April 23, 2024 • 47 mins
A brief look at the causes behind the societal collapse of the Bronze Age Mediterranean. Help keep LTAMB going by subscribing to Liv's Patreon for bonus content!
CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.
Sources: The Landmark Thucydides edited by Robert B. Strassler, translated by Richard Crawley; The Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean edited by Eric H. Cline; 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline.
Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
The late return of the Hellenes from Ilion caused many
revolutions and factions ensued almost everywhere, and it was the
citizens thus driven into exile who founded the cities. Sixty
years after the capture of Ilon, the modern Baeotians were
driven out of Arne by the Thessalians and settled in
the present Beotia, the former Cadmian land, though there was
(00:47):
a division of them there before, some of whom joined
the expedition to Ilon. Twenty years later, the Dorians and
the Heraclids became masters of the Peloponnesus, so that much
had to be done, and many years had to elapse
before Hellas could attain to a jurable tranquility, undisturbed by removals,
and could begin to send out colonies, as Athens did
(01:10):
to Ionia and most of the islands, and the Peloponnesians
to most of Italy and Sicily, and some places in
the rest of Hellas. All these places were founded subsequently
to the war with Troy. Well, Hi, Hello, welcome, this
(01:53):
is let's talk about myths baby, and I am your host.
Live here with the beginning of the end of the
Bronze Age, a look into the so called collapse of
not only the Minoan and Mycenaean people of ancient Greece,
but the wider ancient Mediterranean. What makes a collapse? Though,
really the word itself is an accurate descriptor of what happened,
(02:17):
but it carries with it this desire to make the
collapse of these cultures into something, if not bigger and
more dramatic, then certainly at least mysterious. The idea of
a collapse, the end of these once great people lends
itself to the history bros who blend fact with conspiracy
and pseudohistory, or to the conspiracists. More directly, it lends
(02:40):
itself to the idea that the end of these people
was a mystery to be solved, that they simply disappeared
from human existence, only to be replaced by an entire
different group. But of course, as I hope you can
all gather, that isn't what happened. There is no great mystery,
no moment in time where the Myceneans or the Minoans
(03:01):
just suddenly, out of nowhere ceased to exist. Instead, it's
far more complex and much more interesting, and ultimately is
better described as a collapse of elite power structures, a
collapse of the super rich, if you will. The regular
people just kept going, They moved on, they adapted, they
(03:21):
transitioned to something different. Because when your climate is changing
and unrest is rising, the elites who hoard wealth in
their great palaces, who live like kings while the rest
of the world scrambles to find food, well, that never
ends well for the elites. Are you listening, Bezos musk
(03:44):
weston HM. Today we look at the end, the collapse,
the transition from a cultural structure where the elites ruled
from palaces to one where regular people with sense and
knowledge of the world shifted with the changes that they
saw around them and adapted themselves and their world. As
(04:04):
always that quote I read at the top of the
episode was another from Thucydides, ancient Athenian trying to wrap
his head around this very thing, the end of the
Bronze Age. But we will look at the actual history. Today.
I give you the basics of what happened and when,
and then on Friday I will be joined by returning
(04:25):
guest Flint Dibble to talk about some of the reasons
for the Bronze Age's end. Particularly, we'll look at food,
how they ate before, during, and after the end of
the Bronze Age, and how we can look at those
things and see in them the changing climate of the Mediterranean,
the end of the palatial power structure, and a return
to a more simple way of living, one that suited
(04:48):
those who remained, these regular people just trying to get by.
And then next Tuesday, to cap off this series on
the Bronze Age of Greece and it's collapse, a conversation
with Eric Klein, who literally wrote the book on the
end of the Bronze Age Mediterranean, and a new one
that's just coming out now about what came after. The
(05:09):
Bronze Age. Is the period most aligned with Greek mythology.
It's the age in which many myths were understood to
have happened. It's when the Greeks were believed to have
traveled to Troy in search of a woman, when they
waged this ten years war that changed the face of
the Mediterranean. It's the time when the heroes were believed
(05:29):
to have roamed the Greek world, defeating monsters, battling centaurs,
and bickering with gods and you know whatever, theseus was
always fucking around with It's a time that's been blended
with myth in fascinating ways, but it's also blended with
myth in frustrating ways, ways that can obscure the history
in favor of a mythological past. For all the fun
(05:54):
in imagining a Bronze Age like that of the Iliad,
it's important to remember still that it was a very
real time period, and really the mythological sources that were
believed to be situated in the depths of the Bronze Age,
like the Homeric epics, were very much products of their time,
full of references and technologies from the periods in which
they were developed and then written down. They are a
(06:15):
blending of anachronisms. You heard it on Friday's episode with
Joel Christiansen. There are archaic weapons and notions, Iron Age concepts,
Bronze Age cultures like all nestled together in this epic poem.
The Bronze Age is a time and place separate from
the epics in the same way that the monsters defeated
(06:36):
by Heracles are separate from the real Greece that people
lived and died in. Instead, in those sources we can
learn about the people that came after the Bronze Age,
how they saw their world, their cultural history and memory,
and their future. I say all that because well, I'm
me and I'm too fascinated by the mythology and epics
(06:58):
and what they do and do not say about the
Bronze Age and then the later Iron Age and into
the Archaic period and beyond that, what was the actual
Bronze Age like? Like, how did it and how didn't
it resemble the world of epic and of course how
did it end and why? With a bonus of let's
take a little dive into what it looks like when
(07:21):
a super rich elite power structure crumbles and who and
what is left when it does. This is episode two
(07:44):
fifty nine, not with a bang, but a whimper, the
collapse of Bronze Age grease. Finally we get to the end,
(08:07):
or rather an end that's also a beginning. The end
of the Bronze Age also marks the beginning of the
grease that we know a little better, where the alphabet
will be developed and perfected, where the oral storytelling of
the Homeric tradition will arise and give us everything that
we love so dearly in order for any of that
to begin, the Bronze Age and its palatial world had
(08:29):
to end. The Bronze Age collapse is the term that
bounces around this topic and generally describes the total collapse
of the various states of the Bronze Age Mediterranean and
surrounding cultures. It is a ridiculously complicated subject that we
don't have the clearest answers about. The word collapse is
both accurate and a little misleading. It was a collapse, yes,
(08:51):
but one that marked a transition to What we can
say with enough certainty when it comes to the end
of the Bronze Age is that sometime during the twelfth
century BCE, a number of events occurred that caused many
of the major sites around the Mediterranean to best and
a decline in population to take place. The word lost
(09:14):
is thrown around a lot when it comes to what
exactly happened here. I don't love the word. It presents
the idea that humanity forgot something, rather than simply no
longer had use for it. For instance, it's said that
monumental building was lost, large cities were lost, and the
interconnectedness that permeated every bit of the Bronze Age falls apart.
(09:37):
The interconnectedness certainly does fall apart, and monumental building does
stop happening in the same way, and the large cities
were no longer in use. They weren't lost though, so
much as they lost relevancy. That isn't to say that
the collapse wasn't a big deal and a very real event.
I just don't want to be like the history bro
(09:59):
I will never forget who will suggested that the people
of the Bronze Age straight up disappeared and or lost
the ability to understand written language. It wasn't magic or
some kind of wild collective amnesia of human intelligence. It
was a huge collapse of society across the region and
a transition to something totally different. In fact, most of
(10:21):
the cultures that were active in that region during the
Bronze Age, they do just fall apart completely, with only
really Egypt coming out and with some sort of presence
still intact. It was a collapse of society as the
region knew it. The Mediterranean changed completely. The cultures that
had existed before the collapse just ceased, especially in Greece.
(10:42):
And in terms of what we can find or have
already found, and what was left behind, you know, these
palatial sites like Myceni and Tyrans that we have found
were basically abandoned, and because they weren't still being occupied
in the same ways, they instead served as this inspiration
for the mythological history that would go on to exist
(11:03):
in the region. The people of iron Age Greece, just
a few generations from the Bronze Age that had collapsed,
lost the cultural memory of those sites and saw only
what was left, the palatial compounds that looked utterly and
completely epic, that were so monumental and enormous that they
would have housed so many people in such riches, and
(11:23):
they could only construe of these as the palaces of
their heroes. These sites, the cities, the tombs, would live
on in this collective mythical history developed in some part
at least as a means of explaining what the people
before them had left behind. And as these stories were
developed and grew into something so much bigger than what
(11:46):
they started, as they were passed down through the ages
until they became the archaic Greek's de facto historical past,
and so by the time we get to the Iliad
and the Odyssey as we know them, the heroes that
came out of the Mycenae cities that were scattered around
the Peloponnese were real and had walked the land. Agamemnon
(12:07):
was the king of Mycene, and Menelaus was king of Lacedaemon,
and Minos was the king of Kunosos Nestor of Pilos.
