March 18, 2021

CIVILIZATION'S END, The late Bronze Age collapse

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, courtesy The British Museum

People are starving. Drought and natural disasters have played havoc across the lands. The mightiest governments on Earth are falling and international trade has collapsed. Invasions by mysterious people from over land and from the sea have destroyed cities. Literacy has drastically fallen, and even routine records are rarely kept anymore. Thousands of years of the advancement of human civilization wiped out in a single lifetime.

Sounds like the plot line from the latest John Carpenter movie, but could it actually happen? Well, it already did. And no, we’re not talking about the fall of the Roman Empire and the ensuing Dark Ages. That would be comparatively modern. No, we must go back an additional 1,600 years to the 12th century BC, to what has become known as the Late Bronze Age Collapse. If this term is new to you, let me ease your mind. I have a B.A. in History and was a credit shy of my master’s degree and had never heard of it either. It wasn’t until a fellow history teacher asked me if I knew about it that I became aware of a hole in my ancient history knowledge.

The Bronze Age

The Bronze Age Collapse is both fascinating and mysterious. But before we jump into it, let’s first define the world we’re talking about. The first small farming villages developed around 9,000 BC. This was just after the end of the last ice age. The first civilization, Sumer, emerged around 3,500 BC in modern day Iraq. This was followed by Egypt and the Indus River Valley in India within several hundred years. By 3,000 BC there were Bronze Age Civilizations from Egypt going around the Mediterranean Sea to Greece, then extending East through the modern countries of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and into India.

Assyrian relief of Gilgamesh. Photo by Thierry Ollivier

The Bronze Age lasted from 3000 BC to 1200 BC. These were large kingdoms that constructed palaces, temples, and most famously the Pyramids of Giza (2500 BC). They had written languages and created the first works of fiction including the Saga of Gilgamesh (2100 BC). The Babylonian King Hammurabi developed the first written system of laws that included the concept of innocent until proven guilty (1750 BC). They produced a variety of goods that they used for trade with neighboring kingdoms. In fact, these civilizations couldn’t exist without trade. They were dependent on bronze which requires both copper and tin to produce and there were few places that had both resources. Even beyond bronze, none of these kingdoms possessed all the resources they needed to maintain their advanced civilizations without trade. This was a world of large, interconnected kingdoms with flourishing cultures.

The Collapse

This is the story of how that all collapsed, beginning a new dark age. Pretty much all the details about the Late Bronze Age Collapse are disputed. In fact, we didn’t even know about it until the 1800s. In recent decades, studies and excavations have increased our knowledge. Yet, much of the story is more conjecture than hard facts, but we’ll muddle through it the best we can.

Historians like to put dates on historical events; however, this wasn’t a single event that’s easy to put a start date on. There are indications that parts of this region began experiencing a decline as early as 1250 BC. However, the collapse is much more apparent by 1205, and by 1150 BC most of the Bronze Age civilizations had either disappeared entirely or were much reduced. The regional powers of the Kassites (Iraq), Minoans (Crete), Mycenaeans (Greece), and Hittites (Turkey) all disappeared in the second half of the 12th century BC. The Assyrians survived, but in a much reduced form. The New Kingdom in Egypt likewise survived but in a weakened state. They hobbled on for another century before collapsing into chaos. The “Dark Age” that emerged from the collapse continued for hundreds of years, lasting until at least 800 BC, but sometimes listed as ending as late as 550 BC.

The Late Bronze Age Collapse wasn’t just about the fall of governments. Many cities were completely destroyed while others became abandoned for no obvious reason. This period is referred to as the beginning of a dark age because systems of recording events ceased to operate. We know more about what happened 3,500 years ago than we do 3,000 years ago because they stopped writing it down. This was a fundamental breakdown of civilization that left a massive number of people struggling and often failing to survive.

Map of Late Bronze Age collapse battles. Wikimedia Commons

What Happened?

But why did it happen? Frustratingly, there’s not an easy answer to that question. As previously mentioned, they largely stopped writing about events just as all this started. We have a few passages that hint at the reasons early in the collapse, but then little to nothing afterward. There’s also the passage of thousands of years with people building new civilizations over the ancient ones that has obscured the evidence. Since the existence of the Bronze Age Collapse first became known about 140 years ago several theories have emerged. The modern consensus is that there are probably elements of truth in many of these theories. In other words, it likely wasn’t a single cause, but a combination of factors. A perfect storm of misfortune.

