Conversations: When the Network Went Down, the Bronze Age Collapse w/ Dr Eric H Cline

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:40):
Hi, Hello, Welcome. This is Let's talk about myths baby,
and I am your host live here with the final
episode in our series on the Bronze Age and its Collapse.
We've brought you through the Bronze Age civilizations of Greece

(01:02):
into a little bit as much as we could about
the wider Mediterranean during this period. Then it's collapse and
all the many things that contributed to it. And so
today I have for you a conversation with doctor Eric Klein,
who is honestly probably the biggest name in Bronze Age
slash the end of the Bronze Age and It's Collapse.

(01:23):
Like you google Bronze Age Collapse, you're probably gonna get
his book. It's called eleven seventy seven BC. And then
there's a new one that's just come out very recently
that is a sequel after eleven seventy seven. So that
comes up a lot in this conversation where we talk
about what little things contributed to the collapse, what we do,
what we don't know, what is still being learned, what

(01:45):
has changed in the many many years that we have
been studying this stuff as humans and finding new things
and using new technologies, like all the ways this stuff
changes all the time, just because we change, and therefore
we have better ways of interpreting the past. It's utterly fascinating.
Eric and I had a really really fun conversation, such

(02:07):
a joy and just oh, I cannot wait for you
to listen. So I'm just going to stop rambling and
let you get right into this incredible conversation conversations. When

(02:33):
the network went down, the Bronze Age collapsed with doctor
Eric Klein. But thank you so much for doing this.

(02:55):
I'm very excited to talk to you.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Well, it's fun for me and thank you for having
me on. It's looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
I'm so glad I have an assistant producer who's been
working on a lot of the research because she's currently
My background is in mythology and my degree is quite old,
but she's currently studying and obsessed with the Bronze Age,
and so she is very excited that I'm talking to you,
and she gave me some questions to ask and stuff.
So there's a Mikayla's somewhere being very excited.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yes sounds good, and Mikayla's at UBC at the moment, right.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yes, exactly, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Good good. Well, hopefully I'll be able to meet everybody
in person at some point, but yeah, over the internets
we'll do for now.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
It's nice. At least we have this, right. I feel
like it's opened up a lot in the last few years.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
So it has. Yeah, just saying to my son that
when previous books have come out, I mean ten years ago,
fifteen years ago, it was all radio interviews, and now
it's all podcasts. The technology has totally changed.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah. Yeah, well, and podcasts are great. I mean it's
so easy to record remotely. And I started it in
the pandemic where I had was having these conversations with experts,
and I mean it's just easy and fun. And my
show started out as a very casual, just like silly
mythology podcast and grew to being an incredibly deeply researched
and accurate mythology podcast where I touch on history. But yeah, no,

(04:21):
it's good.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
That's good, and we need we need more of those
ones that are fun, interesting and historically accurate. So there
you go. You touch all the buttons.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
That is my goal always. I do have to share too.
I was in uh it would have been just last year.
Last year, I was on a boat ride from Naxos
to d Loos, and there was this American couple sitting
across from my friend and I and they started they
struck up a conversation and we're chatting about, you know,
where we were going and everything, and the man holds

(04:53):
up a book and he was like, Oh, I'm so excited.
I've been reading all about you know, the ancient world
and we're going to day Los. I'm and it was
your book. I was like, oh, yeah, no, I know
very well. Like I was like, I'm hoping to have
them on my show eventually. So yeah, it was very fun.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, it is funn You never know the ripple effects.
You never know who's reading it, you know, as they say,
you put it out into the wild, and then you
don't know where it goes. So that's cool. Thank you
for sharing that.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, no, you're welcome. I recently had an experience like
that myself where I wrote a book, but it was
a book of mythology out and it was commissioned by
the publisher, which tends to mean that they do a
lot of things without bothering to tell me and I
just find out later. And I recently had someone send
me a picture of it in Turkish, and so that's
how I learned that it exists in Turkish and I
would love to see it myself, but at least I

(05:40):
have a photover.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Now, yeah, that's funny, yeah, yeah yeah. If you have
it in your contract that they have to talk to
you about it when it's translated, then you find out
if it's not on the contract, then you have no idea.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
Oh it is in the contract. I actually used to
work for paying in random house in contracts, so I
know what's in my contract. They just don't do it.
But that's okay. I emailed them and eventually I'll follow it.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
But did they send you a copy of it?

Speaker 1 (06:07):
They are technical supposed to. So that's what my email
was was because I found out that it existed a
couple months ago, and I emailed and my editor was like, oh,
yeah it does. And I was like, okay, great, can
I get a copy? And she was like yeah, we'll
send you on. And now I see that it's in bookshops.
So I said to another being like, okay, where is
it now? Oh? Thank you, Well, I'll get us right

(06:32):
in so we, you know, use up all of our
time on this I'm so excited. The Bronze Age, like
I said, has very much been Michaela's pet project, but
I've been working through all of her research and fortunately
have a good grounding now before we speak. But yeah, essentially,
I'd love to love to know more details about sort
of all the different I mean, obviously so many things
went into the collapse of the Bronze Age, and I'm

(06:54):
fascinated in sort of the I guess the outside forces.
Maybe could we can focus on or the theories rather
and but maybe we'll start it off with just very
something very simple, which is, you know, do you have
do you a favorite thing to talk about when it
comes to this aspect the end of the Bronze Age?
Do you have like a pet bit that's your favorite?

Speaker 2 (07:20):
What is my favorite part of the collapse?

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Good question, good question. I actually think my favorite part
about the collapse, if one is allowed to put it
that way, is the fact that out of all the
things that have been suggested, and somebody says, choose one,
which one do you like? Was it earthquake, was it disease,

(07:45):
was it migration? Was it drought? And my answer is yes, yes,
it's all of the above, and as my kids would say,
it was a series of unfortunate events to quote Limony Snicket, right.
So I think that's my favorite part is it's all
of the above, right, So it's not one you don't

(08:06):
have to choose, you can take them all well.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
And I think that's what makes it so much more
interesting too, like it, and so much more believable, because
I mean, I have this this video I saw years
ago that just keeps coming up in this series because
it's all I can think of. And it was this
one of those guys on on Instagram, you know who
who talks about history in that really loud and fast
way where they can kind of make it sound like

(08:30):
they know what they're talking about, even if they're spouting
utter nonsense. And this guy had this whole thing about,
you know, the greatness of the Mycenaeans and how incredible
they were, and then how one day they just disappeared
and all died out, and the people of the Greek
mainland lost the ability to understand written word. And then
from the dark ages, Homer came up, you know, fully

(08:53):
formed like a theene out of Zeus's head and gave
us these this language and these stories and it's just
like the confidence with which these people say this, and
then of course so many people believe them. And so
it's the thing I keep returning to when it comes
to this topic of you know how, no lots of
things happened. We know generally why, you know, why the

(09:15):
Mice and Knean period ended, why the Bronze Age ended,
and and you know, to say they that humanity like
lost the ability to understand written word is perhaps a
little cruel to humanity, just a little exaggerated.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
But yeah, yeah, I'm seeing things on YouTube now where
you've got all these people pontificating on the late Bronzeige
collapse and everything else like that. They're going on and
on and on and not giving any credit to the
actual people who have worked on this, so that their
listeners think that they came up with all of it.
I'm just like, WHOA. First of all, I give credit

(09:51):
where credits due, And secondly, it's like, I mean, in
this case, it'll stop mansplaining to me, you know, that's
what they're doing. So anyway, but at least, at least
the Late Bronze Age is getting out there into the
broader world well, and.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
It's it's things like this that that make you want
to do the series of episodes that I get to do,
you know, when I see this kind of nonsense and
and the lack of sources and you know, all of
those different things. A couple of years ago, I did
a similar series on Atlantis because people were going off
about all the different theories on Atlantis, and you know,
so I released a series of episodes basically breaking down

(10:29):
all the reasons why Atlantis is literally nothing exactly.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, I could. I could honestly see
somebody starting a podcast that would be called yes but
or no not Actually you know I'm going from there, Yeah, yes,
confident but exactly. But you're right, Atlantis lends itself perfectly

(10:55):
to it. Yeah, and I talk about that in my
archaeology course, and there I'm leaning towards, well, is it
Santorini if it's anything, or you know, is it really
just Plato making it up about his ideal state?

