so dangerous. later.

Sea travel was like rolling a dice. The Persians would lose tens of thousands while trying to invade Greece..

That was an asteroid though.

livescience.com/25324-volcanoes-killed-dinosaurs.html

It's likely both. We KNOW that a HUGE astroid hit the Yucatan peninsula and left a layer of iridium worldwide that we don't find dinosaur bones past.

It's kinda like the bronze age collapse. To much bad shit happened at once for survival.

This might sound like a dumb question, but if boats didn't leave that far from the shore, how did the Greeks get to places like Rhodes, Cyprus, Crete, and Syracuse? Did they just sail along all the edges of the Mediterranean, or are there parts of the Aegean that are easier routes to travel? I feel like traveling for a Greek city to Alexandria for trade by passing along Anatolia and Syria is quite inconvenient in comparison to just trying to sail down to Cyrene.

There is too much open sea between Greece and Libya if you sail directly South through the med. Whereas in the Aegean you can island hop South-Westwards, moving slower, but survive. In the bronze age they would camp on the nearest island beach - carrying their oar-driven ships onto the sand, even, to prevent losing them during the night.

That should say 'South-Eastwards' and not South-Westwards

Something like this, pic related.

Some bad ass men in Fiji took a scooped out tree for an outrigger and paddled all the way to Hawaii.

The comparison between the sea people (Sherden and Weshesh) in the battle of the sea delta with the contemporary stele statues of Corsica is disturbing.

Perhaps you mean Sardinia and not Corsica? But yes - the Sherdan/Shardanu appear to have something to do with sea raids. And apparently after being beaten by Ramses III they were settled, taxed, and the warriors were recruited. This makes sense to me - the Egyptians using the sea people's expertise against them. It's like Rome using barbarian auxiliaries, or the Assyrian empire employing a group of nomadic horsemen against the Scythians.

The question is where Sardinia comes into it - whether they came from Sardinia, or settled there later.

We know the Nuraghe civilisation was in Sardinia since BCE 1800 at least. As you allude to, a lot the figures and art from there is very similar to Egyptian pictures of the sea people at Medinet Habu, pic related.

For the sake of discussion, here also are the Peleset as depicted from Medinet Habu reliefs, distinguished by their plumage. The conventional wisdom is that after being beaten by Ramses III at the delta, they settled in Canaan and became known as Philistines.

No, I meant Corsica.

There is a number of statues steles in Corsica that closely resemble the Sherden depicted at Medinet Habu.

Exactly the same hemispherical hroned helmet, exactly the same type of long swords and daggers, exatly the same type of armor and similar tunics.

Plus, during the excavation of a fortress site in Corsica, a large quantity of bronze plaques has been found, probably used as protective cuissars on a leather corselet.

Of course the Torrean civilization of Corsica was related to the Nuragic civilization, it was most likely the same civilization.

>awaken my masters

The Minoans openly traded with the Egyptians and ususally just waited for a favorable southern wind to start sailing there. It's well covered in that 1177 BC book.

The largest resolution image I could find of this particular picture, taken from Med Habu - slightly more detail than the one I posted previously.

>Phoenician traders arriving with their purple sails, bearing exotic goods from Mesopotamia. Somewhere, a clever Greek notices their alphabet and begins writing.

The Greek alphabet probably originates in Anatolia, not Greece, and the Phrygians were using a Phoenician-derived script before that. So your clever Greek was probably exposed to it via inland contact and not by sea.

>Poor Greeks upping sticks to begin a new life in the East, island hopping across the Aegean and meeting new cultures before setting down in Anatolia - or turning to a life of piracy.

There is significant evidence of Greek settlement of the coast in the Dark Ages though, based on large finds of LHIIIC/D pottery.

Greek Temple orders almost certainly began development in Smyrna and Ephesus in the 12th to 9th centuries.

So how was combat during the late bronze/dark ages? Were hoplites around, with chariots and archer support, or were they just bronze - armed warriors fighting on their own?

i thought the hekla 3 eruption had to do with it but apparently that was later

The feud between Pepe and Feel

The fall of Atlantis.

most were just ragamuffin pillagers armed with whatever they could find

Why do they wear grass on their heads?

Sounds like an ancient version of "JET FUEL CANNOT MELT STEEL BEAMS"

Egyptians were using chariots and footsoldiers with weapons like this Kopesh. But they were at the forefront of their cultural sphere. Other militaries were probably a lot more chaotic.

