End of the Bronze Age
 
Volkwanderung Several European historians in the late 19th century argued that the Bronze Age civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean were overrun by invading hordes of European invaders who settled in these areas. This would square with the Greek legends of Dorian invaders who wandered into Greece in the 1200s and settled there, displacing the older Mycenaean culture. Volkwanderung, that is migrations of peoples from central Europe displacing inferior non-Europeans in the East was a favorite fantasy of European nationalist scholars of the 19th century, and the idea was revived briefly by Nazi historians in the 1930s. Problem is that the theory isn’t supported by any real archaeological evidence. There is no sign of the pre-existing populations being replaced by invaders with a different culture, and no real evidence of new peoples moving in and adapting older cultures to fit, as had happened in Mesopotamia in the past. The best evidence indicated the original populations living in the same places with a much lower level of wealth, prosperity, security and material culture. So much for volkwanderung! “Acts of God” Another popular theory, this one crops up from time to time in the 20th century we might call the “massive acts of god” argument. Essentially, scholars who subscribe to this one argue that a series of earthquakes, tsunamis, severe droughts, whatever, devastated the Eastern Mediterranean between about 1350 and 1200 B.C., destroying the great cities and thus devastating those civilizations. We know that this happened occasionally – I’ve already talked about the case of Crete, and it may be that an earthquake destroyed Troy, at least once. But lots of the cities were not in earthquake zones, and there is no evidence of any of the other stuff, either. If earthquakes or whatnot had destroyed the cities, there would be lots of valuable artifacts on the sites. Natural cataclysms tend to destroy the buildings and bury people and artifacts in rubble. Good examples of this are Pompeii, covered by volcanic ash, and one level of Troy (VIIa). Most of the cities of the eastern Med. yield archaeological evidence that suggests the cities were attacked, sacked and burned, and whoever did it grabbed all the goodies that they could carry and split. Class Revolution Some historians surmise that Bronze Age kingdoms all over the eastern Mediterranean collapsed under the weight of their own internal social/economic failings. This argument has been real popular among Marxist historians since the 1940s, among them, Gordon Childe. These scholars argue that the city societies became increasingly top heavy, bloated with a greedy warrior and bureaucratic palace-based aristocrats and beaurocrats, whose needs were met by an increasingly oppressed peasant population. Usually the trigger for a peasant revolt is a drought, which reduces production so that there aren’t enough goodies to go around. Under this theory the peasants, in good Marxist fashion, rise up and destroy their oppressors. Again, there isn’t any good evidence, and there are lots of problems: a) Why would the peasants destroy the cities? b) How did oppressed and downtrodden peasants suddenly have the clout to overthrow their oppressors, especially if a drought had reduced their caloric intake? c) Why is there no record of troubles up to the moment when the cities were destroyed? Finally d) how can we rationalize so many relatively identical peasant uprisings and destroyed cities – over 50 of them – all over the eastern Med. in roughly a century? Robert Drews’ Theory In 1993, a historian named Robert Drews of Vanderbilt University offered a new interpretation that accounts for all of the evidence in a way that I find much more satisfying. In The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C.’ Drews argues that, by 1400 B.C., the main form of military power in the civilized East was the chariot. Chariot were essentially missile platforms. Chariot warfare involved pairs of warriors, one to guide the chariot, and one firing arrows at the enemy. Massed chariots advanced on the enemy, fired missiles, then veered off, returned to the lines and did it again. Over time, eastern Mediterranean states invested more and more resources into in chariots, and employed infantry as offensive troops less and less. Chariots are very expensive, and scholars once thought that Egyptian and Hittite descriptions of armies with thousands of chariots were mostly official bragging. But written inventories of chariots and horses in Mycenaean Pylos indicates that even that small city state had an army with as many as 1,600 chariots. So maybe Egypt at the height of its power might have had 5 or 6 thousand chariots. At any rate, Drews surmises that by about 1300 B.C. the great states in the eastern Mediterranean supported large professional armies of aristocratic charioteers, and had only small infantry units to guard camps and supplies and to dispatch wounded enemy troops after the chariots had done their thing. Written evidence indicates that, since the warrior aristocrats had no desire to arm their peasants, these kingdoms began to hire mercenaries from areas on the fringes of the civilized world to serve as garrison soldiers and guards. Some of these mercenaries came from the Western Mediterranean Europe – Italy, Spain, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and the Aegean. These areas were materially poor, so mercenaries who served in Eastern armies were most impressed by the material wealth of their employers, VERY impressed! These barbarian warriors were not only able soldiers, but also very good sailors. They fought with small, light shields, effective thrusting/cutting swords, and light throwing spears (javelins). They wore light armor and practiced very mobile group infantry tactics. Sometime around 1200 B.C., these outsiders realized that they were well equipped to attack and destroy chariot-based armies. Their javelins could be employed to bring down the horses and they could swarm over the drivers and archers and use their swords to kill them. Between 1300 and 1200, groups of these folks began to make sea raids against Eastern cities, much as their cousins the Vikings would against European civilization some 2000 years later. These “Sea People” had no interest in settling in the cities that they attacked, they weren’t conquerors, they were looters. If Drews’ thesis is correct, these raiders were very successful. Some 50 cities in the Eastern Mediterranean exhibit signs that they were attacked quickly, methodically plundered and destroyed between roughly 1260 and 1190 B.C. By 1100 B.C., the Bronze Age had come to an end as iron technology began to replace bronze in the West. Catastrophe of ca. 1200 B.C. Archaeological evidence indicates that around 1200 B.C. civilizations all over the eastern Med. were either destroyed or aversely effected by something, and scholars have come to call that something the catastrophe of the 1200s B.C. Various scholars have come up with a number of interpretations to try to explain the catastrophe. So, we should review the main interpretations briefly. What happened? We don’t know, but several factors probably led to the change. Here are some theories: