WEBVTT - What Caused the Late Bronze Age Collapse? 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:11.280 Welcome to Stuff you should know. A production of iHeartRadio. Hey, 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:14.080 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:17.160 and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you should know, 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:21.960 A good old history edition, if you ask me, by goodness, 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:27.600 History of the World Part two. I don't think I 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:30.320 saw that since I was maybe eight, and at the time, 0:00:30.360 --> 0:00:31.920 I was like, I have no idea what's going on 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:34.280 or why people think this is funny? Yeah, well that 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:38.120 was part one. Part two is out now. Oh really. Yeah, 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:39.760 We're not getting paid for this, but I'll plug the 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:43.519 heck out of it. It's on Hulu and they waited, 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:45.320 you know, to like a forty year in the making 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:49.400 sequel that they did as a TV show with mel 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:53.000 Brooks executive producing and narrating. But it's like some of 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:57.080 the great minds and comedy out there doing you know, 0:00:57.280 --> 0:01:01.639 history sketches. Is Michael Fossbender in it? I don't think so. 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:05.600 Is he was great comedy minds? I think so. It's 0:01:05.640 --> 0:01:08.920 really funny, though, like genuinely laugh out loud funny. Yeah. 0:01:08.959 --> 0:01:11.039 I gotta check it out because those things are rare 0:01:11.520 --> 0:01:14.600 and few and far between. Yeah, it's good stuff, you know, sketch. 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.520 So not everything is perfect, but it's I found myself 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:19.520 laughing quite a bit so far. I've seen three of them. 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:22.840 I think, Okay, it's on Hulu. It's on Hulu. And 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:24.800 what happens if you don't have Hulu? Did you just 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:28.480 go subscribe? I don't know how you can watch it. 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:30.680 I think you just go subscribe to Hulu, is what 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:33.280 I'm trying to say. Oh, sure, but this sounds like 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:35.240 an ad for Hulu. I don't know about TV shows. 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:37.759 You can just go out and buy a show, right, Sure, 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:39.560 you want to buy whatever you want. It's the twenty 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:43.520 first century, right, Should we talk about the Bronze Age. Yeah, 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:46.720 let's go back a few centuries, a few millennia actually 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:50.440 to the Bronze Age. Great Age. It was. It was 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:52.559 a great age. It was actually the first grade Age. 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:56.440 I think most people are familiar with the term Bronze Age, 0:01:56.440 --> 0:01:59.520 but they might not know, like, just how amazing an 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:03.400 age it really was, like just I poppingly amazing frankly 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:06.880 if you think of it. Yeah, and it was specifically 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:12.160 wedged between the Stone Age, which stones worked great for 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:15.919 millions of years for a lot of things. Yeah, Bronze 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:18.800 came along and then was followed by the Iron Age 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:21.960 where we were plunged into the Dark Ages. Yeah, but 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:25.200 we're talking what thirty three hundred BC to about twelve 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:30.040 hundred BC, a little over a thousand years. Yeah, and 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:31.400 it had a lot to do with the Bronze which 0:02:31.400 --> 0:02:35.760 we'll talk about, but also just advances and almost everything 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:43.720 you can think of, Yeah, art, architecture, politics, diplomacy, technology, religion, war, 0:02:43.800 --> 0:02:49.239 virsion of science. Yeah, the early sciences, early astronomy and math, writing, 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:53.000 all of this stuff was born during this thousand years 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:55.240 stretch of the Bronze Age. And again, like you might say, 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:57.000 well a thousand years, of course, you could have been 0:02:57.040 --> 0:02:59.120 all that in a thousand years, But think about it. 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:02.400 We were around for tens of thousands of years as 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:05.560 modern humans and millions of years as hominids of some 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:07.880 sort or another up to that point, and then all 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:11.400 of a sudden boom, civilization just develops out of nowhere, 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:15.520 and it was in large part because of bronze itself, 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:21.080 not just that Bronze tools are way better than stone tools. 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.840 They're more easily sharpened, you can fashion them more easily, 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:27.640 you can recycle them, so when they get busted up, 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:30.919 you can re smelt them and make it brand new again. 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:35.520 That's a huge advance in technology. But the actual bronze itself, 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:40.080 in a really roundabout but also pretty direct way, wove 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:43.200 people together in ways that they never had been before. 