It was about a period of about 3 years during the Akkadian Empire when 4 kings rose and fell. There's some open-endedness to that document,though, as it describes the antediluvian kings as reigning for tens of thousands of years each.

It corresponds chronologically with the decay of the Akkadians and a really bad drought around 2200 BC, though. A couple may have been the listed kings from the fourth dynasty of Uruk or the like, but we can't really know for sure. At least to the extent of my understanding.

What are some of your favourite books about daily life in the ancient world?

Maybe this is more appropriate to ELI5?

These are very good questions and deserve a LOT of study.

I have a personal theory about that. I don't know how valid it is but it makes sense to me.

The sensational way to put it would be, "the Trojan War caused the Bronze Age Collapse."

Obviously it's more complicated than that.

My theory is that Troy, which is located near one of the two Turkish straits, had trading connections with grain kingdoms along the cost of what's Ukraine today. If we assume such farming kingdoms existed, Troy would be in a perfect position to flourish by playing middleman between these states and the hungry nations of the eastern Mediterranean, which would explain why such a powerful Trojan state existed in the first place that it could defy all of Greece like contemporary histories suggest it did.

We know the years before the collapse were marked by declining yields in most if not all of the major players in the region, and as the years went on and yields began to shrink further and further but the population didn't decline along with it. Usually when yields decline populations decline too Famine, disease, starvation, confilict over remaining sources of food, all usually combined to ensure the nation goes demographically negative until the population has shrunk to the level it can support. This didn't happen in the late Bronze Age. Or at least when it did happen, it happened all at once suddenly, rather than gradually..

Why? I believe it was because there was a source of plentiful grain to import -- a region that even today is one of the great suppliers of the world's food. Ukraine.

So the grain farms of the northern Black Sea, which I admit I'm presuming to exist but have been there as far back in recorded history as you care to go, became a critical source of food for the empires around the eastern Mediterranean and Troy prospered as a middleman, possibly by shipping the grain itself, and possibly by collecting strait fees or navigation fees on other merchant shipping to help ships traverse the straits safely to reach their customers on the other side.

This in turn would explain why Troy, despite being only one city, could have the economic clout and resources to face the might of the Mycenaean Greeks and think they had a shot (also possibly why the siege of Troy didn't work very well, as they had a ready source of food behind the siege lines that the Mycenaeans couldn't easily stop).

A long siege of Troy would, however, cut off the rest of the eastern Mediterranean from these supplies of desperately needed grain. It would turn the Turkish straits into a warzone and the Greeks would be trying to use their powerful navy to isolate Troy. The grain kingdom(s) of Crimea and the northern Black Sea, robbed of their customer base by the inconvenient strait, may have even fallen apart without a source of revenue they had become dependent on to fund their states, and when the siege settled down, the region had devolved back into a more primitive state, removing these kingdoms from the board as grain exporters for a period of time.

With the Trojan grain network gone, nations that had become more and more dependent on its merchants for food now had that support kicked out from under them. With growing populations and shrinking food supplies, and the deficit no longer easy to make up from import, collapse became inevitable. Ironically, this is also a plausible explanation for why the Greek themselves didn't exploit their victory to colonize the straits until many centuries later. Pulling down Troy's house pulled down their own as well!

It's just an idea. But I think it checks out if you believe (as I do) that the Troy that was besieged by the Greeks was the one that flourished during the late Mycenaean era, and I believe that's where the consensus is right now.

Thanks. Have listened some truly amazing history podcasts. But haven’t been able to find any on the Bronze Age collapse.

I should ask in r/HistoryPodcasts or r/History_Podcasts

Idk man I'm pretty sure there are no podcasts that cover this topic

I appreciate all the podcast requests though I'm glad to find more centralized discussions on the topic rather than pulling little bits and pieces of information for this question!

That is a good point, especially in a temple I imagine lying about someone's deeds there would be unacceptable, unfortunately sifting through the simple truth and the whole truth of the matter is the difficult part!

Oh very interesting! This is funny because I see people arguing both ways on the connections between bronze age societies, it's painstaking actually trying to find the truth when there are so many possibilities.

Your answer also helps to answer my question, it is possible Central Europe was impacted and would subsequently impact the Mediterranean, but then again anything is possible. Thank you!

>The research that has been conducted and neglected over time, is there a reasonable basis for why it isn't used, or does it simply not fit the more exciting narrative as some of the points you brought up later?

(1) Much of this research has been published in edited books and journals that are expensive, difficult to find, and often rather dry to read. Recent examples include Collapse and Transformation: The Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age in the Aegean and Anatolia Between the 13th and the 12th Century BCE.

(2) This is a rapidly evolving area of study, with new finds constantly providing more information or overturning previous theories. For example, our understanding of the Hittite (or "Neo-Hittite") kingdoms of the Iron Age has advanced enormously since David Hawkins' publication of the Iron Age Luwian texts in the early 2000s due to the excavation of more Syro-Anatolian sites and the discovery of many more Luwian inscriptions. There is a list of new inscriptions here, itself now incomplete and outdated.

(3) There is, as you mentioned, also an element of pop history works wanting to exaggerate the Bronze-Iron Age transition for entertainment value. ("And then all of the societies collapsed, writing totally disappeared, and people lived in villages for 200 years!" – A wildly inaccurate description, to say the least.)

>When you speak of the collapse and how it was not a uniform effect across the entire Mediterranean region, do you mean there is no correlation and it was individual events suffered in these regions that appear to us in the modern day more like a chain reaction since they happened so closely relatively from our perspective? Basically there is minimal relation between what occurred in these seperate regions, one factor being the time periods they occurred in?