Speaker 1 (11:09):
Well, and yeah, I kind of landed on you know,
it is Plato making everything up, but maybe he was
inspired by the general shape and history of Santorini.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what I tend to think,
and I don't know how this would go in with
your podcast, but I tell my students, I think there
is a kernel of truth at the basis of most
of the myths and legends. So you can point, you know,
to the Trojan War, Yes, there is some stuff something happened.
You can point to the legend of Theseus and the

(11:41):
Minotaur and look at the ruins of Conolso's yes, maybe
you know, so I think same thing so Atlantis. Maybe
evocative memories of Santorini, but who knows.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah, yeah, And I think those are important because it
does give you some kind of basis for how these
stories come about, and then you can look at, you know,
but where the accuracies lie and where it's mostly just
you know, invention.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Right exactly. Yeah, yeah, I like the idea of some
things being I think the word is the electrical, where
you're making something up to explain something you can see.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
So yeah, yeah, well, you know, in my Bronze Age series,
I'm talking a lot about you know, the where, the where,
the oral tradition and the mythology you know, ties in,
because obviously that's what I'm most interested in, and I
think it's what's going to connect well with my listeners.
You know, I love the kenosos of it all. You know,
you look there and you're like, well, I could see
how this can look like a labyrinth. Like there's a

(12:34):
lot of bulls too. They had a real thing for
bull like canography. Like you can see kind of where
these things come about. When there is you know, five
hundred years gap in between.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Right and absolutely and when you get like wall paintings
in Egypt that show people leaping over bulls in front
of a labyrinth, and then you go, whoa, okay, but
that dates to seventeen hundred BCE. You're like, wait a minute, okay,
or the Menoans in contact with Egypt that that's yes,
they are okay, and you go from there. And same

(13:05):
thing with the Trojan War, which I think is partner
parcel of the whole Late Bronze Age collapse. I've got
no problem at all with something having happened at Troy,
you know. And you can point to the Hittite records
where they mentioned not one, not two, not three, but
four wars that they fought in and around Troy. So
the question for me is not was there a Trojan War?

(13:27):
The question for me is which Trojan war was Homer
talking about? And how does it link to the ones
that the Hittites are talking about. So I do think
that there's a lot of interplay between history, archaeology, mythology,
and that's where all of this comes in and is
so much fun.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah, well and it is. I mean, that's yeah, That's
what I love so much about it. And what I've
been trying to like dig into all of my scripts
for this series is just where I can link in
the mythological references, the ways that you know, the what
what the people later were looking at and how they
were able to tie it to whatever cultural memory they had,
and then you know, transform it into the myths that

(14:08):
we have today.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
And then you look at things like systems collapse, which
is probably what the late Bronze Age collapse is, and
you realize that if you're Colin Renfrew working in the
late seventies and you're defining a systems collapse, one is
that you've got a so called dark age afterward, in
which people are looking back at the Golden Age and

(14:31):
reminiscing and you know, hello Homer, right and hello, he
see it. So I'm like, yeah, okay, and you know
that poor hecid. I wish that I were not living
in an age of iron, and like, yeah, you are,
deal with it?

Speaker 1 (14:45):
So right, Oh, the idea of poor he sid Yeah, okay, well,
I mean is it the perfect way to dive a
little deeper into you know, all the all the different
kind of things that went into it. So you know,
you mentioned the wars of in the Hittite record, and like,

(15:05):
what what are some I'm trying to think of a
better way of phrasing a question, but I'm just so
curious in you know, all the different I suppose records.
I'm quite interested in the records that we have that
give us, you know, some sense of what was happening,
and you know, if it can be tied later to
myths that come out, I mean, even better. But I'm

(15:26):
just so curious in what the records say because I know,
obviously we're dealing with so many different different bits and
pieces when it comes to how we learn about this collapse,
but in terms of what they were writing, like what,
you know, what do we know?

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah? So that's a very interesting question because in addition
to all the archaeology where we've gone and we've dug
up the cities, and yes, this one's destroyed. No, this
one isn't. And this one gets hit by an earthquake,
this one gets hit by humans. We do have a
lot of written records, as you say, but they differ
from society to society, which is probably not surprising. And

(16:03):
they differ in the amount of information we can get
for them and in how much we can trust them
at face value versus exaggeration. So, for instance, we don't
have nearly as much information from the Myceonians because they're
writing in linear b and their clay tablets are concerned

(16:24):
with accounting from the palaces, so they're you know, they're
talking about how many chariot wheels you've got, how many sheep?
They they do not, perhaps surprisingly talk about and we
traded with Egypt, and we traded with Cyprus. There's actually
no real mention of trade or anything like that in

(16:45):
the linear.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
Be Really, I was totally wrong about that. Oh that's
so interesting. I knew it was all palace records, but it's.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
All palace records. What we do have. What we do have, though,
are like the names of items, where the foreign name
comes with the foreign item, some of which might surprise you.
I mean, there's a name of a spice Cyprus, which
you know may or may not come from it's not
spelled quite the same. But the word for ivory comes

(17:12):
from the hit type, the word for gold, the word
for kiton. I mean, a lot of these things come
from the Near East. The word for sesame sasama, and
linear b comes directly out of Akkadian and all of that. So,
and we have the names of a couple of people.
There's one guy named Api Appi Coutio, the Egyptian, and

(17:36):
he's in charge of like eighty sheep picked canalso's like,
why is a guy named the Egyptian in charge? So anyway,
so the linear B tablets from mainland Greece and Canalsos
are not as much help as you might expect. On
the other hand, the hittype records, as I mentioned, talk
about wars, conflicts problems with an area in northwestern Anatolia

(18:00):
modern Turkey, in a region called Osawa and Osoa seems
to be a confederation of like twenty two cities and states.
In fact, the word Aswa gave rise to Asia. That's
where we get the name Asia from. And in among
the twenty two cities and towns is, one called Tarusa

(18:22):
and another Willusa. Willis seems to be the name for
Troy for the Hittites, and Tarusia or Tarusa is apparently
the area around It's like the troad versus Troy. But
you know, in Greek we've got Troy, which is Ilios,
of course, and there would have been a digamma originally,

(18:47):
so it would have been like a W. It would
have been Willios, and the W drops out over time.
Willios in Greek, Willusa in Hitsite. Hello, it's Troy. So there.
And they're talking about, as I say, about four conflicts
starting back in the fifteenth century BC. So I'm actually
wondering if the Trojan War stories that come down to

(19:10):
us from Homer and the Epic cycle might not be
telescoping of two or three hundred years of on again,
off again conflict at any rate. The Hittite records also
talk about the fact that there is drought and famine
towards the end of the Late Bronze Age, and they

(19:31):
talk about campaigns that their kings. Do we know from
archaeology that they've actually abandoned their capital city of Hatusa
just before the end, so when part of it's burnt,
it's already abandoned. So we've got some info from the
Hittite records. The Egyptians, of course, are useful, and that's
where the Sea Peoples come from, because twice Pharaoh Marnepta

(19:55):
in twelve oh seven and Pharaoh Ramsy's the third in
eleven seventy seven BC, And that's where the title of
my first book in this series came from. They talk
about a coalition attacking Egypt twice within you know, thirty
year period. We call them the Sea People, so that's

(20:16):
the name that the French Egyptologists came up with, but
the Egyptians actually tell us their names the Palsse, the
Dnian or Danuna, the Shardana or Sheridan, the Shekelesh, and
so we've been playing linguistic games with them. Are the
Shardana or the Shordan from Sardinia for example? Are the

(20:38):
Shekelesh from Sicily? Are the Danuna or Dnian? Is that Homer?
Is that?

Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah? I thought right.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
Exactly. And actually in the earlier wave there's a group
called the equesh are the equest the Achaeans, and so
do we have one group from the Aegean coming in
twelve oh seven, and another group coming in eleven seventy seven,
and the Egyptians, who don't know better, call one way
the Equestion on the next wave then or dany So anyway,

(21:13):
the only group that we think we can actually identify
is the palesse set. Those are the Philistines. And in
the Hebrew Bible it claims the Philistines come from crete,
from kaftor so, you know, there may be something to that. Now,
the Egyptians say that they beat these sea peoples both times,

(21:34):
but you know, can you take the Egyptian records at
face value?

Speaker 1 (21:37):
Are they going to say when they.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Lost exactly when the Egyptians ever say when they lost them?