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:48.280 That led to civilization. Yeah, it's really cool how the 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:54.200 discovery of metallurgy just changed so much in a very 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:55.560 you know, if you look at the big picture, a 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:59.440 very short amount of time. Yeah, so there were If 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:01.320 you want to make brons, you take copper and you 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:04.000 take a little bit of tin is usually the alloy 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:06.720 that makes bronze, and you smash them together with your 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:11.160 hands over the course of fifteen years, and then dam 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:14.320 you have bronze. So you well know you melt him. 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:18.080 You smelled him, and who smelt it? Delt it? Right, 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.600 that's right. And you have bronze and you can fashion 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:24.760 it into tools. But to get copper and tin together 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:26.800 you have to go to all sorts of different places. 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:29.920 In the Mediterranean. You have plenty of copper, say on 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.080 Cyprus that was a copper mining center, but then if 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:36.360 you wanted tin, you had to go a couple thousand miles, 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:39.919 a few thousand kilometers to the east, if I'm mistaken, 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:44.080 to the east to Afghanistan, which was a tin center, 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:48.160 and to get that tin and that copper together you 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:51.520 had to create really extensive trade networks. You had to 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:53.440 go through one land to another, so you had to 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.159 make friends or make enemies with those people, and all 0:04:56.160 --> 0:05:00.000 of these new relationships developed just to get the component 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:04.520 to make bronze together, and that that formed the basis 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:07.680 of all the stuff that seemed to follow. Yeah, and 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:10.400 we'll talk about the warring. There was certainly that, but 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:13.360 there was also a lot of cooperation because everyone wanted 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:16.760 to get their hands on that sweet bronze, and they're like, hey, 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:20.800 if you want to play with the big fellas, then 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:24.159 maybe become part of this trade route, allow us to 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:26.640 go through your area with the tin or whatever, or 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:29.240 maybe you have something that we need other than just 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:31.279 you know, being on the way. But there's a lot 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:36.240 of cooperation involved too as far as the bronze. What 0:05:36.400 --> 0:05:40.040 that led to ultimately was better. And this is the 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:43.400 sort of the cascading effect that a simple not simple, 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:46.960 but a discovery like this can have is or make 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:50.560 is better farming techniques. And you might think, well, great, 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:53.480 so you could farm better but that means you could 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:56.560 farm bigger, and that means you could support more people, 0:05:57.000 --> 0:06:00.800 and that means you could get a civilization going. And 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.480 because you had before, you previously had a situation where like, hey, listen, 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:08.560 everyone's got a hunt and gather, and then later later on, 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:11.720 everyone's got a farm because we just can't support ourselves 0:06:11.760 --> 0:06:14.280 unless everyone's kind of in on this. Right now, they 0:06:14.279 --> 0:06:19.559 had more sophisticated techniques, so fewer people had to farm 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:23.479 to support more people even and that freed up people 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:25.760 who were good at other stuff to do other stuff. 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:28.560 So that's the cascading effect that you were sort of 0:06:28.600 --> 0:06:32.360 alluding to, where like this one thing led to farming, 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:36.599 better farming, but that better farming led to division of 0:06:36.680 --> 0:06:38.680 labor where it's like, hey, I'm really good at science. 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:40.479 Hey I'm really good. I'm a really good writer. But 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:43.000 everyone always said, don't waste your time writing because we 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:45.839 need you farming. Right it's brand new. It might not 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.080 stick around. It could just be a fad, this writing thing. 0:06:48.520 --> 0:06:51.039 It might just go away. So yeah, and with that 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:54.119 division of labor, the writers can write, the math, people 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:57.680 can figure out math. The farmers can farm and feed everybody. 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:01.120 And then one of the other big pillars of support 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:03.720 for this division of labor that allowed it to blossom 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.640 was centralized governments that said, farmers, we're in charge of you. 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:10.280 Make x amount of grain and bring it to this 0:07:10.320 --> 0:07:13.000 central place. Everybody else come to this central place and 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:15.440 get your grain. We're taking care of you. We're feeding you. 