2. The Bronze Age Collapse - Mediterranean Apocalypse

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Sometime around the year 1100 BC, right at the end of the Bronze Age, a wave of destruction washed over the Eastern Mediterranean. It wiped whole civilizations off the map, and left only ash and ruin in its wake.

This catastrophe, known as “the Late Bronze Age Collapse”, has become one of the enduring puzzles of archaeology. I want to explore how so many societies could collapse all at once, and seemingly without warning, as well as examine the lessons it might teach us in our increasingly globalised and interconnected world.

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Credits:

Voice Actors:

Shem Jacobs
Jacob Rollinson
Jake Barrett-Mills
Bryan Tshiobi
Helena Bacon

Music by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source: incompetech.com/music/royalty-fre…isrc=USUAN1100209
Artist: incompetech.com/

Title theme: Home At Last by John Bartmann. https://johnbartmann.com/

Chapters:

0:00 - Intro: The Ruins of Hattusa
2:30 - The Mysterious Wave of Destruction
3:37 - Introduction and Welcome
5:53 - The Iliad, Odyssey, and The City of Troy
11:38 - Mediterranean Civilizations
13:05 - Trade between City States
15:00 - Bronze
18:16 - The two main sources of information from this era
20:02 - First Theory of Decline: The Sea Peoples
21:50 - Ugarit
30:51 - Egypt and Ramses III
42:00 - The Decline of Mycenae, Hattusa, Elam, Babylon
44:35 - Babylon
48:08 - Second Theory: The Growth of Iron Use
50:30 - Final Theory: Climate Change
53:15 - Eruption of Hekla 3
56:35 - An Alternative View of the Sea Peoples
1:00:21 - Closing Thoughts

Sources:

Baker, Andy; et al. (1995). ‘The Hekla 3 volcanic eruption recorded in a Scottish speleothem?’. The Holocene. 5 (3): 336–342. doi:10.1177/095968369500500309

Bell, Carol. The merchants of Ugarit: oligarchs of the Late Bronze Age trade in metals? EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN METALLURGY AND METALWORK, 180. 2012.

Bietak, Manfred. ‘Minoan Presence in the Pharaonic Naval Base of ‘Peru-Nefer.’’ British School at Athens Studies, vol. 18, 2010, pp. 11–24. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23276759. Accessed 10 July 2023.

Breated, James Henry. Ancient Records of Egypt: The twentieth to the twenty-sixth dynasties. United States, University of Illinois Press, 2001.

Bryce, Trevor, and Bryce, Trevor Robert. The kingdom of the Hittites. United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, 2005.

---------- Warriors of Anatolia: A Concise History of the Hittites. United Kingdom, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.

Cemal Pulak, The Uluburun shipwreck: an overview. The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, Volume 27, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 188-224,ISSN 1057-2414, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1057-2414(98)80031-9.

Cline, Eric H.. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilisation Collapsed. United Kingdom, Princeton University Press, 2014.

Cohen, Yoram. The ‘Hunger Years’ and the ‘Sea Peoples’: Preliminary Observations on the Recently Published Letters from the ‘House of Urtenu’ Archive at Ugarit. 2021, SBL: Atlanta.

Collapse and Transformation: The Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age in the Aegean. United Kingdom, Oxbow Books, 2020.

Collins, Billie Jean. The Hittites and Their World. United States, SBL Press, 2007.

Drews, Robert. The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe Ca. 1200 B.C. - Third Edition. United Kingdom, Princeton University Press, 1993.

Grattan; Gilbertson (2000). ‘Prehistoric 'settlement crisis', environmental changes in the British Isles, and volcanic eruptions in Iceland: An explorarion of plausible linkages’.

Historical Records of Ramesses III.: The Texts in Medinet Habu Volumes I and II. United States, University of Chicago Press, 1936.

Homerus. The Iliad, rendered into Engl. blank verse, by Edward earl of Derby. To which are appended translations of poems ancient and modern. United Kingdom, n.p, 1867.

Megadrought and Collapse: From Early Agriculture to Angkor. United States, Oxford University Press, 2017.

Nougayrol, Jean; Laroche, Emmanuel; Virolleaud, Charles (1968). Ugaritica. V: nouveaux textes accadiens, hourrites et ugaritiques des archives et bibliothèques privées d'Ugarit. Stony Brook University.

Pritchard, James B., editor. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament with Supplement. Princeton University Press, 1978. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt19wccw4. Accessed 10 July 2023.

Tainter, Joseph. The Collapse of Complex Societies. United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Yon, Marguerite. The City of Ugarit at Tell Ras Shamra. United States, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.