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, we got beat really badly, Like they're not going
to rate that.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah, even the Battle of Cadessh, which was a draw
back in about twelve seventy four that we know, you know,
we know it was a stalemate, but the Egyptians claim
a victory. So so do the Hittites for that matter.
But never mind. So, you know, so one place that
has provided really interesting records is the site of a

(22:09):
port city on what is now the north coast of Syria.
And there we have archives from three or four different
private merchants who are also working for the palace, and
they talk about life on the one hand going on
just as per normal right up until the end. I mean,

(22:32):
there's even one guy who's sending his ships back and
forth to Crete. But then all of a sudden we
get reports of enemy ships being seen, that enemy troops
have landed at rasib Andhani, which is right there on
the coast, and that troops are advancing towards Ugarit. And

(22:56):
we know that Ugart is destroyed by humans. There are
arrowheads in the walls, there's a meter three feet of destruction,
and yet we don't know who the enemies are because
they just say the enemy. So from Ugart we then

(23:17):
get an idea of the end. And some of the
other texts, and these were ones that have only just
been published. They came out in French in twenty sixteen,
and then an English translation published by Yuri Cohen in
twenty twenty, where the texts from Ugart are talking about
a famine and that they're all dying, and that they're

(23:40):
writing to the pharaoh of Egypt, including Marnepta, the same
guy as the thought to see people's and the King
of Ugart writes to Menepta saying that we're dying here,
there's a famine. Can you send us anything? And interestingly
we're missing that letter, but we have Marnepta's response, in

(24:01):
which he quotes the letter. He says, you wrote to
me saying X, Y and Z and so here, I'm
happy to help. These sends seven thousand dried fish, plus
beads and textiles. And I'm not sure how the beads
and textiles would help the famine, but the dried fish
went a long way. I'm sure. Yeah. So there we

(24:22):
would have no reason to doubt it. It's not exaggeration,
it's not a public record, it's a private letter between
kings and so that for me is a very useful
textual source. So, like I say, we've got a number
of different sources from different cities. The question is how

(24:44):
much can we take at face value and how much
can we say, Okay, that really was the situation, but
I would love to have more. For instance, we don't
have anybody writing contemporaneously saying help, help, the sky is falling,
we're collapsing. Oh send help. We've got earthquakes, you know,
we don't have that. We do have people saying we're

(25:07):
being invaded, send re fores months. But you know, was
anybody aware at that time that they were collapsing and
wrote about it? You know, was there somebody who was
at Clytemnestra that was you know, predicting the future or
other people like that? Yeah? You was there anybody like that?

(25:27):
And a Southsayer and you know, was she ignored? So
we don't have that, unfortunately, but we do have a
lot of information.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, it's really interesting that that what the textual sources
we do have don't talk about the natural disasters that
we know were happening. Like I have a real pet
obsession with the eruption of thera just because I love
a good volcanic eruption, Like they're just fascinating. And I've
went to Akritiri a couple of years ago and just you know,
game changer, and it is fascinating that. I mean, I

(25:59):
know that it's considerably earlier, you know than when things
are collapsing, but I know, but still that there were
earthquakes happening so often, and it's interesting that they don't ever,
you know, write that down. Of course, I think probably
a big problem with this time period and the writings
is that they were much more practical than they were later.
You know, there was the writing was much more about
whether it was going to be useful versus like recording

(26:22):
things for posterity.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Right exactly, And they weren't busy doing that, that is
for sure. But we do know that there's a period
of about fifty years when there's earthquakes back then and
earthquake storm as Amos North from Stanford has called them,
and they're affecting many of the cities at that time,
including Troy. We know that Troy six is destroyed by earthquakes.

(26:47):
So then there's another earthquake at Comel Hatan in Egypt,
where i'm an Hotep the Third's palace was, and at
Mycena maybe at Turns that's a bit debated now, but yeah,
we've got all that, and yet earthquakes were a big
factor and yet nobody's writing about them, which okay, you know.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
So it goes yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting though,
the earth shakes, Like you'd think you'd write it down
or like say it to somebody, but I guess, you know,
it's not necessary for any kind of record keeping maybe,
but it's yeah, it's interesting. So I feel like this
is now just me being like a nerd for natural disasters,

(27:27):
but like I feel like, if there's an earthquake at Myceni,
they'd probably feel it a tarans like it's.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Not far yes, exactly exactly you would think, so you
would think so right, right, And I realized I mispoke
not quite Amnesty. Of course it's Cassandra who does all
the profitsing, right, So you know, were there any Cassandra's
back then, I'm sure there were, but they didn't write
their words down. So and that's where where I mean

(27:52):
the archaeology comes in because you know, as one of
the books that I read when I was younger, the
Mute Stones Speak, you know, we've got to get archaeology
to tell its story. And it's wonderful when the written
text can supplement it, you know, and that's something that
we especially find in the Iron Age when you've gotten

(28:12):
the Neo Assyrian texts and all of that. But here
at the end of the Late Bronside where I would say,
so reliant on what the archaeologists are finding and how
they interpret it. But that's why there's so much room
for agreement and disagreements when you're looking at the same
data and two people can see two different stories there.

(28:35):
But we definitely have tons of evidence for the late Bronzides,
some written and some not.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Mm well, and I know, you know, when it comes
to writing, especially during this period, we're really dealing with
the elites, right that the people who have the ability
not only to write, but to have it preserved. And
I think that that's something that you know, if you're
just coming to this as an outsider, like interested in
the subject, it's harder to remember because now anyone can

(29:02):
write something down and have it preserved. But back then,
like you know, there there's a lot that has to
go into some thing not only being recorded but surviving
for us today. And that does mean that it is
really the people, the rich people, the elites in power
that can.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Do that exactly, and that is very much a problem
from back then. And that was some of the comments
that I got on the first book, including in some reviews.
He's telling the story of the one percent, what about
the ninety nine percent? And my response is, yeah, what
about him? I'd love to be able to talk about him.
Show me the evidence because and that even after the collapse,

(29:39):
you know, in the aftermath and the Iron Age again,
and what I say in the sequel that's just about
to come out after eleven seventy seven BC, in the
front of the book and the preface and the prologue,
I explicitly say, I can only report what I know.
I can only report what we found in archaeology or
from the written text. And in the case and I

(30:01):
give the example of the Neo Assyrians. They're talking about
the king and the administration, they're talking about the one percent.
I said, so I can't really tell you what it
was like for a peasant out in the hinterlands unless
somebody has gone and excavated it. So I say, unfortunately,
this is the story of the elite, and I just

(30:21):
can't tell you the story of the unnamed millions out there,
much as I would want to do that. So we
are our hands are tied by the evidence that's been
left to us, that's for sure. And the least we
can do is acknowledge that and say, you know, there's
a lot that remains untold.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
When I imagine the archaeological record does give us certainly more
when it comes to you know, some level of normalcy
like obviously not deep out in the country unless you
suddenly figure out how where to excavate and can manage it.
But in terms of you know, even the palatial structures
and stuff, the archaeology would would, I imagine give us
some idea of what a slightly more normal person lived.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Like, assuming somebody has found a site and excavated it.
Absolutely right, But even there it's it's worth the mercy
of our technology to a certain degree. I mean, it
used to be thought that in the aftermath of the
Brownze age on the Greek mainland that between seventy and

(31:52):
ninety percent of the people had died or had migrated.
We've now lowered that a maximum sixty percent diet or migrated,
maybe more like forty percent. Sarah Murray and Ian Morris
have suggested the popular las plummeted from six hundred thousand
down to about three hundred and thirty thousand people on

(32:13):
the Greek mainland. But part of that, part of the
reason why we've ratcheted it back and said, oh, it
wasn't ninety percent the diet, it's only forty percent, is
because now we're finding more iron age sits that we
hadn't been able to find before, and so with every
new site you're like, Okay, more people survived or whatever.

(32:34):
So again I keep in mind that when we're calling
something like the aftermath of the collapse a dark gauge,
it's frequently a reference to the fact that we don't
know what happened. It's dark to us, which is why
you've got so many scholarly articles where the title is

(32:55):
new light on the dark Gauge. You know, new light.
It's like, eventually there's enough light. It's not a dark
age anymore. And in fact, I don't think that the
Iron Age is a dark age, and that's what a
lot of Skylar are arguing now. The problem is that
the general public doesn't know that yet. So you still
see the centuries after the Late Run's Age collapse late twelfth, eleventh, tenth, ninth,

(33:22):
even down into the eighth still called the world's first
dark age. I mean, even the pr for eleven seventy
seven talked about the aftermath being the world's first dark age.
So in the sequel at the end, I make the
argument and I agree with my colleagues that say stop
calling this a dark age, just like the Middle ages.

(33:45):
They don't want theirs called the dark Age anymore, same
with us. So I'm in the camp that says, can
we just call it the Iron Age, which is accurate,
doesn't cause you know, cast any aspersions. But so anyway,
so it's part of how much we know, and that's

(34:06):
where the technology that our including remote sensing and that
are surveying techniques and all that is, if you'll excuse me,
shedding more light on this period.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
No, I think it's really important to emphasize that, Like
it's something that I've been aware of in writing this
of you know, both noting that it used to be
called or and it's still sometimes called a dark age,
but all the reasons why that's not really applicable and
just is misleading because I think that people do really
consider a dark age more to be about like, you know,
what is happening versus this idea of a lack of sources.

(34:43):
And that's really applicable to the Middle Ages too, where
you know, people considered it a dark age is in
terms of like you know, human intellect and stuff, and
that's just it's very unfortunate for the people that we're
living then. And I think about that with the Iron
Age a lot, because I mean the Iron Age is
when we get the development of everything that I certainly
obsess over when it comes to ancient Greece, Like they
weren't doing nothing. They weren't some suddenly dumbed down group

(35:06):
of people, Like just a lot of things change and
they stopped, you know, recording things in the same way,
and so we don't know. But that doesn't mean it
wasn't happening exactly.