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:17.400 So you guys can go off and concentrate on this 0:07:17.440 --> 0:07:25.400 other stuff and help civilization flourish. So government is a huge, sweeping, bureaucratic, 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:31.920 hierarchical entity. Really got established in the Bronze Age as well, 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:35.000 just because there were so many people being strung together 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:39.120 again in the service of creating bronze Yeah, and hey, 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:42.040 while you're at it, enslave people, why don't you build 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:47.320 huge statues of me and big monuments of myself as 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:50.480 the leader of you. So that's kind of what happened, 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:54.160 you know, the establishment of government from the very beginning 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:57.960 sort of gaveth and took it away, gaveth and that 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:00.320 all the things you were saying, which was great about 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:03.400 organizing large groups of people, but took of the way 0:08:03.440 --> 0:08:07.000 because every civilization was built on the backs of enslaved people, 0:08:07.920 --> 0:08:12.120 and if not enslaved, at the very least they established 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:16.080 a real kind of like never before, a real hierarchy 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:19.280 of high I'm in charge and you're not, so you 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:22.200 don't matter as much. Yeah, that's that was definitely new. 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:24.920 I mean you always had things like you know, shaman 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:28.480 or some sort of like probably group leader, elders or 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:31.360 something like that, right for a hunter gatherer bands, but 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:35.720 nothing like this where you didn't even come close to 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:38.760 to talking to or knowing personally the person who was 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:42.840 your your ultimate leader. Like that was brand new. And 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:44.920 what's interesting, Chuck, as you said, you know, kind of 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:48.720 for better for worse about the government emerging. You can 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:55.200 really see how you feel about today's world by how 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:58.480 you in purpet what was born and what happened during 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:01.880 the Bronze Age. It's like look in a highly polished 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:05.920 bronze mirror. Basically, it's really interesting what reflects back, and 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:08.520 it's not always cut and dried, like I have certain 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:12.400 feelings about, you know, topics like government or whatever. But 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:15.959 I also in looking back a few thousand years, it's 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:18.760 also easy to see the other side's opinion because they're 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:21.480 not all up in my face. They're several thousand years old, 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:26.040 and I can kind of now understand contemporary people's feelings 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:29.200 about say government or something as well. I think that's 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:33.240 just fascinating. That's ultimately why history is so important, because 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:36.160 you really do learn lessons from it. You can, like 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:39.280 humans are not We like to think we're super advanced 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:41.680 compared to you know, the people of a few thousand 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:45.880 years ago, but we're still basically the same humans that 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:48.000 we were back during the Bronze agents, So there is 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:52.000 a lot to learn. I agree. You know, we mentioned 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:54.640 that there was worrying obviously, when you're going to get 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:58.160 bigger groups of people together and government's ruling those people 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:01.920 and they're in close proximity to one another, you know, 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:05.280 neighbored right up to each other, there's gonna be people 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:07.240 that don't get along, and there is obviously going to 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:09.560 be warring. But like we mentioned, there was also a 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:14.160 lot of diplomacy and there was a very sort of 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:18.640 golden age of this Golden age kind of square in 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:22.240 the middle, where things were cruising along really, really nicely. 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:25.240 I think these sort of looking back at it, it 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:30.679 seems like the beginnings of a big, grand transition like this, 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:33.559 things can be rough, and as we'll see at the end, 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:37.280 given that it basically collapsed. It's obviously rough, but there 0:10:37.360 --> 0:10:39.160 was a time in the middle there where things were 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:43.839 going pretty great. Yeah, Yeah, it's true. It's that middle 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:47.400 Bronze Age prosperity. And it actually kind of underscores the 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:49.800 idea that when you bring a lot of people together 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:54.560 you can do amazing, momentous things. But if you bring 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:57.720 a lot of diverse people together, you've got a lot 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:03.880 of different attribute ut different contributions from different groups and opinions. Yeah, 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:08.440 and opinions and affluence and prosperity can really follow when 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:13.400 people of diverse backgrounds interact with one another on large scales. Amen, 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:17.640 that's pretty cool. Should we take a break. Sure, it's 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:19.240 kind of an early break, but it feels like a 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:22.440 good stopping point. And maybe when we come back, we'll 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:52.520 talk about the Big Eight. All right, I tease the 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:58.199 Big Eight. We're talking about the Big Eight areas societies 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:02.199 that dominated the Bronze Age, and they are not This 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:06.840 is not an order of influence or preference, even alphabetical, 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:11.439 it's not any This is just randomly assimilated, okay, or assembled. 