And this remained, of course, to the point where even
today we still called the gold mask found in Myceni
the mask of Agamemnon, despite him almost certainly not having
been real, and of course we still call the palace
(12:27):
at Pilos the Palace of Nestor. But how does such
an enormous societal collapse happen? A total system collapse is
a huge thing that doesn't just happen because of one
or two small events. Multiple catastrophes and troubles needed to
occur in order to shake up the system so thoroughly
(12:48):
that it just falls apart after having thrived for hundreds
of years. There are lots of theories for why this
one collapse happened, from the infamous sea people's to famine,
to earthquakes and climate change, but all of these by
themselves just aren't enough to cause a big enough disruption
(13:08):
to destroy such an established system. Instead, it's likely that
it was all of these things occurring around the same
time or in close enough succession, that the systems in
place just cracked and broke and eventually fell apart. Just
so many game changing events and threats and disasters coming
(13:30):
together at just the wrong time, and poof your society collapses.
But remember we mean this society collapsed. Everyone doesn't just disappear,
but the elite structures that had been established crumbled, and
what was left was just the regular people who, for
(13:51):
the most part, kind of just figured it out. They adapted,
transitioned to something entirely new, and unfortunately, either what they
left behind wasn't found or wasn't impressive enough to quell
the idea of this dark age, this loss. But what
it really was is that either what they left behind
(14:14):
just didn't last for us, or we haven't found it yet.
And you all know how I love a good natural disaster,
let alone one combined with so many other wild events.
So let's look at all the things that came together
to collapse the societies of the Bronze Age Mediterranean. Obviously,
(14:45):
we are starting with my favorite topic, one that I've
touched on before because it aided in a certain conspiracy
about a certain so called lost mythical city that's really
just a wild thing Plato made up. That's right. We're
talking about the abruption of Thera, and fine, not because
it had anything to do with the Bronze Age collapse,
but instead because I want to talk about it. And
(15:07):
it is often referenced as a cause of the Bronze
Age collapse despite not being a cause of the collapse,
because fine, it happened like four hundred years before the collapse,
but it is still evidence of the volcanic and tectonic
happenings in the area, which did indeed contribute to the collapse.
It's generally understood that the major collapse of the Bronze
(15:28):
Age happened around the twelfth century BCE. Meanwhile, the exact
date of the eruption of Thera is still up for debate.
There's a whole lot of science that I simply cannot
and will not wrap my head around. But it's likely
that it was toward the end of the seventeenth century BC,
so again, four to five hundred years before the eruption
was to put it simply massive, The event would have
(15:49):
lasted about two to three days, and even before the
volcano erupted, there would have been major earthquakes in the region.
This is super common. Even at Pompeii, before Vesuvius erupted,
there were earthquakes leading up to the actual event. Actually,
just the other day I read about two hundred earthquakes
happening right off the coast of where I live in
quick Success. And apparently the scientists were just like, yeah,
(16:11):
it's cool, Like a little bit of magma is going
to erupt into the Salish Sea, but it's nothing to
worry about. I mean, I trust them, but still I digress.
The point is, volcanic eruptions come with earthquakes. And when
Theira did finally erupt, and I should have said this already,
thera is Sancherini. It basically blew out the center of
the island completely. Like have you ever looked at the
(16:32):
shape of Sancherini. It is essentially a circular island that's
had the center blown out. It's why Santorini has the
cliffs that are so famously beautiful and horrifically packed with tourists.
It's literally a popped off volcano popped is the technical term.
The town that we know of on Bronze Age Thera,
(16:52):
Acriterii was covered in a layer of pumice and volcanic ash.
It was closely connected with crete to the south and
likely forced refugees who were able to escape south to
that island. And fun fact about Ekerterii too, Unlike Pompeii,
the preserved Bronze Age city, Bronze Age City does not
have a single body that's been found, which either means
(17:13):
everyone got out, people returned after to mourn and care
for their dead, or they just haven't been found yet.
Regardless of Acritiri, which in the grand scheme of the
Mediterranean was nothing particularly special, the resulting ash cloud would
have spread over the Aegean and the effects on the
surrounding land would have been noticeable. Still, if this happened
(17:33):
four to five hundred years before the collapse, how is
it relevant? Well, aside from my insisting that we include
it in this series because Aquaria is a magical place
where Bronze Age fantasies are born and I love a
good volcanic eruption story, it demonstrates to us the type
of environmental events that happened in this area, because again, fine,
(17:55):
it did not contribute to the collapse, let's make that
very clear, but it does remind us what's possible because
there were definitely, certainly tectonic happenings that did contribute to
the collapse. Not necessarily Valcai eruptions, but earthquakes. The Mediterranean
and the Near East all exist along active fault lines
that can and do still affect the people that are
(18:18):
living there. The last time I was on Crete, there
was an earthquake in Heraclion, like big enough that they
did some damage even to the modern island. Earthquakes can
be devastating for a city, especially one with buildings that
are not built to withstand that kind of movement, and
when you don't fully understand why they're happening or how
to handle them, like they're going to be a pretty
(18:38):
big issue. And toward the end of the thirteenth century
and beginning of the twelfth century, there was a series
of earthquakes that took place along that fault line. Earthquakes
of varying intensity were happening all up and down the
fault line at this time, and obviously they were causing
major destruction. And when you think about how monumental building
was done at this time, like basically stacking big stones
(19:00):
on top of each other. They're not going to survive
the earth violently shaking beneath them. Still, it can be
hard to say whether a site was destroyed by an
earthquake or human intervention other than you know, sometimes there
are telltale signs, like if a site is destroyed because
of an earthquake, you would not expect to find lots
of people with arrows sticking out of them, you know,
(19:21):
that's a bit of a giveaway. But in case of
an earthquake, you might What you might have is people
trapped under debris or walls that have shifted and moved
and show visual signs of that movement. You know, not
to say that they couldn't have had a thing for
like wavy walls, but one does have to stick with
the most obvious explanation sometimes. And still, earthquakes alone, you know,
(19:41):
did not collapse these entire societies. We do see efforts
across a Mediterranean to rebuild after earthquakes, you know, but
there needed to be more to take these people out
so completely. This is where other people come in. See
people to be dramatic and specific have you not heard
(20:03):
of see people. Oh you must be a normal person
who does not spend their entire life devoted to people
who've been dead for thousands of years. Lucky you. Basically,
the Sea people are a theorized group of people who
just kind of sailed around fucking shit up. There's a
lot of uncertainty and a lot of sensationalizing around them,
lots of memes, you know the type, which is why
I would like to start with a caveat The Medinet
(20:26):
Habu inscriptions of the late thirteenth and early twelfth century
from Egypt are the only definitive mention of the Sea peoples,
and they don't like use a term like sea peoples.
This is a modern phrase that current scholars and others
use to describe what is mentioned in these inscriptions. Ultimately,
what is described are battles between the Egyptians and outside
(20:48):
forces that can be understood as having come from islands
or somewhere else by sea. And other than that, we
don't have much explicitly about these sea peoples. There's a
debate about one letter from Ugart that could possibly be
mentioning the sea peoples, but it's not agreed upon widely.
So what we understan stand up about the Sea People's
(21:09):
comes from extremely limited sourcing and ultimately does not give
us enough information to fully understand them. My conversation next
Tuesday is going to go into much more detail on this.
But if we're going to, you know, not to jump
into this sensationalizing that is the Sea People's, Like, how
are we gonna understand what's happening? You know, because we
(21:30):
can see from sites all across the Mediterranean that there
was violent destruction happening and someone, some people were causing it.
So who could they be? Like, yes, the Sea peoples
are an option, but like, who are they really? When
we look at it is what we have is once
again people moving around the Mediterranean, you know, movement and connection,
albeit in a rather more violent way in this case,
(21:53):
and this is what defines a Mediterranean Even during the collapse,
there absolutely was destruction and invasion happening from outside sources.
During the collapse, you know, there were people moving around
the Mediterranean from a variety of places and who were
indeed sometimes invading other cities. There's plenty of evidence for
sites that were destroyed because of humans, Like for example,
(22:16):
you know, when we find people with the aforementioned arrows.
You know, it's not always so explicit, but what we
have found are people who have met some kind of
violent and unnatural end. You know, I think it would
be pretty safe to say that if we find people
who have obviously died because another human came at them
with something sharp and pointy, that such a thing was
done with, you know, dubious intentions. And there are enough
(22:39):
sites that were destroyed because of this kind of human
violence that we can certainly say that, you know, there
were people destroying cities purposefully in some way. But that
begs another question, you know, because if we can't say
who the people were that were doing the destroying, like,
can we say why they were traveling the seas and
(23:01):
ultimately destroying what they found during this period of collapse.