Speaker 2 (35:15):
It doesn't mean it wasn't happening, and it doesn't mean
they weren't trying their best. And even a dark day,
it's not you know, the total collapse in degeneration with
wild dogs howling, and you know people and I do
talk about this at the towards the end of the sequel,
but yeah, you know, we're going to get the standardization

(35:36):
of the alphabet courtesy of the Phoenicians, who then bring
it over to Greece and to Italy for that matter,
and so our people in Greece are going to be
able to start writing, certainly by the eighth century, and
maybe even earlier. There's some new research that is debating
whether the alphabet made it over as early as the

(35:57):
eleventh century. Which I'm in total favor of because that's
when it gets standardized over in the Near East. Why
would Greece be three hundred years behind. Bring it on
over and you know, we've got I think at some
point there's thirty three different variations of the early alphabet,
so they're experimenting. So yeah, this is a time of innovation.

(36:21):
It's the time of invention. And not only do you
get the standardization of the alphabet, you also get iron
and it gives the name to this. You get the
invention of iron, which is probably courtesy of the Cypriots,
it's looking like right now, and they're making bimetallic knives

(36:42):
and weapons where the blade is made of iron and
the hilt, you know, inlaid with bone or wood or ivory,
but fastened on with rivets made of bronze. So you
get both bronze and iron. And it looks like the
Cypriots are kind of making the transformation from the segue,

(37:04):
if you will, from the Bronze age to the Iron age,
and that on Cyprus they've been working with copper all
this time and now they move into iron, and along
along with the exportation of these objects, both degrees and
the Southern Levan. It looks like they're also exporting the
know how, the technology, and then of course you've got

(37:26):
iron ore in every country and so everybody's then able
to make it. So this is a period of invention, innovation, transformation.
And one thing that I take a look at in
this sequel, I borrow the adaptive cycle, which is something
that you frequently see in environmental studies, biology and such.

(37:50):
But the basic ideas you know, empires rise and fall, right,
that's the adaptive cycle. You get a release phase and
then you get an innovation phase and then everything comes back.
I think that's what we're looking at here. The Bronze
Age collapse is the release phase, the omega phase in
adaptive cycle, and then the Iron Age not a dark age,

(38:13):
but it's the alpha phase, which is defined as a
period of invention and innovation trying to grapple with what's
just happened. And I think that's a perfect analogy right here.
So it's almost the opposite of a dark age. And
in fact, some scholars like John Poppadopolis and Sarah Morris

(38:36):
at UCLA have argued that this is not a dark age,
it's far from it, and so have some of the
people that are studying the Near East. So I'm just
literally jumping in the bandwagon and agreeing with you that
this is a time of invention and innovation. It's actually

(38:57):
a very exciting time. I mean, I'm a Bronze Age person,
that's where my heart lies. But I have to admit
that the Iron Age is pretty darn interesting, So I'll
give them that.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Well, I'm really big on the classical and archaic, so
we can kind of find the middle ground there in
the Iron But I mean, it's so interesting to me
that it's ever been called the Dark Age because regardless
of what we did or did not know, like what
we've known for a long time is that it did
give rise to the oral tradition that would become like
the Homeric epics. Like the idea of referring to the
time when those were being created, you know, as a

(39:31):
dark age is so ironic given that you know, so
much of quote unquote Western civilization has been attributed to
the Greeks, like during and from that, I was like, why, like,
there's just so much kind of happening there that seems contradictory.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Yeah. Absolutely, But if you think back too, the Greeks
themselves never talked about a dark age. No, that's as
James Whitley once said, the dark Age of Greece is
our own conception. And you know, and that's where again
John Popadopoulos said, the Greeks didn't know of a dark age.

(40:05):
Why not trust their better judgments? And I'm like, yeah,
why not trust their better judgment? Right? So yeah, I
would absolutely agree. Any age that's got everyone from Homer
to Hecia Disapho went onward, is not, in my mind
a dark age.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
Yeah. Yeah, they're giving us amazing stuff that we all
still love. So yeah, Now the alphabet that you mentioned,
you know, the sort of new research coming through about
when it was, you know, happening in Greece, was that
the some of the stuff that's been published recently about
on Andros. There was something that recently came out about that.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
Yeah. I don't know if it is or not. I'd
have to look, but I'm thinking of the research that
Wilhelmina Wall has been publishing out of I think I
think she's at Leiden but doing really interesting work on
the origins of the alphabet. But yeah, this is new
stuff rally, and there's a couple of Greek archaeologists working

(41:11):
on this as well. So I don't know what the
pushback is going to be from the actual philologist or
linguists or anything like that. But from an archaeological point
of view, looking at the earliest Phoenician alphabet and the
earliest inscriptions in Greece, I think we can push it

(41:34):
back further. But Brio Yanni's has been talking about this anyway,
the field is definitely alive and well, and I think
it may shake up some of the tried and true
things that we've been teaching for years. So I mean,
there are other things that we're going to shake up.
I mean, I start my book by dismissing the Dorian invasion.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
Lovely, I'd love to hear more about that.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
Well, there's nothing here. It didn't happen, Okay, No, just no.
Exactly all the maps that have the Dorian coming down,
I'm like, no, exactly. So I actually start the book
with that. I end the book pleading for no dark ages.
It's an iron age. I begin the book with the Dorians.
In fact, I start out with the Dorians came down

(42:25):
from the north, brandishing their weapons of iron. They overran
Greece and took over and d and then I pause
figurative literally, and then say, but it probably never happened,
And what that's a good way to start to open
the book, right right, So, yeah, but it probably never happened.

(42:47):
The problem is that you see it all over the internet.
You see it in online encyclopedias, and I actually call
out one or two by name in the book with
the link, so, which means I'm pretty sure within three
weeks of the book appearing in mid April that the
online encyclopedias will have changed their entry and either the

(43:09):
link will be dead or they will have changed it
to not say what I've got. So I've got screenshots,
I've got the receipts. So but yeah, they still talk
about the Dorians coming sweeping down from the north at
about twelve hundred PC and ending my Synian civilization. And
I'm like no, And I reached back and quote scholars

(43:30):
all the way back to like Rheese Carpenter in the
sixties saying things like the Dorian invasion is a mirage,
that it's an invasion without invaders, that everything they're supposed
to bring with them is already there and can be
attributed to them. So you know, I think it's like
herotidaus enthusidities. We're trying to, in a way make this

(43:53):
up so they could explain the dialects of Greece, you know,
Ionic versus Dorac versus whatever. But archaeologically speaking, there's no
evidence for it. Now, of course, we do have the
problem with evidence of absence or absence of evidence is
not and all that right, absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence. We can't find the Dorian invasion. One

(44:14):
could argue that doesn't mean it didn't exist. I do
think it didn't exist. What we've got instead, how about
if it's not an invasion, but it's a migration. We
do have people moving back and forth at that time,
not a problem, but there is a world of difference
between a migration and an invasion, two very different things.

(44:36):
So I start out the book saying, if we're wrong
about the Dorian invasion, and we have to change our
textbooks because they're in the textbooks. I mean the textbook
that I was using for my Ancient Mediterranean Civilization's class.
It's got a page and a half two pages on
the Dorian Invasion. And I would tell my freshmen. Because

(44:57):
it's a freshman class. I would say, you know, rip
those pages out of the textbook because that's wrong, right,
or if we're going to discuss it, let's discuss it.
But so it's still around, and we just have to
we have to let the general public know that that
stuff is not right. So you know, there's another episode
for you, Yes but you know, or or no, not

(45:19):
so much. The Dorian Invasion. Did it happen? No? Right,
But again, this is not news to scholars, but it
is news to the general public. And everywhere I look
on the internet, they're like, oh, and I'm I'm fully
expecting that after the sequel comes out, we'll see a
whole other sloop of podcasts of people man explaining why

(45:41):
the Dorian Invasion either happened or didn't happen and taking
credit for everything that you know that we've done. But anyway,
there's lots of I guess one could say, miss and
legends about this period, some of which are accurate and
some of which just aren't, and we got to figure
out which is which.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
M M. It's funny I'm trying to think of, you know,
because I really don't touch on history too much. As
outside of like, you know, the kind of classical period
history or surrounding the playwrights, because I love them and
they talk about myths. But you know, so I've touched
into history a couple of times on the show, you know,
in my own research, and one of them was last
year I did a series on Sparta and it was

(46:24):
broadly about the Sparta sort of the Spartan mirage, you know,
the myths that Sparta created for themselves, right, And I
think that's the only time I've ever touched on the
Dorian invasion. And I'm trying to remember what I said,
but I from what I remember of looking into it,
it felt to me more like a Spartan myth than
it did history. And so I'm hoping that that's kind
of where I landed at the time, because that's what

