I'm gonna get ChatGBT to explain it to me like a pirate

That was a fascinating read, thanks for sharing!

I don’t really know much about (pre)history, but I was always wondering if iron technology made the extensive trade systems that were needed to gather the ingredients for bronze unnecessary, and that breakdown of “international” trade caused the collapse of civilization

The skills of agriculture and irregation were also essential for survival, and would make you rich when you sold your bountiful harvest, yet they were lost, entire regions with huge irregation systems were abandoned, and even hundreds of years later were not inhabited.

Original from before Daniel had enough of James’ BS.

[removed]

Isn't there only one period recording of the so called sea people?

There is some recent work by Luigi Pascali that finds that the transition from bronze to iron destroyed the need for trade routes and that decimated economies.

Nobody knows. There are theories but there's no evidence other than the Palace structure collapsing and settlements abandoned. It wasn't necessarily an invasion either, the only evidence of that is from Egypt. That map is a complete fabrication from guessing too

For a long time I've believed the collapse happened because some people figured out how to make steel and went nuts over expanding then when their steel production ran out they lost their new territory. There's been plenty of discoveries of high carbon iron in the time period. Be it from meteors or just early attempts at heating iron with charcoal. Remember too that the metal ages mostly only refer to Europe and the time periods fall apart once you start looking at China and Egypt. After all King Tut had an iron dagger in the 14th century BC.

I loved The Horse, The Wheel and Language. It’s an unbelievably well sourced and detailed explanation of roughly 5000 BCE to approximately 1000 BCE. Worth every penny.

They could have focused on the North American continent and today Canada would have been bordering Mexico. They were stretched on two fronts and the schwerpunkt became India, for obvoius reasons.

Because making Iron was essential for survival and also a great way to become rich. The skill of writing not so much when the Palace you used to work in was a ruin and deserted.

The theory goes that a huge volcanic eruption in Indonesia/Flores changed the weather patterns in Europe. This resulted in repeating draughts and famine. The people rioted and civilizations fell. The very complex traderoutes that transported copper and tin was disrupted. Tin and copper was the ingredients of making bronze. This lead to a high pressure to refine the art of turning iron-ore into steel.

Thank you!

It's rather hard to find an English translation; there is one [among a lot of other documents of that era] in Tryntje Helfferich: The Thirty Years War: a Documentary History.

[removed]

Wow!

Probably the Mycenaean Greeks. Elites of the Greek society would often be buried with Amber. The Greeks considered Amber to be a sign of wealth due to the unique color. Studies have shown that this amber can be traced back to the Baltic Sea. Even early Scandinavian art from the Bronze and Iron Ages show boats that could point to the Mediterranean.

I highly doubt someone is going to solve one of the current biggest mysteries in history using pop science websites on Reddit. And it most likely will remain forever unknown unless there’s some breakthrough archaeological find in the real world. It’s a well known fact that people travelled from as far as northern Scandinavia and Scotland with movement between to the Mediterranean to trade with Bronze Age civilizations.

To claim that these Central Europeans were the Sea People is like claiming China first discovered the Americas. While there is evidence to support the Sea People came from a variety of cultures and those potentially could’ve been from deep inside Europe they were far more likely to be a mix from Sicily, Illyria, North Africa, and elsewhere. Maybe Pannonia but even then you’d have mountains separating who ever is there from the sea.

The more realistic option is that whatever crisis in europe happened caused the flow of trade to stop coming into the Mediterranean from Central Europe. Causing massive whatever merchants who lived off that constant supply to essentially switch careers from merchant ships to desperate pirate fleet or risk losing everything

[removed]

[removed]

[deleted]

Original from the Bronze Age?

I agree in principle but I think you should make a distinction between countries and civilizations.

The differences between the two are way less marked than they were 3000 years ago.