(23:35):
Not all of the cities that are destroyed by people
are destroyed for the same reasons. And this is found
in what remains of the sites, you know, well over
three thousand years later, which is your periodic reminder that
archaeology is seriously fucking cool, especially from this time period
where we have minimal text sources to go off of. Now,
you know, archaeologists are scientists as you will hear in
(23:56):
the conversations that are coming, you know, where I try
to understand very sciencey things with my background in literature
and mythology. But today's episode is trust me. So we
are keeping it simple through many scientific ways, I won't
to understand. The sites that remain have been examined, and
through them we get an idea of how and why
they were destroyed. Like if we find a city that
(24:18):
has destruction absolutely everywhere, from the top governmental buildings down
to the neighborhoods of the everyday person, you know, it's
most likely caused by an invasion, especially if we find
human remains that have these marks of violence on them,
you know. And then that gets tied with any textual
evidence that we might have that talks about invasions and
fights happening in those areas, you know, and suddenly we've
(24:42):
got probable invasion. But you know, what about the sites
that have destruction, But it's limited, say to the palatial
centers and bureaucratic buildings. Remember, it is a collapse of
the elite, you know. I won't say it's the dream,
but if Bezos ever goes down, I will be celebrating
in the streets So if all the elite structures in
(25:02):
an area show signs of destruction, you know, but the
neighborhood where that people are living is untouched. Hmmm. An
instances like this, you know, it's probably not invasion that's
responsible for the destruction. It's probably something more akin to
internal factors, to the people living in the region rising
up against the ruling elite and you know, well eat
(25:24):
the rich, good for them. These are things that we
can learn from ancient history, you know, like let's make
a free grocery store out of one of Galen Weston's houses,
Like it seems only fair. Ultimately, the point is that
while many of these sites show widespread destruction at the
hands of humans, we can't always assume some outside invasion
(25:45):
by sea people's or anyone else. Sometimes the most dangerous
people in a culture are the ones that have been
fucked over and marginalized for generations. This is entirely me
making stuff up here. But if you've spent hundreds of
years working for an elite palatial complex where the rich
are living their best lives and bathing in gold and
your poorest shit, well, you know, when the opportunity arises,
(26:08):
revolution isn't new and maybe we need to return to
some roots, you know, apropos of nothing. Yesterday I bought
coffee and eggs and like three other basic staple foods
at a grocery store and it costs over fifty dollars.
Eat the rich. But what does this destruction look like,
you know, this specific type of internal disruption. Well, where
(26:30):
we're going to go next. The most important factor in
the destruction is fire. Remember these linear A and linear
B tablets. You know. Linear A and B are the
two Proto Greek languages that developed during the Bronze Age.
Linear A is primarily coming from a no one create
and it's colonies, and Linear B from the mainland of
mice Andians and theirs. Linear B is translated, linear A
(26:52):
is not, you know, which is why I have a
bunch of fun little symbols tattooed on my finger in
the hopes that one day will translate it and I'll
know that I have like grain or olive oil trade
tattooed on my fingers. Because that's the thing about linear B.
It's primarily focused on these palatial records from the Bronze
Age period, iterating a lot of this stuff to you.
Just as this reminder of what they are, because you know,
(27:14):
during this time, Linear B is the only textual evidence
that we have coming out of Mycenean culture. And how
do we have these tablets, these palatial records today because
of fire, the fiery destruction of various Bronze Age Greek sites.
Is this main reason why we have these tablets containing
Linear A and B. The fires that took down these
(27:36):
monumental buildings also just happened to bake those clay tablets
for us, you know, like firing a clay pot in
a kiln to preserve it. These fires preserved the tablets.
And this is just so fucking lucky for us because
Linear B tablets are this invaluable research when it comes
to understanding the palatial complexes in which they were found. Like, sure,
(27:58):
they were mostly these palace records, and no one came
right out and told us that Achilles was like a
real dude. But you know, knowing how much olive oil
and wine and food stuffs were kept in the palaces
is super helpful, if less thrilling than if they contained
a Bronze Age myth. That would have been cool. Still,
I have so much to say. Let's hang around these
(28:20):
Bronze Age sites just a little bit longer. It was
during this late thirteenth century and into the early twelfth
that we date a lot of the destruction of the
mainland Greek sites, specifically at Mycene. It appears that at
first there was an earthquake sometime in this mids thirteenth century.
Then some fifty years later there was another destruction event.
(28:43):
This one was marked by fire, but this fire seems
to be localized to the citadel and not the surrounding areas.
You know, like say, maybe someone returned from war to
find his city and shambles and his wife pretty angry
that he sacrificed their daughter for a bit of wind,
you know, in violence ensues. Okay, fine, again, probably not that,
(29:06):
but still eat the miceny and rich, particularly if they're Agamemnon. Meanwhile,
over at the nearby palatial site of Tyrans, the palace
where Heracles was said to have kicked a guy off
(29:29):
a wall and started a whole mess for himself, we
see more evidence of an earthquake destroying the buildings in
the citadel at the end of this thirteenth century. And
then if we quickly pop over to Pilos, we once
again see evidence of destruction in the early twelfth century
by fire. Poor Nestor. I mean, you know, I'm all
(29:49):
for toppling the aristocracy, but comparatively like he was a
pretty okay guy. Again, fictional iliatic heroes aside, and you know,
I can't resist making references to them. We can look
all over the Mediterranean and inland to the east and
see this evidence of this, you know, the similar kinds
of it's found in the Mesopotamian people of ancient Iraq,
(30:12):
and the Hittites of Anatolia, ancient Turkey and Cyprus, Phoenicia
down into Egypt. And this early twelfth century date around
the time as this destruction in Pilos was when also
Troy seven fell. But it's worth mentioning that just because
these sites were destroyed doesn't mean that they were then abandoned.
(30:33):
You know, this is really important for understanding this Bronze
Age collapse. This is an event where what is lost
is this centralization. Not the people or really the culture
at all these sites. The thing that is lost is
this centralized government that at the top of the social ladder,
this highly organized system that we have become so familiar
(30:56):
with in the Bronze Age disappears for a period of
time that you know, varies depending on the region. In
Greece it was gone for a good while, but elsewhere,
you know, they popped up quicker than you might expect,
because while this centralization in administration disappears, people and human
(31:17):
ingenuity do not, which is why, you know, we don't
want to keep calling what followed the Bronze Age this
this dark Ages, because it wasn't dark like. It isn't
even marked by a lack of sources, which is you know,
where the word originally came from. It was simply a
transitional period that becomes the Iron Age, and it's when
(31:38):
a whole lot of other amazing stuff happens, So calling
it dark is mean at the best. The vast majority
of these sites continue to demonstrate people living in and
occupying the buildings that are still present, you know, maybe
not in the most upper parts of the citadel, but
in the cities and the surrounding regions. And this tells
(32:00):
us so much because what gets assumed is that you know,
this Mediterranean after these events, gets catapulted in this time
of lack and loss, and quite frankly, that's just that's
not what is actually happening. Even in Greece, shirt like,
the upper classes of society are seemingly gone, but the people,
like the people that lived on and worked the land
(32:22):
and fought for their cities, like, they are still going
about their day to day lives in whatever way they can.
In Greece, at least, they went on to establish and
formalize the Greek alphabet, among everything else, you know, to
develop this oral tradition of storytelling that will eventually give
(32:42):
us the Iliad and the Odyssey. The ages that followed,
they were not dark. And maybe this is what we
should take from these instances of destruction and the people
that are moving around the Mediterranean at this time. You know,
for the most part, this is not necessarily people looking
to destroy and take over regions. Maybe it's people moving
(33:05):
around trying to find a better place to live. Because
maybe an earthquake took out their old home and a
couple of families packed up what they had, jumped on
a ship and moved around. This is not an unfamiliar occurrence,
you know. Maybe, and this is where we're head next.
It was this change in climate that forced people to
(33:26):
leave the areas they were living because they simply could
no longer sustain themselves. They left in order to find
a land where they could survive. But once again, and
this is Mikaela screaming in the background. Like the Bronze
Age at every point is defined by people moving around,
interacting and existing amongst each other. It is a time
(33:48):
period that is defined by its interconnectivity and diversity even
during its collapse. Climate change was definitely a major factor
for movement within the Bronze Age. Collapse, droughts and the
resulting lack of food and resources would of course have
pushed people to move themselves and their family to hopefully
(34:09):
better horizons. And this is a seriously natural human response.