(46:45):
it felt like. It's just like another of the things
that the Spartans kind of, you know, mythologized about themselves,
and that kind of took it, sort of caught hold
and lasted.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
Yeah, I would agree. I would absolutely agree that it
was part of the Spartan mirage, all the stuff that
Paul Cartlidge and other people talk about, and yeah, the
Dorians are part and parcel of that. They were very
important for those Spartans. So yeah, I absolutely agree. And
in my History of Ancient Greece course when I teach it,
I say the exact same thing. I touch on it

(47:17):
as well.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
Yeah, I feel like I thought it wasn't. Well, clearly
I didn't. I don't know. Now I'm fascinated, but yeah,
I mean it always seemed unlikely to me, like why
it just yeah, it feels like an unlikely explanation for
what happened, And.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
Well, the thing is unlikely or not. I mean, the
Dorian invasion, it could happen. It's very much like the
Sea People's. I mean, in the original eleven seventy seven book,
I start with the Sea People's and so now in
the sequel I thought, okay, let me start with the Dorians,
and so we have the same sort of questions like

(47:53):
if the Sea peoples actually did invade like the Egyptians,
then why couldn't the Dorians have invaded also? Right? And
one could ask that the part of the problem is
that for the Dorians, as I said, there's no archaeological evidence.
For the Sea People's, there's no archaeological evidence either, you know,

(48:14):
we can't find them anywhere. We do have textual evidence, right,
the shard And that's part of the problem. The Shardana
or the Shurdan. They're mercenaries. We see them fighting in
the Near East, both for Egypt and against Egypt from
like the fourteenth century on. They're known quantities. And yet

(48:35):
point me to a site anywhere that you can say,
this is where the Shardana come from, right in Sardinia
or wherever there isn't one yet, right, And even Ugart
where they talk about the enemy ships showing up, they
don't say the Shardana. There is one text that mentions
a Shardana. So we've got the same sort of thing

(49:00):
for the sea people's and for the Dorians. And so
I guess one could ask, and I'm just talking off
the top of my head here, but why do we
accept the sea peoples and not the Dorians. Well, the
sea peoples, I now think are as I mentioned, are
part of the equation in terms of being victims as

(49:21):
opposed to oppressors. They are migrating because of a drought,
and I would have no problem with the Dorians doing
that as well. I have no problem with the Dorians
migrating at the end of the Late Bronze Age. I
just don't want the Dorians invading. And similarly, I'm not

(49:42):
so sure the Sea People's invaded per se. I think
they are migrating, and we've got evidence, especially in the
Southern Levant now, for the Philistines, who are part of
the Sea Peoples, as having been a much more peaceful
assimilation into the region than one would expect. So maybe

(50:04):
that's the answer. And I guess what I'm doing in
both books is arguing for a migration rather than an invasion,
for both to see people's and the Dorians. And I
think that explains the evidence we've got. It explains some
of the tics that we've got, and it doesn't do
away with them completely. It just massages it slightly to

(50:26):
fit the evidence that we've got. So, you know, you
want to call it a Dorian migration, I'm cool. Call
it a Dorian invasion. I'm not so sure about that.
But you know, again, but this is nuances, this is semantics,
and you know, somebody out in the general populace is
going to say invasion, migration, whatever. I'm like, no, not whatever,

(50:50):
let's talk about it.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
Mm hmmm. Well, and that's I'm so glad that you
brought it up that way because I think, I mean,
one of the things that we've been really trying to
drill in in this whole series is the way that
the ancient Mediterranean was broadly about migration, like the way
that you know, it wasn't about you know, this group
of people lived in this land and only in this land,

(51:13):
and they are the indigenous peoples, and and you know,
across Mediterranean it was a very shared space. There was
a lot of going back and forth, a lot of migration,
especially if we're dealing with drought and other like climate
change things that would force people to migrate. And I
think that especially because of the myth of Western civilization,

(51:33):
you know, we have this idea that like ancient Greece
existed in a little bubble, a little vacuum of like
just them, and they were very Greek and they started everything.
And it's like even the ancient Greeks are like, well,
the Phoenicians gave us the alphabet, and you know, Aphrodite
probably came from Cyprus, and you know, like they give
us so much evidence for migration, both of culture and

(51:57):
language and people. But I think it really is important
to remind everyone that this wasn't like set you know it,
Migration happened a lot and a lot of people, a
lot of different people from different places lived together in
the same place, quite peacefully and quite happily. And it
wasn't always about an invading force like I think we

(52:20):
think about it because of later colonialism. We imagine that
if there is a large group of people, it is
always going to be an invading force. And I think
that that's a really important myth to break, and you know,
and really just point out all the evidence that suggest
that that's not really what was happening.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Broadly, I agree. And if you look, if you look
closely at the sea people's inscriptions in Egypt, the one
I'm thinking of Ramses the third and his inscription on
his wallet med at Habu. In addition to a scene
of the naval battle between the Egyptians and the Sea peoples,
he's got right next to it a scene of the

(52:58):
sea people's literally migrating. You see the women and the
children sitting on an ox cart, you know, with their
Samsonite luggage in the cart with them. You know, it's
a migration. It's not a bunch of men popped up
on testosterone just rating. It's an entire family migrating, and

(53:19):
we see the picture. So I actually said in the
original book that I thought that the analogy for the
Sea People's would be the dust Bowl in the nineteen
thirties in the United States, where the people moved from
Oklahoma to California. More recently, I would say the people

(53:44):
fleeing the Civil War in Syria would be the equivalent
of Sea People's. You know, they're just looking for a
better home where there, you know, not in the middle
of a war zone. People migrating trying to get to Europe,
for example. These are all, I would say, examples where

(54:04):
I wouldn't call that an invasion per se, I would
call it a migraine. And I think it's the same
at the end of the Late Bronze Age, in the
beginning of the Iron Age, we definitely have evidence for
lots of migration, not just in Greece, but elsewhere as well.
There may be that may be were the kingdoms of

(54:25):
like Moab and Ammon and even Etom. Even people they're
either migrating or they're nomadic at the time. At the
end of the Late Bronze Age, And of course I
think it was Herodotus that talks about the Etruscans migrating
from Anatolia because of a drought in about twelve hundred BCS.

(54:47):
So you know, there you go, there's your Herodotus talking
about a drought and a migration at the end of
the Late Bronze Age. Whether it's accurate or not, you know,
who knows, but.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Sure, but when they're writing it into their myths or
their you know, history or what Herodotas wanted to be
history like, it still is coming from somewhere. It's just
recently read yesterday somebody. It was a whole thing on Twitter,
but essentially it was like this the notion that Rome
was like not a city of immigrants, which is so absurd,

(55:21):
and Rome obviously like, yes, you know, I won't pretend
that the aia it is not Augustine propaganda, but the
idea of Romans coming from from Troy like had to
have come from somewhere, even if they just imagined themselves
as a city of immigrants. That's an incredibly important, like
cultural tradition that they established for themselves. And I think

(55:45):
that it it's really important to point this stuff out
because today, our modern ideas are so based in like
fear mongering and all these different things about migrants, and
you know, it's like it's just horrible stuff. And I
think that often especially like you know, just what I
call history bros. But I appreciate that you call them
man's plains some please, like you know that the YouTuber guys,

(56:05):
and it, like, I think that that mentality comes into
those that kind of telling of this idea of invasions
instead of migrations, and it just kind of perpetuates these
problems that we have in the modern world and which
have like you know, really really important modern issues attached
to them, but then are being put on the ancient world.
And when we put that kind of stuff on the

(56:26):
ancient world, it almost gives legitimacy to the to the
actions of today, right, this suggestion that, oh, well, it
was an invasion and it was bad and they fought
back or whatever it is, you know, but yeah, whereas
a lot of it was migration. Not to say that
they weren't having wars obviously, but like it's important to
point out what things are migrations versus invasions.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
Absolutely, and I think that's where a lot of the
what did you just call them the history bros. Yeah,
they they lose the or they never knew the nuances
and what's the saying the devils and the details. So
the nuances matter at this absolutely yeah, absolutely so, especially

(57:07):
if you're ing and trying to compare the modern world
to the ancient world. You know, you need you need
to have the facts straight. And a lot of the
people on YouTube, let's just say, do not have their
facts completely in order.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
No, yeah, it's not the best. I mean not to
say that there aren't some good some good work being
put out there, but unfortunately the loudest ones tend to
be the ones that are the most wrong.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Right, Yes, there are some very good ones. I should
not wump everybody together, but yeah, there are others where
you would definitely want a yes, but or no not
so much.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Well, sensationalizing gets your views unfortunately, Right, It's like all
the documentaries that we see that have utter nonsense infused
in them because sensational is exciting.

