More than 3,200 years ago, the Mediterranean and Near East were home to a flourishing and interconnected Bronze Age civilization fueled by lucrative trade in valuable metals and finished goods. The great kingdoms and empires of the day—including the Egyptians, Babylonians, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Hittites and more-had the technological know-how to build monumental palaces and employed scribes to keep records of their finances and military exploits.
In a matter of decades, though, that thriving culture underwent a rapid and near-total collapse. After 1177 B.C., the survivors of this Bronze Age collapse were plunged into a centuries-long “Dark Ages” that saw the disappearance of some written languages and brought once-mighty kingdoms to their knees.
But what kind of catastrophic event could have triggered such a sudden and sweeping downfall? It’s likely that the simultaneous demise of so many ancient civilizations wasn’t caused by a single event or disaster, but by a “perfect storm” of multiple stressors that toppled these interdependent kingdoms like dominos.
Not unlike today, a truly “globalized” economy once existed in the Late Bronze Age in which multiple ancient civilizations depended on each other for raw materials especially copper and tin to produce bronze—and also trade goods made from ceramic, ivory and gold.
One way to grasp the extent of this interconnectedness is through archeological finds like the 1320 B.C. Uluburun shipwreck of the coast of modern-day Turkey. Its contents include a dazzling array of luxury goods: carved ivory trinkets, gold and agate jewelry, and expensive raw materials from distant ports. Also on board were bulk shipments of copper and tin ingots in the typical ratio of 10 to 1, the recipe for making bronze, the strongest and most brilliant metal of its day. These materials were from Cyprus, Afghanistan, Greece, Egypt, and Lebanon, making the ship a good example of the international trade that was going on in the Late Bronze Age, both in raw materials and finished products.
The traditional explanation for the sudden collapse of these powerful and interdependent civilizations was the arrival, at the turn of the 12th century B.C., of marauding invaders known collectively as the “Sea Peoples,” a term first coined by the 19th- century Egyptologist Emmanuel de Rougé.
At Ugarit, a major port city in Canaan, the king wrote of unknown enemies who burned his cities and “did evil things in my country.” In Egypt, the pharaoh’s armies fought off two separate attacks from these mysterious foreigners, once in 1207 B.C. and again in 1177 B.C. A stunning relief on the walls of Ramses III’s temple at Medinet Habu depicts the second massive se battle, in which Egypt was finally victorious against the swarm of Sea Peoples.
The true origins of the Sea Peoples are one of history’s great unsolved mysteries. One leading theory is that they emerged from the western Mediterranean—the Aegean Sea or as far as the Iberian Peninsula of modern Spain-and were driven East by drought and other climate disasters. Their ships invaded Mediterranean strongholds with women and children in tow, evidence that the Sea Peoples were both raiders and refugees.
In 2014, researchers from Israel and Germany analyzed core samples taken from the Sea of Galilee and determined, using radiocarbon dating, that the period from 1250 to 1100 B.C. was the driest of the entire Bronze Age, what some scholars call a “mega-drought.”
The Egyptians and Babylonians were spared the worst of the drought because of their proximity to mighty rivers like the Nile and the Tigris and Euphrates. But other civilizations weren’t so lucky. Where there’s drought, there’s famine. And Cline doesn’t believe it’s a coincidence that the worst famine years correspond with the invasion of the Sea Peoples, when desperate climate refugees would have been on the hunt for resources.
The mega-drought wasn’t the only natural disaster that destabilized Late Bronze Age civilizations. Cline conducted research with the geophysicist Amos Nur which revealed that during the 50-year period from 1225 to 1175 B.C. the Mediterranean region was hit with a rapid-fire series of major earthquakes known as an “earthquake storm.”
Ironically, the interconnectedness that had strengthened these Bronze Age kingdoms may have hastened their downfall. Once trade routes for tin and copper were disrupted and cities began to fall, it had a domino effect that resulted in a widespread system collapse.
Among the casualties of the Late Bronze Age collapse was large-scale monument building and an entire system of writing called Linear B, an archaic form of Greek used by Mycenaean scribes to record economic transactions. Since only the top one percent were literate, they lost that ability after the collapse. Consequently, it took centuries for writing to return to Greece, only after the Phoenicians brought their alphabet.
Not all civilizations were impacted equally. Some, like the Mycenaeans and Minoans, suffered a complete collapse. Same with the Hittites, who simply ceased to exist as a civilization. The Assyrians and the Egyptians were largely unaffected, while others showed resilience and either transformed or redefined themselves.
Question: What were the achievements of the Bronze Age? Answer this question in about 150 words. (24 points)