We know that people are moving around, not just from
accounts of the quote unquote see peoples, but also from
the continued movement of artifacts that are found in these
various sites. But how do we look back and find
(34:29):
evidence of things like drought and famine. These seem to
be things that could be particularly difficult to find within
the archaeological record. What kind of evidence would we expect
to find that would help us see that these things
are happening at this time? Well, the first and probably
the most obvious is textual evidence. While we tend to
focus on Greece for a lot of things during the
(34:51):
Bronze Age, we need to expand our horizons and look
at this Mediterranean as a whold. The textual evidence that
we get from Grace is pretty much just these administrative
records of various resources that the palatial centers had. But
if we look toward other areas, we get different kinds
of sources, better, more detailed sources. For this, we're going
to head back to the levant and the people at
(35:12):
the city of Ugarit, which really was hit with pretty
much everything that we have talked about so far. You know,
there was an earthquake, there was famine, we'll get there,
and there was invasion. Like really, this is a great
case study for understanding the various elements at play during
the Bronze Age collapse. So at Ugarit, which is in
(35:33):
northern Syria by the way, what was been found are
letters that have been sent between various individuals, from those
with power all the way to people who are just
involved with commerce. And within these letters, which we'll hear
about in more detail in my conversations, we hear about
famines across the region. These accounts are evocative and very
telling to the seriousness of the situation at hand, with
(35:57):
the most relevant of sources saying there is famine in
your house. We will all die of hunger. If you
do not quickly arrive here, we ourselves will die of hunger.
You will not see a living soul from your land.
This isn't a light account. It's very notable today, perhaps
(36:17):
human caused famine being a bigger issue. It's this very
telling account though, of just how dire a situation like
this is, particularly during the collapse you know in ugar
It the situation was so tense that those in charge
felt the need to reach out to neighboring kingdoms in
order to seek aid. There were these requests for grain
(36:39):
and other food sources so that they would be able
to feed their people. But textual sources are not the
only forms of evidence that we have for these droughts
and famines. Science also comes in and gives us much
more explicit evidence for droughts in the region. This is
done through examining pollen of all things like The long
and short of how this works is that scientists have
(37:00):
gone to the Levant and the Near East and taken
these core samples from soils specifically along the areas where
streams and rivers would have been in antiquity. Then they
examine the samples that they retrieved to see what kind
of pollens are present in them. And what these various
pollens can tell us is that the kinds of plants
and crops that were being grown at the time were
(37:21):
more akin to those that do well in these more arid,
dry environments. And so what comes out of this study
is evidence for an incredibly long and for all I
can assume arduous drought that occurred during a late thirteenth
century and lasted until like the ninth century, something like
three hundred years. Other studies that examine other sources have
(37:44):
shown us that there was a drop in the sea
surface temperatures that would have resulted in less precipitation on
the land. And so all in all, the evidence that
comes out of these various studies points to a drastically
different climate in the early Iron Age from the one
of the Bronze Age, and a change like this, especially
if a society doesn't have much space for adaptability and
(38:05):
really relies on what resources that they can bring in
from their land like would have really devastating effects on
the economic output and the ability to sustain a larger population.
So what we end up seeing all across the Mediterranean
and Near East is quite a drastic drop in their population.
You know, there are less people. This is what happens
(38:26):
during a famine. Of course, were to assume the worst.
So looking at the end of the Bronze Age as
a whole, what we see is drought and climate change,
devastating natural disasters that lead to destruction of sites, invasion, migration, war,
all these things by themselves are not totally devastating. They're
(38:47):
recoverable individually. But that's the thing, you know, they were
not happening one at a time. They were all happening
at once or in quick succession. And this is what
was so just wholly devastating to the region. It wasn't
just one earthquake that a couple of sites spent a
couple of years recovering from. It was a series of
(39:08):
earthquake over a long period of time, causing this continual
destruction and disruption to all these sites. It wasn't just
one war or one invasion. It was a series of
wars and invasions across the Aegean and Near East. It
wasn't a small drought in one region. It was this
prolonged and persisting drought, this drastic event of climate change
(39:30):
that affected the regions for decades to come. And of
course all of those things are going to come with refugees,
with people seeking safety. All these events in succession are
just not easily recoverable, like especially during a period so
as early as the Bronze Age. This is what makes
(39:50):
this time period so important to study and learn from.
It's a case study of the various types of events
that can affect a world so highly connected and cause
it to just fall apart. But it's also important to
remember that just because this occurred, just because some organized
civilizations collapsed entirely, that doesn't stop people from living and
(40:14):
building and continuing on in their individual worlds. The Mycenaean
kingdoms of Mainland Grace fell apart, but all the everyday
normal people that survived this didn't disappear off the face
of the earth. They continued to find ways to survive
in their new landscape and to build a new life
for themselves. The stories of who they used to be
(40:36):
or who they came from continued to live on in
this oral tradition that they passed down to their children
through the ages, and which became the stories that even
today I survive on. Most of the myths that we
love and talk about on this show came out of
this persistence of the people living in this region at
(40:56):
this time. It came out of their understanding of who
they used to be and what they could understand from
the built world around them and what little they understood
of it. A couple hundred years later, Myceni continued to
stand and the stories of Menelaus and Helen persisted or
came into being. The various monumental palatial structures continued to stand,
(41:19):
and people visited the enormous tombs built into the landscape
and imagined that this is where Ajax and Diamedes, and
Achilles and Odysseus were laid to rest. Supposedly, even Alexander
the Great, on his campaigns into the Persian Empire, stopped
by the believed site of the Trojan War and went
(41:39):
to this tomb of Achilles and made a sacrifice there.
That's an Alexander's story, but still like life would never
be the same after the collapse but life would continue
to still be life, and that's important to remember when
thinking about this the end of the Bronze Age and
about the collapse as a whole. It does mark an end,
(42:01):
but not in totality. And maybe the people we should
focus on are the people who were left after these events,
the you and me, the ones who were going to
keep going and give these stories of what was and
who we were to their children for generations to come.
The Bronze Age as a whole is not just an
example of where these cultures that we love come from,
(42:23):
but it's this example of human resilience and determination in
the face of these uncontrollable events. It's also an example
of how if the world dies, the elites die with us,
or rather they die first. Oh Nerds, thank you so
(43:01):
much for listening. That was one of the longest scripts
I've read in a while, and we're just gonna wrap
it all up. I have two more conversations coming for you.
So this is not the end of the Bronze Age.
It is just my and by that I mean Mikaela's
incredible script in my attempt to read it, my attempt
to wrap up this collapse in a narrative episode. But oh,
(43:23):
I have two conversations still coming about this collapse. So
we are going to go into much more detail with
the actual archaeologists who know this stuff. It's going to
be amazing. On Friday, you will hear Flint Dibble talking
about climate change. The way the series turned into a
rant against humanity's inability to act about climate change, when
(43:44):
the Bronze Age people were able to fucking do it
and they weren't causing it themselves and they didn't know
about it. I just I wasn't expecting it. But you
can have that to look forward to world's colliding, world's colliding.
This is it's such a relevant period in time, both
historically and just out of interest, and also like for
us today to look back on and see, hey, they
(44:08):
survived climate change. They didn't even know what was happening,
and they certainly weren't causing it. So maybe if we
can convince capitalism to stop being quite so evil, we'll
have a chance or maybe get rid of it entirely.
Speaking of I will finish off today's episode with a
review from one of you amazing listeners. I got a
(44:29):
few recently and they made me smile. Really really big,
So thank you so much for those. If you are interested,
consider living me a review on Apple Podcasts, or you
can do a rating on Spotify. They just don't let
you write something nice and have it sent to me,
so that's why I like the reviews. This one comes
from a user called lil Maru from the States. You
(44:51):
have a fun and nice voice. I like listening to
your podcast because of the subject matter, and you obviously
love what you're talking about and it shows. Also I
agree death to capitalism. That's right, thank you, Death to capitalism.
It's evil. The Western world of is evil. Anyway, back
(45:12):
soon with more. I can't wait for you guys to
hear these conversations. Yeah, they're gonna be so good. Let's
talk about Myth's Baby has written and produced by me,
except not in this case. Mikayla absolutely wrote most of
this entire series. I contributed minimally other than my voice.
Thank you, Mikayla, you are the existence behind this Bronze
age series. Laura Smith is the production assistant and audio
(45:35):
engineer who worked so hard on all of the conversation
episodes and always does select music in this episode was
by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the iHeart
Podcast Network. Listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever you
get your podcasts, and help me continue bringing you the
world of Greek mythology and the Ancient Mediterranean by becoming
a patron, where you'll get access to lots of past
(45:55):
bonus episodes, hopefully some new ones, but definitely helping the show.