Speaker 2 (57:53):
So it is, uh, it is.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
I would love to hear more about, you know, what's
happening at this period beyond Greece, because obviously I focus
mostly on Greece, but I want you know, we've talked
a little about the Hittites and the Egyptians, which is wonderful,
but I know a lot was happening more further inland,
wasn't it, like even into Mesopotamian stuff. Were they having
like a similar kind of collapse or their own version?

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Yes and no. And this is where this is, first
of all, where it gets very interesting, but also where
the sequel becomes even more important. So on the face
of it, at the end of the Late Bronze Age,
you know, everyone goes down. Actually what happens is it's
the network that goes down, the globalized Mediterranean network, as

(58:42):
Susan Sherritt and others have called it, the ones that
are linking everybody where nobody is more than three hops
away from anybody else, so that it's a small world network.
That network collapses at the end of the Late Bronze
it's the links are cut. The actual societies are each
affected in different ways, and that's what I'm exploring in

(59:07):
the sequel. Wonderful, but that's where it comes in because

(59:41):
at the end of the Late Bronze Age, on the
surface of it, it looks like the Assyrians and the
Babylonians do better than many of the other people. And
indeed they're all the way in inland Mesopotamia, as you said,
the tigers and Euphrates rivers. They are too far inland
to be hit by the sea peoples. They at first,

(01:00:05):
at least don't seem to have been hit by the
drought and the famine, maybe because they're on tigers and
Euphrates and in other words, they seem to have survived
better well. As it turns out, and I go into
in the sequel, the answer is yes and no. They
do survive longer, at least at first without the drought

(01:00:29):
and without the famine. They're not impacted immediately. They're not
impacted necessarily at eleven seventy seven like the others, nor
do they have to fight or anything like that. But
they do keep records. And this is what's nice, is
that they don't collapse. It's not how systems collapse. They
still have the king, they still have the administration, they

(01:00:50):
still have the economy, they still have the standing army,
they still know how to write right. They haven't lost
civilization per se. They're definitely not in a dark age,
but we are missing royal records for about seventy five years.
At that period, there just aren't any right, they're still around,

(01:01:13):
but we don't have records. We don't know why are
they writing on some other material or whatever. And then
when we do start getting records again about seventy five
years into it, down at about say eleven hundred BC,
they start saying, we now have a drought, we now
have famine, we are now resorting to cannibalism. So they

(01:01:37):
do get hit, but it's like almost one hundred years
later than anybody else. But what happens is they also
rebound because they never lose everything entirely. And so by
the ninth century, the Neo Assyrians are not only back
up and running, but they're busy conquering all of the
ancient earies. In fact, one thing of has changed. Back

(01:02:01):
in the Bronze Age, like the Assyrians and the Babylonians,
they were good commercial partners, were trading with everybody else. Right,
we even have Minoan sandals that are sent over to
Hamarabi of Babylon in the eighteenth century.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
That's adorable. I don't know why it's so cute.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
It is cute, but it's even better because he didn't
like him, and he returned them, and it tells us
that in the records, and I've always wondered, oh, why
did he return them? Are they too small? You know,
to last millennium? But anyway, so the Assyrians and the
Babylonians in the Brownze Age were good, dependable trading partners.

(01:02:43):
Now in the aftermath of the collapse, the people that
the Assyrians and Babylonians were trading with, many of them
had collapsed. The Assyrians go down, the Mycenaeans go down.
What the Neo Assyrians do when they come back up
in the ninth century is they start attacking and taking
the stuff. Whereas before they've been like, look, I'll give

(01:03:05):
you this for this and this for this, now they're like,
give me what you got, right, give me what you got,
and they are either demanding in tribute or actually capturing everything.
So that changes in the Iron Age is the nature
of the relationships with the Assyrians and Babylonians. So you know,

(01:03:25):
it's changed a little bit. And what's happening in the
Iron Age is quite different in some ways from the
Bronze Age. But I would say that's where the combination
of doing the research for the first book eleven seventy
seven BC. Added to the research for the second book,
The After eleven seventy seven BC has given me and

(01:03:49):
hopefully the readers, a more nuanced look at what happened before, during,
and after the collapse, so not just in terms of
resilience and everything, but in how the different relationships were affected.
So one of the things that I say in the
sequel is the collapse of the Late Bronze Age is messy.

(01:04:12):
The aftermath is even more messy.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
Mm hmmm. I mean makes sense when something that big
goes down, Yeah, it's gonna leave a mess behind.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
This is true, and that's interesting. But you know, again
from the archaeology and the textual records, we only have
bits and pieces. So I compare it to a kaleidoscope
where you're looking through and you've got all these pieces
and sometimes they can form a picture and other times
they're just you know, disjointed fragments, and we've got to
put them all together.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. I it kind of you
can kind of see how uh culture would would kind
of get to that point if they're having their their
you know, drought and famine, late and they've seen that
everyone else has kind of fallen around them, Like I
can I can see how a mentality would develop of like, well,
if we can't do the trading, like, but we're also

(01:05:04):
the ones who kind of, you know, stayed the strongest
as everyone crumbled. Like the the immediate reaction that kind
of time period is to be like, well, I guess
we'll take what we used to trade.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
For, right, Absolutely, we've still got our standing army. You don't.
We're just going to come and take your stuff, right yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
Yeah, And like you know, they used to have diplomacy,
but it wasn't possible anymore. And it's so interesting. Yeah, well,
and it's interesting how much you know, being inland can help.
But it makes sense, you know, like even in just
in terms of like the natural the earth factors. You know,
it is such a different place compared to like when

(01:05:42):
you're right on the coast of the Mediterranean.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
And exactly, but look, you know the Phoenicians who were
on the coast, Look, they were able to take advantage
and in contrast to the Neo Assyrians, the Phoenicians are
busy trading with everybody. You don't see, you know, the
Phoenicians conquering, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
Okay, so after so they're still doing that.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
Yeah, I mean, you do eventually get the Phoenician colonists,
just like you get Greek colonization, and so you get
you know, the Phoenicians on Cyprus, you get the Phoenicians
founding Carthage on all of that, and there would be
obviously some military to go with that, but some of
the earliest evidence we have them is I would say,

(01:06:27):
more peaceful maritime ventures in which they're going out and
trading for what they need and including as far west
as Spain. So but you know, then eventually you can't
blame them just I mean, I don't know, maybe you
could blame them just like Greece, you know, and the
Archaic period and the colonizing Curied, they start sending out, well,

(01:06:49):
in the Greeks case, start sending out their excess population,
and so we get the Phoenicians expanding that way too.
But again at first, it's I like to imagine it
much more peaceful. We got this, you got that, we
need it, let's go as opposed to the Assyrians with
you got that, we want to give it to us.

(01:07:12):
But again, one thing I would hasten to add is
that we're coming at this from the Neo Assyrian written
records for the most part, and I do not know
that we can take them all, or most or any

(01:07:32):
at face value, because again, the Neo Assyrians are very
much like the Egyptians. Neo Assyrians never lose a battle.
They always win, they always conquer, they always take loot,
you know, and really, actually.

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
Yeah, is it likely, just you know, statistically exactly so.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):
And there is some intimation that in some of the battles,
like when the Assyrians and the Babylonians are fighting, that
the Assyrians may have lost a couple of times. But again,
this is where we have to be careful of taking
inscriptions at face value, especially when they're obviously being used

(01:08:13):
as propaganda, when they're put up on blocks in the
king's palace for people to see where he's definitely boasting.
I mean, there's one one of my favorite inscriptions. He
calls himself a stormtrooper, and I'm thinking, oh, you're in
Star Wars. Huh, you're a stormtrooper. Okay, that's pretty cool, right, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
What would the word be like, what would be like
a more literal definition than we could call it a
storm trooper.