I wouldn't say minimal relation. Rather, we should be careful not to focus on external factors (e.g. migrations) at the expense of internal factors that made kingdoms vulnerable to this sort of chain reaction.

It is tempting to blame the collapse of the Hittite empire on invading groups – the "Sea Peoples," Aramaeans, and the like – and indeed many scholars have done so. That by itself is quite dissatisfactory, however, as it fails to explain why the empire fell to these groups when it had survived so many other invasions over the centuries.

For example, the Hittite empire experienced a series of invasions during the 14th century BCE, known today as the "concentric attacks." By the end of the century, most of the Hittite kingdom had fallen to attacks from the Kaška in the north and from Arzawa in the west. Even the capital city of Ḫattuša had been captured and burned, with the kingdom consisting of little more than the besieged territory of the city of Šamuḫa. The events were remembered dramatically in a decree of king Hattušili III, who reigned in the 13th century BCE.

>In earlier days the Ḫatti lands were sacked by its enemies. The Kaškan enemy came and sacked the Ḫatti lands, and he made Nenašša his frontier. From the Lower Land came the Arzawan enemy, and he too sacked the Ḫatti lands, and he made Tuwanuwa and Uda his frontier...

The king of Egypt was so convinced of the imminent demise of the weakened Hittite kingdom that he opened diplomatic relations with the kingdom of Arzawa in western Anatolia, expecting it to become the next great power in the Middle East.

>I have heard everything [is done]. The land of Ḫattuša (i.e. the Hittite empire) has been frozen/paralyzed.

As it turned out, however, the Hittites saw a reversal of fortunes under Šuppiluliuma I and his son Muršili II. Not only did the empire survive, it expanded to its maximum extent, encompassing western and central Anatolia as well as much of the Levantine coast.

So why was the Hittite empire vulnerable at the end of the Late Bronze Age when it had survived far more devastating invasions in the past? Here one has to look at the internal factors unique to the Hittite empire, such as the civil war that created multiple centers of power and a devastating pandemic that wiped out much of the Hittite population.

>According to the information you have given, the disappearance of many settlements would be due more to local issues conflicts, rather than an external force (excluding things like the changing climate) and as such outside intervention would not serve as a catalyst to the diminishing civilizations of the Mediterranean which would answer my question generally that there was no event in Central Europe that contributed to the collapse(s) of the Bronze age civilizations

It's a bit of both. To again take the Hittite empire as an example, the Hittites experienced a grain shortage toward the end of the LBA and imported grain from Egypt to supplement their reserves. Pirates based on Cyprus and the Levantine coast, however, interfered with these shipments.

This sort of piracy would've been a mere nuisance in more stable periods – pirates and bandits are well attested in earlier periods – but it greatly affected an empire already strained by other factors (internal warfare, pandemic, drought, etc.) and had an outsized effect on long distance trade and the political stability of the Hittite empire.

I wonder if there is a good podcast that delves into the Bronze Age collapse.

It doesn't sound like this king kept his title very long if I may speak from an outsiders perspective

Thank you for the information, Troy really has been through a lot, huh.

Wait so Tin sounds like it would come from closer to the Balkans, but are you saying there were possible trade relations with places like Germany, or at least that far north?

Sounds suspiciously like a Simpsons bit where Homer & Lisa go to the museum.

Patrick also had an interview with Cline during this season as well, the episode is titled "Why Did the Bronze Age World Collapse? Interview with Professor Eric Cline". I believe I remember him hinting at being at work on a sequel, so I'm sure that will be a fun read.

No it's a good point just another calamity that happened and displaced people!

That was another question I meant to ask, is if there was a more defined timeline as that map leaves much up to question, where the timing is obviously an important factor to determining what actually occurred.

Thank you I will look at this!

Propaganda only works if there’s truth hidden somewhere. It’s unlikely it was completely made up. It’s also not worth putting on a temple unless it’s somewhat agreed that these people were a serious threat.

Imagine Trajan making a column and it’s just 90% bs. Would not fly.

Or worse, the Sicilians...

Thank you though I saw it was said that the sea people may have just straight up been propoganda from Ramses II? You also make a good point that the Europeans would not have developed the advancements in sailing needed that would thrive in open water, much less as a formidable raiding force

Great link, thanks!

I imagine much like the Romans with Britain, regions that far away are so different and hard to keep relations with in the same manner, say the Mycenaeans towards the German people. I could definitely see relations with the Balkans though. Something that just came to me is if the Germans had relations with these bronze age civilizations, wouldn't it be much more probable that classical Greece and Rome would have had easier access to the region instead of an area isolated from major civilizations at the time? Just food for thought I don't really know

I had a classics and Roman history professor who used to say that there is a misconception about separation, that the pre-iron age societies we look at now only appeared to be unconnected. ‘The illusion of separation’ was his term. Largely proven now of course but when he was coming up there were stil very clear borders.

One of the examples that I remember the best is about the supply of wheat, that if there was a blight on the crop in Egypt, the shortage would be felt as far away as the Indus and Central Europe.

There might be something to a theory of the inverse leading to the Bronze Age collapse. Lacking the means to feed themselves in a harsher north, people follow supply lines south to the Mediterranean, taking to raiding and piracy to survive. The same can be said for how the Balkans were later settled from the south.

Thank you! Good timing for me I suppose

That is really interesting, it really does leave you wondering!

I cannot recommend the most recent season of ToH enough for this (and many other) topic(s). Patrick Wyman’s combination of research and guests (including Eric Cline the author of 1177) this season was a grand slam from beginning to end.