Helping the free show, visit patron dot com, slash myths Baby,
or click the link in this episode's description. Oh my
voice is going Thank you all so much. This was
so fun. What a series. Stay tuned for really the
best parts of it. Let's be honest, the conversations are
(46:17):
the best part of this series. Stay tuned. I am
live and I love this shit and I'm excited to
return to mythology, a thing that I feel more confident
talking about. S
The late return of the Hellenes from Ilion caused many
revolutions and factions ensued almost everywhere, and it was the
citizens thus driven into exile who founded the cities. Sixty
years after the capture of Ilon, the modern Baeotians were
driven out of Arne by the Thessalians and settled in
the present Beotia, the former Cadmian land, though there was
(00:47):
a division of them there before, some of whom joined
the expedition to Ilon. Twenty years later, the Dorians and
the Heraclids became masters of the Peloponnesus, so that much
had to be done, and many years had to elapse
before Hellas could attain to a jurable tranquility, undisturbed by removals,
and could begin to send out colonies, as Athens did
(01:10):
to Ionia and most of the islands, and the Peloponnesians
to most of Italy and Sicily, and some places in
the rest of Hellas. All these places were founded subsequently
to the war with Troy. Well, Hi, Hello, welcome, this
(01:53):
is let's talk about myths baby, and I am your host.
Live here with the beginning of the end of the
Bronze Age, a look into the so called collapse of
not only the Minoan and Mycenaean people of ancient Greece,
but the wider ancient Mediterranean. What makes a collapse? Though,
really the word itself is an accurate descriptor of what happened,
(02:17):
but it carries with it this desire to make the
collapse of these cultures into something, if not bigger and
more dramatic, then certainly at least mysterious. The idea of
a collapse, the end of these once great people lends
itself to the history bros who blend fact with conspiracy
and pseudohistory, or to the conspiracists. More directly, it lends
(02:40):
itself to the idea that the end of these people
was a mystery to be solved, that they simply disappeared
from human existence, only to be replaced by an entire
different group. But of course, as I hope you can
all gather, that isn't what happened. There is no great mystery,
no moment in time where the Myceneans or the Minoans
(03:01):
just suddenly, out of nowhere ceased to exist. Instead, it's
far more complex and much more interesting, and ultimately is
better described as a collapse of elite power structures, a
collapse of the super rich, if you will. The regular
people just kept going, They moved on, they adapted, they
(03:21):
transitioned to something different. Because when your climate is changing
and unrest is rising, the elites who hoard wealth in
their great palaces, who live like kings while the rest
of the world scrambles to find food, well, that never
ends well for the elites. Are you listening, Bezos musk
(03:44):
weston HM. Today we look at the end, the collapse,
the transition from a cultural structure where the elites ruled
from palaces to one where regular people with sense and
knowledge of the world shifted with the changes that they
saw around them and adapted themselves and their world. As
(04:04):
always that quote I read at the top of the
episode was another from Thucydides, ancient Athenian trying to wrap
his head around this very thing, the end of the
Bronze Age. But we will look at the actual history. Today.
I give you the basics of what happened and when,
and then on Friday I will be joined by returning
(04:25):
guest Flint Dibble to talk about some of the reasons
for the Bronze Age's end. Particularly, we'll look at food,
how they ate before, during, and after the end of
the Bronze Age, and how we can look at those
things and see in them the changing climate of the Mediterranean,
the end of the palatial power structure, and a return
to a more simple way of living, one that suited
(04:48):
those who remained, these regular people just trying to get by.
And then next Tuesday, to cap off this series on
the Bronze Age of Greece and it's collapse, a conversation
with Eric Klein, who literally wrote the book on the
end of the Bronze Age Mediterranean, and a new one
that's just coming out now about what came after. The
(05:09):
Bronze Age. Is the period most aligned with Greek mythology.
It's the age in which many myths were understood to
have happened. It's when the Greeks were believed to have
traveled to Troy in search of a woman, when they
waged this ten years war that changed the face of
the Mediterranean. It's the time when the heroes were believed
(05:29):
to have roamed the Greek world, defeating monsters, battling centaurs,
and bickering with gods and you know whatever, theseus was
always fucking around with It's a time that's been blended
with myth in fascinating ways, but it's also blended with
myth in frustrating ways, ways that can obscure the history
in favor of a mythological past. For all the fun
(05:54):
in imagining a Bronze Age like that of the Iliad,
it's important to remember still that it was a very
real time period, and really the mythological sources that were
believed to be situated in the depths of the Bronze Age,
like the Homeric epics, were very much products of their time,
full of references and technologies from the periods in which
they were developed and then written down. They are a
(06:15):
blending of anachronisms. You heard it on Friday's episode with
Joel Christiansen. There are archaic weapons and notions, Iron Age concepts,
Bronze Age cultures like all nestled together in this epic poem.
The Bronze Age is a time and place separate from
the epics in the same way that the monsters defeated
(06:36):
by Heracles are separate from the real Greece that people
lived and died in. Instead, in those sources we can
learn about the people that came after the Bronze Age,
how they saw their world, their cultural history and memory,
and their future. I say all that because well, I'm
me and I'm too fascinated by the mythology and epics
(06:58):
and what they do and do not say about the
Bronze Age and then the later Iron Age and into
the Archaic period and beyond that, what was the actual
Bronze Age like? Like, how did it and how didn't
it resemble the world of epic and of course how
did it end and why? With a bonus of let's
take a little dive into what it looks like when
(07:21):
a super rich elite power structure crumbles and who and
what is left when it does. This is episode two
(07:44):
fifty nine, not with a bang, but a whimper, the
collapse of Bronze Age grease. Finally we get to the end,
(08:07):
or rather an end that's also a beginning. The end
of the Bronze Age also marks the beginning of the
grease that we know a little better, where the alphabet
will be developed and perfected, where the oral storytelling of
the Homeric tradition will arise and give us everything that
we love so dearly in order for any of that
to begin, the Bronze Age and its palatial world had
(08:29):
to end. The Bronze Age collapse is the term that
bounces around this topic and generally describes the total collapse
of the various states of the Bronze Age Mediterranean and
surrounding cultures. It is a ridiculously complicated subject that we
don't have the clearest answers about. The word collapse is
both accurate and a little misleading. It was a collapse, yes,
(08:51):
but one that marked a transition to What we can
say with enough certainty when it comes to the end
of the Bronze Age is that sometime during the twelfth
century BCE, a number of events occurred that caused many
of the major sites around the Mediterranean to best and
a decline in population to take place. The word lost
(09:14):
is thrown around a lot when it comes to what
exactly happened here. I don't love the word. It presents
the idea that humanity forgot something, rather than simply no
longer had use for it. For instance, it's said that
monumental building was lost, large cities were lost, and the
interconnectedness that permeated every bit of the Bronze Age falls apart.
(09:37):
The interconnectedness certainly does fall apart, and monumental building does
stop happening in the same way, and the large cities
were no longer in use. They weren't lost though, so
much as they lost relevancy. That isn't to say that
the collapse wasn't a big deal and a very real event.
I just don't want to be like the history bro
(09:59):
I will never forget who will suggested that the people
of the Bronze Age straight up disappeared and or lost
the ability to understand written language. It wasn't magic or
some kind of wild collective amnesia of human intelligence. It
was a huge collapse of society across the region and
a transition to something totally different. In fact, most of
(10:21):
the cultures that were active in that region during the
Bronze Age, they do just fall apart completely, with only
really Egypt coming out and with some sort of presence
still intact. It was a collapse of society as the
region knew it. The Mediterranean changed completely. The cultures that
had existed before the collapse just ceased, especially in Greece.
(10:42):
And in terms of what we can find or have
already found, and what was left behind, you know, these
palatial sites like Myceni and Tyrans that we have found
were basically abandoned, and because they weren't still being occupied
in the same ways, they instead served as this inspiration
for the mythological history that would go on to exist
(11:03):
in the region. The people of iron Age Greece, just
a few generations from the Bronze Age that had collapsed,
lost the cultural memory of those sites and saw only
what was left, the palatial compounds that looked utterly and
completely epic, that were so monumental and enormous that they
would have housed so many people in such riches, and
(11:23):
they could only construe of these as the palaces of
their heroes. These sites, the cities, the tombs, would live
on in this collective mythical history developed in some part
at least as a means of explaining what the people
before them had left behind. And as these stories were
developed and grew into something so much bigger than what
(11:46):
they started, as they were passed down through the ages
until they became the archaic Greek's de facto historical past,
and so by the time we get to the Iliad
and the Odyssey as we know them, the heroes that
came out of the Mycenae cities that were scattered around
the Peloponnese were real and had walked the land. Agamemnon
(12:07):
was the king of Mycene, and Menelaus was king of Lacedaemon,
and Minos was the king of Kunosos Nestor of Pilos.