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
This good question. I have to go back and look
at the actual Lakadian and see. But he does call
himself a stormtrooper and compares his opponents to little little
desert rodents hopping away as he comes after them. So yeah, okay, fine.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
So yeah, well maybe maybe don't take that fully as truth, you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Know, exactly. So this is part of the problem. And
this is again what I say towards the beginning of
the book is not only do I only have the
information from the top one percent and don't really know
how the bottom is doing, except in some cases where
they give us like annual crop yields, which was sometimes
on the records. But I also can't say for sure

(01:09:28):
that we can take this at one hundred percent believability.
You know, are they gaslighting us? Are they exaggerating? You know,
did you really kill that many you know, wild bulls? Right?
And so on? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
Yeah, oh, I mean it's yeah, it's so interesting, especially
the textual record stuff like I think about that, you know,
when it comes to a just even mythology, right like
it it's yeah, we still only even when it comes
to mythology, we still only have the stuff that not
only they back then deemed you know, worthy of being
written down. But then whoever you know, in the last

(01:10:05):
thousand years or the thousand years that followed, decided to
keep it like and record it again and long enough
for us to have it like. There's so much missing,
and I think it's Yeah, it's important to remember, you know,
the nuance of what we do have and also what's
possible that we don't have.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Right right, exactly too much information. It's a plethora. It's
as smart as board.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
I feel like, Okay, I'm going to look at a
couple of I have some questions from Mikayla just as
we get closer to the time. I'm sure we've kind
of touched on a number of these things. But are
there any you know, really big misconceptions about the Bronze
Agent It's collapse that you feel like are very relevant
and we haven't talked about already.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
Yes, So the biggest misconception about the collapse that we
haven't talked about, but that you touched upon, not in
relation to this, but you like volcanoes, You like the
eruption of Santorini. Yeah, and who doesn't like a good eruption?
Right right? The biggest misconception is that the eruption of

(01:11:12):
Santorini contributed to the Late Bronze Age collapse. I see
that everywhere. I still see it everywhere, even though we've
managed to hammer home to some degree the idea that
the eruption of Santorini was back in the sixteenth century,
maybe the fifteenth at the latest, but somewhere between sixteen

(01:11:34):
twenty eight and fifteen fifty, and the collapse is at
twelve hundred, so that's, you know, three hundred and fifty,
four hundred years. Santorini had nothing to do with the
Late Bronzis for last I know, I know, but I'm
still seeing the history bros. I like that. I'm going
to start using that. I'm still seeing them on the

(01:11:56):
internet going yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, fine, but it did
impact create and I'm like yeah, and the Minoans bounced back,
and they're like, but it could have had a century's
long ripple effect. I'm like, could h didn't know, And
then others saying, well, maybe it exploded again, and I'm like, well,

(01:12:17):
one scholar has suggested there might have been renewed activity
in about twelve hundred, but no, that's for me. That's
the biggest misconception. Yeah, And when people are watching some
of my lectures from back in twenty sixteen, the comments
are like, you didn't even mention Santorini. And then I'm like,

(01:12:37):
watch the Q and A because I dismissed it there.
But yeah, so that's yeah, so I said, that's the
biggest misconception Santorini and the eruption has nothing to do
with the late ron Sage collapse.

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
Fair, fair, all right, I'll take it. And then sorry,
now I'm looking at my questions. The Usually I just
go with whatever I'm thinking about. Do you think that
there's anything in this period that is not getting you know,
the tension that it deserves.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
I think things aren't getting the attention. Well yeah, I
would say yeah, But no, I'm thinking of how to
phrase this because, on the one hand, most of the
things that contributed to their collapse I see around today.

(01:13:35):
You know you can check the boxes off. Yes, climate
change yes, yes, famine yes, earthquake yes, disease yes, invaders yes, migrants.
You know, we've got everything that they had back then,
plus we've got you know, nuclear weapons, so.

Speaker 1 (01:13:49):
And human made climate change and.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
Human made climate change and Hello, they collapsed. You know,
the Late Bronze Ages came to an end. There's no
question about that. Why you think we're not going to
come to an end? I don't know. That's eubristic. Every
civilization has either completely collapsed or had to transform so
that it was basically not recognizable. Again, Why you think

(01:14:14):
that's not going to happen to us? I have no idea,
So I think it's going to happen. I agree. I
think it's not a matter of if it's it's when.
When is it going to happen? You know?

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
Yeah? How fast are we going to let it happen
by letting made climate change continue? On?

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
Yeah? Yeah, climate And think back to two thousand and
eight with the financial crisis on Wall Street. I mean
we came really close to having a globalized meltdown right there.
But especially with the pandemic, I would say, And with
climate change, that's my other worry. That's where I don't

(01:14:50):
think we're doing ourselves any favors. No, Yeah, I mean definitely.
The scientific evidence is showing that there was climate change
back in the Late Bronze Age. Scientific evidence is also
showing there is climate change. Now, why stick your head
in the sand and pretend it's not happening. And this

(01:15:11):
is one of the common sense things they come up
with at the end of the sequel is, look, prepare
for extreme weather events. Just go ahead and do it.
We're seeing it all the time anyway. If you prepare
for it and an extreme weather event does not occur, fine,
not a big deal. If you prepare for it and

(01:15:32):
it does occur, good, Now you're in a good position.
So this was something I was interviewed by Adam Frank
on NPR after the first volume came out, and I
was happily blithering and blathering on about, well, you know,

(01:15:54):
the Hittites didn't know what was happening to them. They
had climate change, and know it wasn't caused by Hittite SUVs.
It was Mother Nature polymp petroleum from the earth exactly.
But I said, we're much more advanced technologically and everything else,
and we know all about climate change. We know it's

(01:16:16):
causing the dry outs and all that. And Adam Frank
just said to me, yes, but are we advanced enough
to do anything with our knowledge? And that I had
no answer to. So that is something I would point
to again. I don't think enough is being done. I
think we're giving too much airtime to the naysayers. There's

(01:16:40):
definitely a climate change, Come on, people, right, so what
are we going to do about it? Let's do something
and if we're ready, we're ready, and if we need it,
it's there, and if not, it's not. And you know, again,
hello late bronze age collapse. Look what happened to them?
You know? And hard on the heels of that is okay?

(01:17:01):
What about after collapse? What about resilience? What about transformation?
Don't you understand? What about coping versus adapt There's so
many lessons from the ancient world if we're just willing
to listen.

Speaker 1 (01:17:15):
Yeah, I'm so thrilled. I'm so thrilled that this is
you know, what you wanted to mention, And it is
almost identical in a brilliant way to my conversation with
Flint that will have aired just a few days before this.
And honestly, like, the way we as humanity are not
doing enough about climate change is my pet obsession in

(01:17:38):
my daily life. Like it's literally I'm sure some of
my friends would argue I talk about it too often,
Like it I am completely obsessed with how capitalism is
the main reason why we just are not actively saving
ourselves because the money is in is in the stuff
that's destroying us. And I didn't know that that's what
this Bronze Age series was going to become because I

(01:18:00):
just had not learned enough about the climate change aspect
of the collapse. So I'm just so thrilled that like that,
not only that it is this major talking point when
it comes to this, but that so many people working
on this and working in this field are connecting it
to what's happening now in the way that you are,
And it just it fills me with like just a
little bit more hope than I had before. Not enough,

(01:18:22):
not enough hope, but.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
Like some some hope. Ye little hope is better than none.

Speaker 1 (01:18:28):
Exactly exactly. And I mean this is something I've made
into like a talking point on the show before My
show is like, you know, more political than a mythology
show probably needs to be. But it's just who I
am as a person, and so it's it's like a
fairly regular thing that I talk about, especially you know,
in connection with the elites. So it's been quite fun
to be able to be like, oh, well, I'm going

(01:18:49):
to just also be able to talk about climate change
in a collapse of the elites when it comes to
the ancient world.

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
So well, it also shows how relevant all of this is,
that this isn't just ancient history, it's not just ancient mythology.
It is relevant to us today, and you part that's
part of the enduring legacy of myths and legends and
all of that is there continuing relevance. But in this

(01:19:16):
particular case, it's relevant to whether or not we survive
as a species, which I think is just a little
bit important.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
It's a tiny bit important. Yeah, you know, we might care. Yeah, right. Well,
to kind of close on a slightly more upbeat question,
is there anything or any particular you know, research field
of study when it comes to this topic that you
think is quite exciting, like new new research that's being
done or coming out. I know you touched upon some

(01:19:48):
you know, adjustments to when we think the alphabet, which
is very exciting. But you know, is there anything else
that's kind of thrilling?

Speaker 2 (01:19:54):
Yeah, there's actually a lot. But one thing that I
would the one thing I would point to is the
work with ancient DNA that is so so important, so
interesting and so fraught with potential problems. So you know,
just to get the ancient DNA out of the ancient

(01:20:16):
skeletons can be difficult, but then interpreting it also. So
on the one hand, we have great new stuff, like
there were four Philistine infants that were excavated at ascalon
underneath the floors of the houses, and those infants are
probably the grandkids of the Sea peoples who settled down

(01:20:41):
in Canaan, because the genetics show and I know genes
don't work quite this way, but the little kids are
like forty percent local Canaanite and sixty percent from elsewhere,
and the computer models indicate that the elsewhere is most

(01:21:01):
likely to be either crete or Spain or Sicily, and
that's exactly where we thought the Philistines were coming from. Anyway,
you know, the kids have been identified and the houses
as Philistine because of the pottery and everything else. But
there the DNA matches. Of course, the problem is four

(01:21:22):
kids is too small a sample, but still, you know,
it fit what we were already thinking, so that is interesting.
The problem is when modern pundits and such get hold
of the data and start saying things like, let's look
at the DNA of Minoan's and Mycenians and relate it
to people in Greece today and start making comparison. You know,

(01:21:46):
so and so has always been here, so and so
migrated in. This is where we have to be careful
of a the proper interpretation of the actual results and
then be how you use it and maybe making it
relevant or not, because you.