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:17.440 Egyptians not bad, actually hit and as we'll see, the Egyptians, 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:19.640 they didn't completely go away. They got punched in the 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:30.679 face during the Bronze Age collapse, but they stuck around Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, Cypriots, Minoans, Mycinians, Assyrians, 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:34.559 and rounding out the top eight, everyone's favorite, the Babylonians. 0:12:34.960 --> 0:12:37.360 And this is like, not all of these groups were 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:41.520 dominant at one time at the same time. Yeah, some 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:44.480 were dominant at one time or another, like the Minoans 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:50.040 were the civilization that predated the Mycinians right so um 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:54.120 by quite several hundred years, if not longer, but each 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:57.800 one dominated. They both controlled crete while they were in charge. 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:00.280 And if you look at these these groups, to a 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:02.600 lot of them are I mean, I guess you'd call 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:06.120 them famous, Like the Babylonians pretty famous, the Manoans famous 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:10.440 that um, the Egyptians super duper famous. Yeah, white famous. 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.360 And this was the this these were the groups that 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:16.920 created the beginning of history, Like this was the time 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:19.480 when the pyramids at Giza were built, or when the 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:22.599 Epic of Gilgamesh was written and the Code of Hammurabi 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:26.320 was encoded. This is when Pharaoh's like two to common 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:29.720 and Ramesy's the second ruled Like this was big deal 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:34.480 capital h history that was being produced at this time. UM, 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:37.080 and it seems to have all kind of started with 0:13:37.720 --> 0:13:41.400 the um. The Sumerians. They seem to be the ones 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:45.280 who like kicked the whole thing off. Yeah, and we 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:47.840 should mention too that all of those groups that we 0:13:47.920 --> 0:13:52.640 named had subgroups, a lot of Itites, you want to 0:13:52.640 --> 0:13:58.640 tell him, some ess amrites h Gergeshites, that's my favorite. 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:01.800 And these were all all groups, and they even had subgroups, 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:06.120 you know, under these umbrella terms like Canaanites. But Sumerians, 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:11.040 like you said, came first. They said, hey, you like irrigation, 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:13.880 what do you think about this? Canal right, what do 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:16.120 you think about this zigarrette? What do you think about 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:19.680 writing things down? And now we can keep track of 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:24.040 inventories and things like that, and log books and money 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:28.400 or like you mentioned the Epic of Gilgamesh, great read 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:32.680 ye've known as the first work of literature. But what 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:35.000 you also had because of this invention of writing was 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:39.120 other cultures writing, and in a way that sort of 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:42.560 helps corroborate what's going on. When you have different cultures 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:46.360 writing about things that that track or check check one another, 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:49.080 then you sort of get a better picture of what's 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:52.360 happening well. Plus, also, when you have these diverse cultures 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:55.760 that have different systems of writing and language, when they 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:59.960 communicate with one another, they're often writing in two different language. 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:04.400 So later historians, once you crack one language, you can 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:07.200 use that to crack like let's say you cracked hieroglyphics, 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:10.600 you can use hieroglyphics to now crack linear B, which 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:13.560 was I think out of crete if I'm not mistaken. 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:16.000 And if you crack linear B, well wait a minute, 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:20.560 they used linear B to write this cuneiform or cuneiform, 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:23.600 so we can crack that now too. So like almost 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:27.120 all tablets written during this time, we're in multiple languages, 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.480 so each one's like a Rosetta stone. Yeah, it's really neat. 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:35.280 That is super cool. So everything's going great. People are trading, 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:39.440 people are thriving, people are farming like never before, and 0:15:39.840 --> 0:15:44.440 all these advances are happening and then boom, almost for 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:48.320 the most part, everything stopped. Most of that development and 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:52.280 almost all of those major civilizations kind of just went away, 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:57.560 and like we said, the Iron Age came along. Looking now, 0:15:57.880 --> 0:15:59.480 my friend, I think this would have been the best 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:02.720 place for a break. Sure, but it screwed that up. 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:05.400 So we'll just dive right into what might have happened. 