And this remained, of course, to the point where even
today we still called the gold mask found in Myceni
the mask of Agamemnon, despite him almost certainly not having
been real, and of course we still call the palace
(12:27):
at Pilos the Palace of Nestor. But how does such
an enormous societal collapse happen? A total system collapse is
a huge thing that doesn't just happen because of one
or two small events. Multiple catastrophes and troubles needed to
occur in order to shake up the system so thoroughly
(12:48):
that it just falls apart after having thrived for hundreds
of years. There are lots of theories for why this
one collapse happened, from the infamous sea people's to famine,
to earthquakes and climate change, but all of these by
themselves just aren't enough to cause a big enough disruption
(13:08):
to destroy such an established system. Instead, it's likely that
it was all of these things occurring around the same
time or in close enough succession, that the systems in
place just cracked and broke and eventually fell apart. Just
so many game changing events and threats and disasters coming
(13:30):
together at just the wrong time, and poof your society collapses.
But remember we mean this society collapsed. Everyone doesn't just disappear,
but the elite structures that had been established crumbled, and
what was left was just the regular people who, for
(13:51):
the most part, kind of just figured it out. They adapted,
transitioned to something entirely new, and unfortunately, either what they
left behind wasn't found or wasn't impressive enough to quell
the idea of this dark age, this loss. But what
it really was is that either what they left behind
(14:14):
just didn't last for us, or we haven't found it yet.
And you all know how I love a good natural disaster,
let alone one combined with so many other wild events.
So let's look at all the things that came together
to collapse the societies of the Bronze Age Mediterranean. Obviously,
(14:45):
we are starting with my favorite topic, one that I've
touched on before because it aided in a certain conspiracy
about a certain so called lost mythical city that's really
just a wild thing Plato made up. That's right. We're
talking about the abruption of Thera, and fine, not because
it had anything to do with the Bronze Age collapse,
but instead because I want to talk about it. And
(15:07):
it is often referenced as a cause of the Bronze
Age collapse despite not being a cause of the collapse,
because fine, it happened like four hundred years before the collapse,
but it is still evidence of the volcanic and tectonic
happenings in the area, which did indeed contribute to the collapse.
It's generally understood that the major collapse of the Bronze
(15:28):
Age happened around the twelfth century BCE. Meanwhile, the exact
date of the eruption of Thera is still up for debate.
There's a whole lot of science that I simply cannot
and will not wrap my head around. But it's likely
that it was toward the end of the seventeenth century BC,
so again, four to five hundred years before the eruption
was to put it simply massive, The event would have
(15:49):
lasted about two to three days, and even before the
volcano erupted, there would have been major earthquakes in the region.
This is super common. Even at Pompeii, before Vesuvius erupted,
there were earthquakes leading up to the actual event. Actually,
just the other day I read about two hundred earthquakes
happening right off the coast of where I live in
quick Success. And apparently the scientists were just like, yeah,
(16:11):
it's cool, Like a little bit of magma is going
to erupt into the Salish Sea, but it's nothing to
worry about. I mean, I trust them, but still I digress.
The point is, volcanic eruptions come with earthquakes. And when
Theira did finally erupt, and I should have said this already,
thera is Sancherini. It basically blew out the center of
the island completely. Like have you ever looked at the
(16:32):
shape of Sancherini. It is essentially a circular island that's
had the center blown out. It's why Santorini has the
cliffs that are so famously beautiful and horrifically packed with tourists.
It's literally a popped off volcano popped is the technical term.
The town that we know of on Bronze Age Thera,
(16:52):
Acriterii was covered in a layer of pumice and volcanic ash.
It was closely connected with crete to the south and
likely forced refugees who were able to escape south to
that island. And fun fact about Ekerterii too, Unlike Pompeii,
the preserved Bronze Age city, Bronze Age City does not
have a single body that's been found, which either means
(17:13):
everyone got out, people returned after to mourn and care
for their dead, or they just haven't been found yet.
Regardless of Acritiri, which in the grand scheme of the
Mediterranean was nothing particularly special, the resulting ash cloud would
have spread over the Aegean and the effects on the
surrounding land would have been noticeable. Still, if this happened
(17:33):
four to five hundred years before the collapse, how is
it relevant? Well, aside from my insisting that we include
it in this series because Aquaria is a magical place
where Bronze Age fantasies are born and I love a
good volcanic eruption story, it demonstrates to us the type
of environmental events that happened in this area, because again, fine,
(17:55):
it did not contribute to the collapse, let's make that
very clear, but it does remind us what's possible because
there were definitely, certainly tectonic happenings that did contribute to
the collapse. Not necessarily Valcai eruptions, but earthquakes. The Mediterranean
and the Near East all exist along active fault lines
that can and do still affect the people that are
(18:18):
living there. The last time I was on Crete, there
was an earthquake in Heraclion, like big enough that they
did some damage even to the modern island. Earthquakes can
be devastating for a city, especially one with buildings that
are not built to withstand that kind of movement, and
when you don't fully understand why they're happening or how
to handle them, like they're going to be a pretty
(18:38):
big issue. And toward the end of the thirteenth century
and beginning of the twelfth century, there was a series
of earthquakes that took place along that fault line. Earthquakes
of varying intensity were happening all up and down the
fault line at this time, and obviously they were causing
major destruction. And when you think about how monumental building
was done at this time, like basically stacking big stones
(19:00):
on top of each other. They're not going to survive
the earth violently shaking beneath them. Still, it can be
hard to say whether a site was destroyed by an
earthquake or human intervention other than you know, sometimes there
are telltale signs, like if a site is destroyed because
of an earthquake, you would not expect to find lots
of people with arrows sticking out of them, you know,
(19:21):
that's a bit of a giveaway. But in case of
an earthquake, you might What you might have is people
trapped under debris or walls that have shifted and moved
and show visual signs of that movement. You know, not
to say that they couldn't have had a thing for
like wavy walls, but one does have to stick with
the most obvious explanation sometimes. And still, earthquakes alone, you know,
(19:41):
did not collapse these entire societies. We do see efforts
across a Mediterranean to rebuild after earthquakes, you know, but
there needed to be more to take these people out
so completely. This is where other people come in. See
people to be dramatic and specific have you not heard
(20:03):
of see people. Oh you must be a normal person
who does not spend their entire life devoted to people
who've been dead for thousands of years. Lucky you. Basically,
the Sea people are a theorized group of people who
just kind of sailed around fucking shit up. There's a
lot of uncertainty and a lot of sensationalizing around them,
lots of memes, you know the type, which is why
I would like to start with a caveat The Medinet
(20:26):
Habu inscriptions of the late thirteenth and early twelfth century
from Egypt are the only definitive mention of the Sea peoples,
and they don't like use a term like sea peoples.
This is a modern phrase that current scholars and others
use to describe what is mentioned in these inscriptions. Ultimately,
what is described are battles between the Egyptians and outside
(20:48):
forces that can be understood as having come from islands
or somewhere else by sea. And other than that, we
don't have much explicitly about these sea peoples. There's a
debate about one letter from Ugart that could possibly be
mentioning the sea peoples, but it's not agreed upon widely.
So what we understan stand up about the Sea People's
(21:09):
comes from extremely limited sourcing and ultimately does not give
us enough information to fully understand them. My conversation next
Tuesday is going to go into much more detail on this.
But if we're going to, you know, not to jump
into this sensationalizing that is the Sea People's, Like, how
are we gonna understand what's happening? You know, because we
(21:30):
can see from sites all across the Mediterranean that there
was violent destruction happening and someone, some people were causing it.
So who could they be? Like, yes, the Sea peoples
are an option, but like, who are they really? When
we look at it is what we have is once
again people moving around the Mediterranean, you know, movement and connection,
albeit in a rather more violent way in this case,
(21:53):
and this is what defines a Mediterranean Even during the collapse,
there absolutely was destruction and invasion happening from outside sources.
During the collapse, you know, there were people moving around
the Mediterranean from a variety of places and who were
indeed sometimes invading other cities. There's plenty of evidence for
sites that were destroyed because of humans, Like for example,
(22:16):
you know, when we find people with the aforementioned arrows.
You know, it's not always so explicit, but what we
have found are people who have met some kind of
violent and unnatural end. You know, I think it would
be pretty safe to say that if we find people
who have obviously died because another human came at them
with something sharp and pointy, that such a thing was
done with, you know, dubious intentions. And there are enough
(22:39):
sites that were destroyed because of this kind of human
violence that we can certainly say that, you know, there
were people destroying cities purposefully in some way. But that
begs another question, you know, because if we can't say
who the people were that were doing the destroying, like,
can we say why they were traveling the seas and
(23:01):
ultimately destroying what they found during this period of collapse.