Speaker 1 (01:22:04):
Can blame the modern dangers of that exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:22:08):
That's dangerous, right, And the scientists are already pointing this
out that you've got oftentimes a huge difference between the
actual scientific report that might come out in Nature or
Science or something, and then the media's interpretation of it,

(01:22:29):
where the article and the headline are almost clickbait, like
you you know, implied earlier. And I do that all
the time, where I see something on the Internet or
somebody sends it to me and I'm like, oh, that's
sensational interesting. But to their credit, even those articles usually
have a hyperlink buried somewhere in the article, right, you

(01:22:53):
have to look for the blue word and you click
on it. It takes you to the original publication in
the scientific peer reviewed journal and you read that you're like, oh,
that's what they were saying, Yeah, that doesn't really matter
with what the media reported, so and again that's what

(01:23:13):
we can learn. But the general public, they don't go
and see the original. They just see the media report.
And you know, and even if we later this happens
all the time, if we later come out and say yes,
but we never get the bandwidth for our rebuttal that
the original story had, right, same thing, William Lantis, you.

Speaker 1 (01:23:34):
Know, yeah, yeah, oh, definitely, Yeah. You never get to
reach the same people or as many people. Yeah. Well,
and I just think of the ways that that kind
of thing can be used to.

Speaker 2 (01:23:44):
Justify absolutely absolutely and yet and yet this worked with
ancient DNA and the other what people are calling the
exact life sciences. This, as some of my colleagues have
called it, this is the third wave in our chaeology
where we're using all the new scientific stuff. And so

(01:24:07):
I think the next couple of decades, the next generation
in our chaeology is going to be very exciting, and
topics like the Bronze Age collapse and the aftermath are
going to go along with that, and that we're going
to have a lot more data coming in the future
such that I don't know, I was thinking the other night,

(01:24:27):
if the next generation is going to look back on
what we're doing now and go, yeah, they were right
about this, they were wrong about that. You know, always
we can look back at our predecessors and go, yeah, right, right,
wrong wrong wrong right wrong right, No door innovasion, Migraine, Yeah,
exactly right. No dark ages, no darkcases, an iron age.

(01:24:48):
So I wonder what you know our students or the
students of our students, or the students of our students
of our students, are going to say about our work
at some point.

Speaker 1 (01:24:58):
But yeah, provided we solve climate change.

Speaker 2 (01:25:02):
Provided we solve climate change, there is that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
Yeah, there have to be students of.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
Students, one hopes.

Speaker 1 (01:25:10):
Oh dear, that's how I make my apparently lighthearted end
question back.

Speaker 2 (01:25:15):
Into I was going to say, and that's sending on
an upbeat note.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
Yep, that's what I do. That's what I do here.
Thank you so much for doing this. This was absolutely fascinating.
I learned so much. I'm so excited. I'm a little
annoyed that I can't talk about thera, but that's okay,
that's my fault.

Speaker 2 (01:25:32):
We can do we can do therast some other time.
So perfect, Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:25:39):
Well, just before we close up, do you want to
tell my listeners. I mean, you've mentioned your books a
couple of times, but I think this episode will be
coming out on April thirtieth, so I think the sequel
will be out, So if you want to tell my listeners,
just like, reiterate those titles and where they can buy them,
which I imagine is everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):
Yes, certainly. So. The sequel that is coming out on
April sixteenth is called After eleven seventy seven BC, The
Survival of Civilizations, and yes, that'll be available from Amazon direct,
from Princeton University Press, or your local booksellers if you

(01:26:16):
would like to support them. That will actually be coming
out on the very same day as another publication. The
original book was eleven seventy seven BC, the year civilization collapsed,
and that came out from Princeton in twenty fourteen. With
the revised edition which is what people should read, that

(01:26:39):
came out in twenty twenty one. Now, the other publication
that's coming out on the same day as my sequel
is the graphic version of the original, which is Brilliance.
It's drawn by Glennis Fox, who's an archaeologist and cartoonist,
and she has essentially translated the original into another language,

(01:27:03):
the language of cartoon and graphic version. The drawings areutiful.
It's huge. I mean it is thick, heavy, glossy paper,
beautiful drawings. And what she has done is translated my
text into the story told through the eyes of two

(01:27:23):
young kids from that time period. We've got Hell short
for Palesset, a young boy about twelve years old, and
his friend Sisha, again about twelve years old. She's Egyptian
and she is a scribe. She knows how to read
and write. And the two of them are running around

(01:27:45):
the Aegena and Mediterranean trying to figure out why everything
is collapsing and what has happened, and whether Grandpa Pel's
grandpa who was a sea person, what he actually did
in the battles, And so you see it through the
eyes of the kids, but you also have both me

(01:28:07):
and Glynnis parachuting in from time to time up in
the corner of the panel, telling the reader things that
the two kids could not possibly have known. Right, Yeah,
you know, it's like, oh, well, when Schleiman came here,
he did this, and so so it's basically four new
characters introduced. It is so compelling, it's so wonderful. I'm

(01:28:30):
so excited about it, and I'm hoping we get a
whole new readership everybody from age seven to seventy, you know,
especially like if you don't like to read, but you
like comic books, this is this is it for you.
And if you're too younger, you have only just started reading,
you can you know, there's the pretty pictures and anyway,
and you can play Where's Waldo with you know, with

(01:28:52):
me and with Glennis anyway. So those two, both the
sequel and the graphic version of the original, will come
out mid April, and I'm very excited about both of them.
So thanks for the opportunity to mention them.

Speaker 1 (01:29:07):
Oh, I'm thrilled. I've seen photos you've posted in the
cover of the graphic and it looked like gorgeous, So
I'm thrilled to know what's inside. And I mean, it
sounds like it'll be really beneficial broadly, but I know
there's also a lot of people who just learn visually,
you know, and I think that that's so beneficial for
so many people. That's great and also just fun. That's
a fun little graphic novel version.

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):
It is, and she really, yeah, it's interesting. In order
to put it in the graphic version, she distilled it,
so you know, it's got the most essential twenty five
percent of the original text, you know that kind of thing. So, yeah,
the process was fascinating. She and I did a webinar
the other day and in which she walked the viewers

(01:29:49):
through her process of drawing. Oh my god, the work
that it went, that went into it is amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:29:58):
Yeah, so I can only imagine. Yeah, yeah, oh that's wonderful, wonderful. Well,
I will link to everything in the episode's descriptions so
people can find it. And that's great. And is there
any last f you want to share with my listeners
before I let you go?

Speaker 2 (01:30:11):
No, I just I thank you. And you know, contrary
what I might have sounded like, I am optimistic about
our future. But we'll see. It's up to us, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:23):
Yeah? Yeah, oh, well, thank you so much. This was
such a thrill, my pleasure.

Speaker 2 (01:30:27):
Thank you. It's been an honor and a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:30:45):
Uh, Nerds, thank you so much for listening to this
entire series. Holy crap, it was. It was quite a
thing to create. Probably are this was probably our biggest,
maybe in line with Sparta, but man, the Bronze Age
is wild because because it's the Bronze Age, because it's
so much older than all the other stuff that we
work with, because it is so heavy in archaeological evidence

(01:31:09):
and so lacking in text. It's just such a departure,
but one that is utterly fascinating. I mean, I just
I've learned so much. I hope you have too. These
have been such joyful and fascinating conversations. I'm just so
thrilled to have brought them all to you. You can
find in the episode's description links to the books and
things that were mentioned by Eric Klein, and I hope you,

(01:31:31):
you know, check out more on the Bronze Age, or
maybe just you know, the next time you hear a
history bro trying to tell you about the Dark Ages
and how everyone suddenly became incapable of intelligence until Homer
sprung out, now you'll know. Now you'll know why that's
all nonsense. I mean, it was pretty obviously nonsense because

(01:31:52):
that's just not how humanity works. But now you have
the receipts, let's talk about. Mis Baby is written and
produced by me Live Albert Michayla Smith is the Hermes
to My Olympians, my assistant producer, and honestly, I mean
she's the person behind this Bronze age series of episodes.
Couldn't it wouldn't possibly have existed without her. She might

(01:32:13):
be existing in the background of this, but I want
to make clear who It's a lot of Michaela's doing,
and Laura Smith is the incredible audio engineer and production
assistant who works on all of these conversation episodes doing
technological things that I never learned how to do. Thank you, Laura.
Laura's also working to make my website helpful, so stay

(01:32:34):
tuned for more on that. The podcast is part of
the iHeartMedia Network. Listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever
you get your podcasts, and help me continue bringing you
all of this incredible mythological and historical stuff by becoming
a patron, where you will get access to loads of
past bonus episodes Patreon dot com, slash myths Baby, or

(01:32:54):
the link is in the episodes description. Thank you all.
Oh my god, I can't believe this series is over.
It's absolutely It's been a wild ride. I just love
the ancient world so much and I really love the
you do too. I am live and I love this
shit I just said

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