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:09.360 The data the collapse is generally given as eleven sixty 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:11.920 seven BC, but it's obviously not the kind of thing 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:15.440 that happens overnight. I think it They generally now agree 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:17.720 that it happened over the course of what thirty or 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:20.120 forty years? Yeah, I think from about twelve hundred to 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:22.880 eleven fifty, which I mean, if you're living through that, 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:26.480 it's fifty years at the time of lifetime, probably a lifetime, 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:31.840 but looking back historically, it's like the blink of an eye. Yeah, 0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:34.360 and in a blink of an eye, things like when 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:36.960 we talk about collapse, it was it was a pretty 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:41.320 start collapse, like there was there's evidence of lots of disturbance, 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:46.200 lots of upset in that region. And we'll get into 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:48.640 everything that happened. I mean, we talked about the warring 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:54.800 people really started warring, and when certain civilizations might have 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:58.440 fallen out of power, that created a vacuum there where 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:02.000 a new civilization would come in and all of these 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:04.560 civilizations kind of going away. I believe it was like 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:08.000 Sparta and Athens were the next to come along. To 0:17:08.119 --> 0:17:11.600 really kind of kick off the next Golden Age, right, Yeah, 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.399 several hundred years later, and in between there was what 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:16.720 you would call a dark Age, the Iron Age, which 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:19.920 iron is preferable to bronze in some ways and that 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:25.080 it can be harder, I believe, but bronze doesn't rust. 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:29.080 So people typically look at the Iron Age, the transition 0:17:29.160 --> 0:17:31.920 from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age as a 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:36.440 step backward, a dark age. And it came from this 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:41.359 collapse what's called the Late Bronze Age collapse where you know, 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:44.120 you said that they really started boring and cities were 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:47.000 sacked and burned. Cities have been like sacked before and 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:50.080 burned before, but they were rebuilt during this age of prosperity. 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.080 This time, after the Late Bronze Age collapse from twelve 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:56.560 hundred to eleven fifty, they weren't rebuilt. They were left 0:17:56.680 --> 0:17:59.760 in ruins and rubble because the civilizations that would have 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.320 built them were gone. Their languages were gone, their writing 0:18:03.480 --> 0:18:07.200 was gone. In very short time, people couldn't decipher things 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:09.879 that had been written fifty or one hundred years before. 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:14.480 It was it was just one civilization after another fell 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:19.159 like dominoes all around the Mediterranean and this part of 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:22.320 the world that gave the world essentially civilization for the 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.800 very first time fell into this dark age, and it's 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:32.480 it's it was such a stark, massive, all encompassing collapse 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:36.919 of the first attempt at civilization that it just piqued 0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:41.680 historians and archaeologists curiosity from the first time they detected it, 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:46.320 and they've been seeking to explain exactly what happened ever since. Yeah, 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:48.000 and we'll in a second will go over some of 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:52.760 the causes, but after the cause, and there's a lot 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:55.720 of debate over what those were. You we have a 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:59.560 civilization or a group of civilizations that we've talked about 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:03.080 being very interconnected and dependent on one another. So you 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:05.320 said they fell like dominoes. That's going to happen if 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.359 you have a lot of civilizations trading with one another, 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:13.040 depending on one another, sharing resources with one another. When 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:16.800 one goes down, then it becomes unstable for all of them. 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:22.880 And you know, if a civilization collapses, those people it's 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:26.320 not like everyone literally is destroyed, Like those people are 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:29.200 going to go to the next closest place probably and 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:33.280 that overstresses them and then it's just like you said, 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:36.399 it's it's just one after the other, this domino effect happens, 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:40.120 and it just kind of happened one after the other 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:43.920 over this very short time period. Yeah, because remember this 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:47.920 is the first time when people follow to centralized government, 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:50.399 and this is where you got your food, right, So 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:54.119 when that centralized government collapsed, you no longer had access 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:56.119 to food. And you're like, I'm a mathematician, I have 0:19:56.200 --> 0:19:58.200 no idea how to grow grain. I'm going to starve 0:19:58.280 --> 0:20:00.520 to death if somebody doesn't do something you told me. 