(23:35):
Not all of the cities that are destroyed by people
are destroyed for the same reasons. And this is found
in what remains of the sites, you know, well over
three thousand years later, which is your periodic reminder that
archaeology is seriously fucking cool, especially from this time period
where we have minimal text sources to go off of. Now,
you know, archaeologists are scientists as you will hear in
(23:56):
the conversations that are coming, you know, where I try
to understand very sciencey things with my background in literature
and mythology. But today's episode is trust me. So we
are keeping it simple through many scientific ways, I won't
to understand. The sites that remain have been examined, and
through them we get an idea of how and why
they were destroyed. Like if we find a city that
(24:18):
has destruction absolutely everywhere, from the top governmental buildings down
to the neighborhoods of the everyday person, you know, it's
most likely caused by an invasion, especially if we find
human remains that have these marks of violence on them,
you know. And then that gets tied with any textual
evidence that we might have that talks about invasions and
fights happening in those areas, you know, and suddenly we've
(24:42):
got probable invasion. But you know, what about the sites
that have destruction, But it's limited, say to the palatial
centers and bureaucratic buildings. Remember, it is a collapse of
the elite, you know. I won't say it's the dream,
but if Bezos ever goes down, I will be celebrating
in the streets So if all the elite structures in
(25:02):
an area show signs of destruction, you know, but the
neighborhood where that people are living is untouched. Hmmm. An
instances like this, you know, it's probably not invasion that's
responsible for the destruction. It's probably something more akin to
internal factors, to the people living in the region rising
up against the ruling elite and you know, well eat
(25:24):
the rich, good for them. These are things that we
can learn from ancient history, you know, like let's make
a free grocery store out of one of Galen Weston's houses,
Like it seems only fair. Ultimately, the point is that
while many of these sites show widespread destruction at the
hands of humans, we can't always assume some outside invasion
(25:45):
by sea people's or anyone else. Sometimes the most dangerous
people in a culture are the ones that have been
fucked over and marginalized for generations. This is entirely me
making stuff up here. But if you've spent hundreds of
years working for an elite palatial complex where the rich
are living their best lives and bathing in gold and
your poorest shit, well, you know, when the opportunity arises,
(26:08):
revolution isn't new and maybe we need to return to
some roots, you know, apropos of nothing. Yesterday I bought
coffee and eggs and like three other basic staple foods
at a grocery store and it costs over fifty dollars.
Eat the rich. But what does this destruction look like,
you know, this specific type of internal disruption. Well, where
(26:30):
we're going to go next. The most important factor in
the destruction is fire. Remember these linear A and linear
B tablets. You know. Linear A and B are the
two Proto Greek languages that developed during the Bronze Age.
Linear A is primarily coming from a no one create
and it's colonies, and Linear B from the mainland of
mice Andians and theirs. Linear B is translated, linear A
(26:52):
is not, you know, which is why I have a
bunch of fun little symbols tattooed on my finger in
the hopes that one day will translate it and I'll
know that I have like grain or olive oil trade
tattooed on my fingers. Because that's the thing about linear B.
It's primarily focused on these palatial records from the Bronze
Age period, iterating a lot of this stuff to you.
Just as this reminder of what they are, because you know,
(27:14):
during this time, Linear B is the only textual evidence
that we have coming out of Mycenean culture. And how
do we have these tablets, these palatial records today because
of fire, the fiery destruction of various Bronze Age Greek sites.
Is this main reason why we have these tablets containing
Linear A and B. The fires that took down these
(27:36):
monumental buildings also just happened to bake those clay tablets
for us, you know, like firing a clay pot in
a kiln to preserve it. These fires preserved the tablets.
And this is just so fucking lucky for us because
Linear B tablets are this invaluable research when it comes
to understanding the palatial complexes in which they were found. Like, sure,
(27:58):
they were mostly these palace records, and no one came
right out and told us that Achilles was like a
real dude. But you know, knowing how much olive oil
and wine and food stuffs were kept in the palaces
is super helpful, if less thrilling than if they contained
a Bronze Age myth. That would have been cool. Still,
I have so much to say. Let's hang around these
(28:20):
Bronze Age sites just a little bit longer. It was
during this late thirteenth century and into the early twelfth
that we date a lot of the destruction of the
mainland Greek sites, specifically at Mycene. It appears that at
first there was an earthquake sometime in this mids thirteenth century.
Then some fifty years later there was another destruction event.
(28:43):
This one was marked by fire, but this fire seems
to be localized to the citadel and not the surrounding areas.
You know, like say, maybe someone returned from war to
find his city and shambles and his wife pretty angry
that he sacrificed their daughter for a bit of wind,
you know, in violence ensues. Okay, fine, again, probably not that,
(29:06):
but still eat the miceny and rich, particularly if they're Agamemnon. Meanwhile,
over at the nearby palatial site of Tyrans, the palace
where Heracles was said to have kicked a guy off
(29:29):
a wall and started a whole mess for himself, we
see more evidence of an earthquake destroying the buildings in
the citadel at the end of this thirteenth century. And
then if we quickly pop over to Pilos, we once
again see evidence of destruction in the early twelfth century
by fire. Poor Nestor. I mean, you know, I'm all
(29:49):
for toppling the aristocracy, but comparatively like he was a
pretty okay guy. Again, fictional iliatic heroes aside, and you know,
I can't resist making references to them. We can look
all over the Mediterranean and inland to the east and
see this evidence of this, you know, the similar kinds
of it's found in the Mesopotamian people of ancient Iraq,
(30:12):
and the Hittites of Anatolia, ancient Turkey and Cyprus, Phoenicia
down into Egypt. And this early twelfth century date around
the time as this destruction in Pilos was when also
Troy seven fell. But it's worth mentioning that just because
these sites were destroyed doesn't mean that they were then abandoned.
(30:33):
You know, this is really important for understanding this Bronze
Age collapse. This is an event where what is lost
is this centralization. Not the people or really the culture
at all these sites. The thing that is lost is
this centralized government that at the top of the social ladder,
this highly organized system that we have become so familiar
(30:56):
with in the Bronze Age disappears for a period of
time that you know, varies depending on the region. In
Greece it was gone for a good while, but elsewhere,
you know, they popped up quicker than you might expect,
because while this centralization in administration disappears, people and human
(31:17):
ingenuity do not, which is why, you know, we don't
want to keep calling what followed the Bronze Age this
this dark Ages, because it wasn't dark like. It isn't
even marked by a lack of sources, which is you know,
where the word originally came from. It was simply a
transitional period that becomes the Iron Age, and it's when
(31:38):
a whole lot of other amazing stuff happens, So calling
it dark is mean at the best. The vast majority
of these sites continue to demonstrate people living in and
occupying the buildings that are still present, you know, maybe
not in the most upper parts of the citadel, but
in the cities and the surrounding regions. And this tells
(32:00):
us so much because what gets assumed is that you know,
this Mediterranean after these events, gets catapulted in this time
of lack and loss, and quite frankly, that's just that's
not what is actually happening. Even in Greece, shirt like,
the upper classes of society are seemingly gone, but the people,
like the people that lived on and worked the land
(32:22):
and fought for their cities, like, they are still going
about their day to day lives in whatever way they can.
In Greece, at least, they went on to establish and
formalize the Greek alphabet, among everything else, you know, to
develop this oral tradition of storytelling that will eventually give
(32:42):
us the Iliad and the Odyssey. The ages that followed,
they were not dark. And maybe this is what we
should take from these instances of destruction and the people
that are moving around the Mediterranean at this time. You know,
for the most part, this is not necessarily people looking
to destroy and take over regions. Maybe it's people moving
(33:05):
around trying to find a better place to live. Because
maybe an earthquake took out their old home and a
couple of families packed up what they had, jumped on
a ship and moved around. This is not an unfamiliar occurrence,
you know. Maybe, and this is where we're head next.
It was this change in climate that forced people to
(33:26):
leave the areas they were living because they simply could
no longer sustain themselves. They left in order to find
a land where they could survive. But once again, and
this is Mikaela screaming in the background. Like the Bronze
Age at every point is defined by people moving around,
interacting and existing amongst each other. It is a time
(33:48):
period that is defined by its interconnectivity and diversity even
during its collapse. Climate change was definitely a major factor
for movement within the Bronze Age. Collapse, droughts and the
resulting lack of food and resources would of course have
pushed people to move themselves and their family to hopefully
(34:09):
better horizons. And this is a seriously natural human response.