>Imagine what the world would be like if Yosemite went off and broke the midwest's ability to feed the US and the nations that receive her grain surplus.
Yellowstone, and there's reason to believe the results will be far worse than what you seem to think.

You know damn well which Troy he means.

You can overdose on medicine.

Geologist here
The volcano hypothesis is bullshit
The Indian Traps eruption happened well before we see the mass extinction take place, which coincides perfectly with the iridium layer from the asteroid
Volcanoes may have been setting up the environment for a collapse but the asteroid did most of the legwork
Most other mass extinctions are really complicated and full of coinciding factors but the end-Cretaceous extinction is pretty cut and dried

I-is that pic fucking real

mass immigration

>implying iron wasn't the result of severed copper and tin trade

Yes, apparently someone decided uniting 500 million people speaking 150 languages in 28 countries would be too easy and the European Union is in dire need of a multicultural IV drip.

The Hyksos beg to differ

The Hyksos probably weren't that bad and all the narrative about them being le evil tyrants was created as propaganda by that dynasty who deposed them. If there's one "history is written by the winners" example, it's that.

The beginning of the Iron Age

Communism.

Migrants are important to the European economy

>uneducated retards are economically important

The correct way to solve problems would be abolishing pensions, not importing hordes of goatfuckers.

If you were fighting for a city state or stable regional power in the Bronze Age, then chariots are the order of the day. They would carry two men in the cab - one to take the reins, and another to use a powerful bow or throw spears. Chariots could hit and run infantry and clean up fleeing opposition. Chariot teams were the highest status people in Bronze Age armies, but only prosperous states could afford the resources to maintain them.

There wasn't a proper cavalry until at least 1000 BC, because settled civilisations in the Bronze Age didn't know how to use horses like the steppe nomads. This is why Scythians would fuck up Assyria and the Medes. The only way settled societies could use cavalry was if they used horse nomads for mercenaries. The nomads used bows while on horses.

We see a lot of archers in Bronze Age armies in varying proportions alongside spearmen and shield men, who would shield the archers, so there is some combined arms going on.

>what killed the bronze age
THE ICE AGE

>the European economy

No such thing. There are different countries with different economical structures in Europe, as there are cultures and languages.

A production based economy like Germany might benefit from low-skilled labour migrants (even though this i dubious), where as in for countries like Finland and Sweden they are a net negative because their type of labour isn't needed.

>The correct way to solve problems would be abolishing pensions
Yeah, that won't cause any problems.
The real correct option is to stop thinking in terms of growth-based economies which are ridiculously unsustainable. It's not the industrial revolution anymore. Or someone needs to invent FTL-travel and just fuck the galaxy's shit up

I should also add that even when settled civilisations adopted cavalry it still took them a long time become as adept as the nomads. For example, the Assyrians would use cavalry in pairs - one horsemen would hold both reins so that the other could use a bow.

my penis got into ur mum lel

I think it's their hair bunched together with a band.

they ran out of bronze

>a motley crew.

The spread of agriculture turned people into pasty and fat sedentary manlets, therefore they got rekt by hot and steamy tan aryan nomads

RIP New Kingdom Egypt

[Beginning of the victory that his majesty achieved in the land of Libya] -i, Ekwesh, Teresh, Lukka, Sherden, Shekelesh, Northerners coming from ALL lands.

The Sherdan/Shardanu are certainly involved, but my original point is that they were a motley crue because they are clearly working alongside other ethnic groups such as the Peleset - they of the plumed hats, the Sherdan themselevs being characterised by the horned helmets. These two are the most easily identified from the Medinet Habu reliefs, pic related.

My guess is there were also people from less easily visually distinguished groups, working for and against the Mediterranean powers according to their whims.

>migrants to Europe are uneducated rural people
Has this meme ever been true?

Yes, that's what I meant by pointing out ALL lands

Yes

>There wasn't a proper cavalry until at least 1000 BC, because settled civilisations in the Bronze Age didn't know how to use horses like the steppe nomads. This is why Scythians would fuck up Assyria and the Medes. The only way settled societies could use cavalry was if they used horse nomads for mercenaries. The nomads used bows while on horses.
So no one just thought "they ride horses, we should try that."

they ran out of bronze lmao

They did think of that. But the likes of the Cimmerians and Scythians had hundreds of years knowledge of riding on horseback while using bows and spears, without stirrups. The likes of the Assyrians and Egyptians had to start from scratch, without the appropriate breed of horses.

Their horses were too weak and small.