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:03.520 Of course, you're going to run to the next civilization 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:06.080 that still has a central government with grain that they 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:08.760 could possibly have. But that puts a strain on the grain, 0:20:09.160 --> 0:20:11.280 and people start to fight when there's a strain on 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:13.879 the grain. That's just how it goes, right, that's a 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:16.720 T shirt waiting to happen. So UM for one of 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:19.000 the first people or one of the first theories that 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:22.960 came along. Um was posed by an egyptologist, a French 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:26.840 egyptologist who coined the term the sea people. I like 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:31.360 that the sea people have long been UM. Yeah, it's 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:34.119 sound ominous in this sense, don't they. Yeah, when you 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:38.359 capitalize the sea people, yeah, yeah, they're probably not bringing 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:41.639 fruit baskets, you know. No, unfortunately not. They were bringing 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:44.560 death and destruction in Mayhem, and much the same way 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:47.200 that we today think of like the Vikings would have 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:51.440 to the UK and the Western Europe. This is a 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:55.120 very similar thing where a bunch of raiding pirates made 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:59.359 land and just sacked all these civilizations. And so, um, 0:20:59.640 --> 0:21:03.560 they're they're almost hypothetical that we have a pretty good 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:05.960 idea that they did exist in some form or another. 0:21:06.040 --> 0:21:10.960 They're they're written about in Egyptian stale stala, can't remember 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:14.080 how to say that. Um, but inscriptions, let's just say. 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:17.159 And they show up in art too, so we know 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:19.880 that they they happen, but we don't know who these 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:24.920 people are and what extent they They sacked the major 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:28.520 great city states, and if if they managed to topple 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:32.400 all these civilizations, then holy cow, they were They were amazing. 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:34.440 But a lot of people are like, I'm not sure 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:38.920 they actually were the trigger. They might have been a symptom. Yeah, 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:40.600 and we don't, like you said, we don't even know 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:43.520 for sure who they are. I believe Egyptians did identify 0:21:44.119 --> 0:21:47.280 some groups of them at the time as like the 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:51.639 Oshawasha or the Luca or the check Lesh, but that 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:55.120 means nothing to us these days because their contemporary names 0:21:55.160 --> 0:21:59.160 were lost to history. So what we call a lot 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:03.679 of civilizations today were named by people who discovered their 0:22:03.760 --> 0:22:06.320 ruins years later, and that wasn't what they called themselves. 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:12.200 For instance, Minoans were named after the Greek king Minos 0:22:12.400 --> 0:22:16.800 by an archaeologist named Arthur Evans or Arthur Evans. In 0:22:16.960 --> 0:22:19.320 some cases we do know what they called themselves, in 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:22.639 other cases we don't. I think the Samerians we know 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:28.639 called themselves ung song giga, which is blackheaded people, but 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:32.080 they were named Samerians by Acadians who followed after them. 0:22:32.840 --> 0:22:37.040 So we have trouble with identifying people because the names 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:39.720 were lost. We have trouble identifying people like to see 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:43.480 people because there's a very murky picture of who was 0:22:43.760 --> 0:22:47.239 where and when they were there. So there's a lot 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:49.639 of different stories where you think, like one group of 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:53.800 people maybe came in and overpowered another and drove them 0:22:54.240 --> 0:22:56.879 into oblivion, where it's like no, now we believe that 0:22:57.400 --> 0:23:00.240 they were there sort of all along and they just 0:23:00.320 --> 0:23:03.760 filled that power vacuum, or maybe those actually were those 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:07.440 people right right. Like For a good example is the Canaanites. 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:09.760 For a very long time, the Philistines were blamed, and 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:12.480 I mean a really long time the Philistines were blamed 0:23:12.680 --> 0:23:18.240 for toppling the Canaanite empire. But more recent scholarship says, actually, 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:21.840 I think the Canaanites became the Philistines after the collapse. 0:23:22.000 --> 0:23:28.640 They kind of broke up as a group and then reformed. Like, Umm, 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:31.199 I'm trying to think of a band. The only one 0:23:31.240 --> 0:23:32.840 I can think of is my high school band who 0:23:32.920 --> 0:23:36.760 broke up and reformed without me. So let's just say 0:23:36.840 --> 0:23:39.800 that it was like my high school band. Oh that 0:23:40.000 --> 0:23:42.240 story just breaks my heart. Every time I hear it 0:23:42.320 --> 0:23:45.679 breaks my heart too. But anyway, that's what they think happened. 0:23:45.760 --> 0:23:48.560 So so a lot of the scholarship that we were 0:23:48.720 --> 0:23:52.520 we relied on for centuries, like the Canaanites were toppled 0:23:52.520 --> 0:23:55.280 by the Philistines. It was incorrect, and we have to 0:23:55.400 --> 0:23:57.480 figure it out by deducing Well, wait a minute, this 0:23:57.560 --> 0:23:59.879 group was here at this time, and this group was 0:24:00.119 --> 0:24:03.560 at that time. The contemporary reports don't actually help us 0:24:03.600 --> 0:24:05.840