We know that people are moving around, not just from
accounts of the quote unquote see peoples, but also from
the continued movement of artifacts that are found in these
various sites. But how do we look back and find
(34:29):
evidence of things like drought and famine. These seem to
be things that could be particularly difficult to find within
the archaeological record. What kind of evidence would we expect
to find that would help us see that these things
are happening at this time? Well, the first and probably
the most obvious is textual evidence. While we tend to
focus on Greece for a lot of things during the
(34:51):
Bronze Age, we need to expand our horizons and look
at this Mediterranean as a whold. The textual evidence that
we get from Grace is pretty much just these administrative
records of various resources that the palatial centers had. But
if we look toward other areas, we get different kinds
of sources, better, more detailed sources. For this, we're going
to head back to the levant and the people at
(35:12):
the city of Ugarit, which really was hit with pretty
much everything that we have talked about so far. You know,
there was an earthquake, there was famine, we'll get there,
and there was invasion. Like really, this is a great
case study for understanding the various elements at play during
the Bronze Age collapse. So at Ugarit, which is in
(35:33):
northern Syria by the way, what was been found are
letters that have been sent between various individuals, from those
with power all the way to people who are just
involved with commerce. And within these letters, which we'll hear
about in more detail in my conversations, we hear about
famines across the region. These accounts are evocative and very
telling to the seriousness of the situation at hand, with
(35:57):
the most relevant of sources saying there is famine in
your house. We will all die of hunger. If you
do not quickly arrive here, we ourselves will die of hunger.
You will not see a living soul from your land.
This isn't a light account. It's very notable today, perhaps
(36:17):
human caused famine being a bigger issue. It's this very
telling account though, of just how dire a situation like
this is, particularly during the collapse you know in ugar
It the situation was so tense that those in charge
felt the need to reach out to neighboring kingdoms in
order to seek aid. There were these requests for grain
(36:39):
and other food sources so that they would be able
to feed their people. But textual sources are not the
only forms of evidence that we have for these droughts
and famines. Science also comes in and gives us much
more explicit evidence for droughts in the region. This is
done through examining pollen of all things like The long
and short of how this works is that scientists have
(37:00):
gone to the Levant and the Near East and taken
these core samples from soils specifically along the areas where
streams and rivers would have been in antiquity. Then they
examine the samples that they retrieved to see what kind
of pollens are present in them. And what these various
pollens can tell us is that the kinds of plants
and crops that were being grown at the time were
(37:21):
more akin to those that do well in these more arid,
dry environments. And so what comes out of this study
is evidence for an incredibly long and for all I
can assume arduous drought that occurred during a late thirteenth
century and lasted until like the ninth century, something like
three hundred years. Other studies that examine other sources have
(37:44):
shown us that there was a drop in the sea
surface temperatures that would have resulted in less precipitation on
the land. And so all in all, the evidence that
comes out of these various studies points to a drastically
different climate in the early Iron Age from the one
of the Bronze Age, and a change like this, especially
if a society doesn't have much space for adaptability and
(38:05):
really relies on what resources that they can bring in
from their land like would have really devastating effects on
the economic output and the ability to sustain a larger population.
So what we end up seeing all across the Mediterranean
and Near East is quite a drastic drop in their population.
You know, there are less people. This is what happens
(38:26):
during a famine. Of course, were to assume the worst.
So looking at the end of the Bronze Age as
a whole, what we see is drought and climate change,
devastating natural disasters that lead to destruction of sites, invasion, migration, war,
all these things by themselves are not totally devastating. They're
(38:47):
recoverable individually. But that's the thing, you know, they were
not happening one at a time. They were all happening
at once or in quick succession. And this is what
was so just wholly devastating to the region. It wasn't
just one earthquake that a couple of sites spent a
couple of years recovering from. It was a series of
(39:08):
earthquake over a long period of time, causing this continual
destruction and disruption to all these sites. It wasn't just
one war or one invasion. It was a series of
wars and invasions across the Aegean and Near East. It
wasn't a small drought in one region. It was this
prolonged and persisting drought, this drastic event of climate change
(39:30):
that affected the regions for decades to come. And of
course all of those things are going to come with refugees,
with people seeking safety. All these events in succession are
just not easily recoverable, like especially during a period so
as early as the Bronze Age. This is what makes
(39:50):
this time period so important to study and learn from.
It's a case study of the various types of events
that can affect a world so highly connected and cause
it to just fall apart. But it's also important to
remember that just because this occurred, just because some organized
civilizations collapsed entirely, that doesn't stop people from living and
(40:14):
building and continuing on in their individual worlds. The Mycenaean
kingdoms of Mainland Grace fell apart, but all the everyday
normal people that survived this didn't disappear off the face
of the earth. They continued to find ways to survive
in their new landscape and to build a new life
for themselves. The stories of who they used to be
(40:36):
or who they came from continued to live on in
this oral tradition that they passed down to their children
through the ages, and which became the stories that even
today I survive on. Most of the myths that we
love and talk about on this show came out of
this persistence of the people living in this region at
(40:56):
this time. It came out of their understanding of who
they used to be and what they could understand from
the built world around them and what little they understood
of it. A couple hundred years later, Myceni continued to
stand and the stories of Menelaus and Helen persisted or
came into being. The various monumental palatial structures continued to stand,
(41:19):
and people visited the enormous tombs built into the landscape
and imagined that this is where Ajax and Diamedes, and
Achilles and Odysseus were laid to rest. Supposedly, even Alexander
the Great, on his campaigns into the Persian Empire, stopped
by the believed site of the Trojan War and went
(41:39):
to this tomb of Achilles and made a sacrifice there.
That's an Alexander's story, but still like life would never
be the same after the collapse but life would continue
to still be life, and that's important to remember when
thinking about this the end of the Bronze Age and
about the collapse as a whole. It does mark an end,
(42:01):
but not in totality. And maybe the people we should
focus on are the people who were left after these events,
the you and me, the ones who were going to
keep going and give these stories of what was and
who we were to their children for generations to come.
The Bronze Age as a whole is not just an
example of where these cultures that we love come from,
(42:23):
but it's this example of human resilience and determination in
the face of these uncontrollable events. It's also an example
of how if the world dies, the elites die with us,
or rather they die first. Oh Nerds, thank you so
(43:01):
much for listening. That was one of the longest scripts
I've read in a while, and we're just gonna wrap
it all up. I have two more conversations coming for you.
So this is not the end of the Bronze Age.
It is just my and by that I mean Mikaela's
incredible script in my attempt to read it, my attempt
to wrap up this collapse in a narrative episode. But oh,
(43:23):
I have two conversations still coming about this collapse. So
we are going to go into much more detail with
the actual archaeologists who know this stuff. It's going to
be amazing. On Friday, you will hear Flint Dibble talking
about climate change. The way the series turned into a
rant against humanity's inability to act about climate change, when
(43:44):
the Bronze Age people were able to fucking do it
and they weren't causing it themselves and they didn't know
about it. I just I wasn't expecting it. But you
can have that to look forward to world's colliding, world's colliding.
This is it's such a relevant period in time, both
historically and just out of interest, and also like for
us today to look back on and see, hey, they
(44:08):
survived climate change. They didn't even know what was happening,
and they certainly weren't causing it. So maybe if we
can convince capitalism to stop being quite so evil, we'll
have a chance or maybe get rid of it entirely.
Speaking of I will finish off today's episode with a
review from one of you amazing listeners. I got a
(44:29):
few recently and they made me smile. Really really big,
So thank you so much for those. If you are interested,
consider living me a review on Apple Podcasts, or you
can do a rating on Spotify. They just don't let
you write something nice and have it sent to me,
so that's why I like the reviews. This one comes
from a user called lil Maru from the States. You
(44:51):
have a fun and nice voice. I like listening to
your podcast because of the subject matter, and you obviously
love what you're talking about and it shows. Also I
agree death to capitalism. That's right, thank you, Death to capitalism.
It's evil. The Western world of is evil. Anyway, back
(45:12):
soon with more. I can't wait for you guys to
hear these conversations. Yeah, they're gonna be so good. Let's
talk about Myth's Baby has written and produced by me,
except not in this case. Mikayla absolutely wrote most of
this entire series. I contributed minimally other than my voice.
Thank you, Mikayla, you are the existence behind this Bronze
age series. Laura Smith is the production assistant and audio
(45:35):
engineer who worked so hard on all of the conversation
episodes and always does select music in this episode was
by Luke Chaos. The podcast is part of the iHeart
Podcast Network. Listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever you
get your podcasts, and help me continue bringing you the
world of Greek mythology and the Ancient Mediterranean by becoming
a patron, where you'll get access to lots of past
(45:55):
bonus episodes, hopefully some new ones, but definitely helping the show.
Helping the free show, visit patron dot com, slash myths Baby,
or click the link in this episode's description. Oh my
voice is going Thank you all so much. This was
so fun. What a series. Stay tuned for really the
best parts of it. Let's be honest, the conversations are
(46:17):
the best part of this series. Stay tuned. I am
live and I love this shit and I'm excited to
return to mythology, a thing that I feel more confident
talking about. S
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