The first theory is invasions from mysterious sea people. This theory comes from some of the few remaining written texts and was first developed in the late 1800s. These accounts all come from Egyptian sources, but they indicate that multiple coastal sites around the Mediterranean were struck. One text dated to 1177 BC claims the Hittites, Myceneans, and Cypriots were completely destroyed by the invaders.

Egypt suffered at least three invasions beginning in the mid-1200s BC, again at the end of the century, and finally in the 1170s BC. Egypt was one of the most secure kingdoms of this period and eventually defeated each of the invasions. However, each successive invasion took a larger toll than the one before. The final invasion played out over several years. The Pharaoh Ramesses III realized he couldn’t defeat them in open battle and instead lured them into an ambush to secure victory. He had saved Egypt, but the victory left the kingdom’s treasury empty. Unable to pay workers, Egypt experienced the first ever recorded labor strike, further undermining his rule. The dynasty never recovered as Egypt fractured and the Pharaohs slowly lost control of the Nile Valley. The invasions of the sea people likely weren’t the only cause of Egypt’s decline, there were other internal divisions. In fact, it’s not clear if the difficulty in putting down the final invasion was the cause of the decline or a symptom, but it was certainly a contributing factor either way.

But who were these “sea people”? No one knows. They were likely people from some other part of the Mediterranean, either along the coast or an island. Historians have made many theories, but none are conclusive. Initially, they may have been mercenaries for hire. However, in the later invasions, they brought household goods with them suggesting they were looking for a new place to migrate. This raises additional questions about what the driving force behind the invasions was. For a long time, this was the accepted cause for the collapse, largely due to a lack of competing theories. Today this is considered an insufficient cause of a collapse of this scale, but likely was a contributing factor.

Climate Change

Over the last decade, climate change has become one of the leading theories in explaining the collapse. In today’s context, this phrase refers to the human-caused change in the Earth’s climate as a result of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This isn’t that. A variety of scientific techniques indicate that a period of significantly less rainfall began around 1200 BC. The cause isn’t clear but appears unrelated to human activity or greenhouse gases. The data indicates this period lasted around 300 years, which matches up well with the collapse and ensuing dark age. One of the techniques used included counting pollen levels in preserved ancient clay soils. I don’t pretend to understand all the technical analysis, but generally less pollen equates to less rain. This conclusion is reinforced by analysis of tree ring data that shows a decrease in growth in the first half of the 12th century BC. All the data points to a period that was unusually dry starting about this time.

These civilizations had perfected large-scale agriculture, but they were still dependent on pre-industrialized techniques to keep their crops watered. They used rain and water diverted from rivers to flood fields to prevent their crops from drying out. At most, they may have had water retention ponds to use during a drought, but they lacked the technical ability for large reservoirs or to pump water great distances. They could get through a dry year without too much hardship, but successive dry years could quickly become a crisis.

Decades of insufficient crops would result in large populations of desperate people. The authority of kings would be undermined and mass migration of people looking for better prospects elsewhere was sure to follow. This is speculation, but it would explain the motivation of the sea people invading new lands with their belongings in tow. It would also reduce or possibly eliminate trade as well. Without excess crops, there would be less to trade. Even non-agricultural goods would be in short supply as the efforts of craftsmen focused on food rather than manufacturing. It’s my opinion the effects of this centuries-long dry period were likely the driving force behind this collapse of civilization.

Natural Disasters and Pandemics

Although drought and the related calamities are enough to explain these events, there were likely other considerations as well. The best-documented explanation is earthquakes. In what has been dubbed an earthquake storm, archaeological records suggest a series of large earthquakes that rocked multiple locations between 1225 and 1175 BC. The theory goes that as an earthquake relieved pressure in one spot it was transferred to another place along the faultline, resulting in another quake. A series of collapsed structures dating to this period which have been unearthed with crushed human remains inside suggest the accuracy of the theory. It’s not plausible that this alone caused what happened. It’s not hard to imagine though, that a massive earthquake coming after a series of failed crops might have been the death knell for a kingdom. To what extent earthquakes played a role in the collapse is conjecture.

From Hutchinson’s History of the Nations, 1915

The final theory is a pandemic of some sort. The evidence here is a lot thinner, really there isn’t any. This is like one of those physics problems where they come up with a solution that fits, but can’t prove how it works. It would help explain the abandoned cities that weren’t destroyed and the depopulation of the region. The growth of cities just prior to this event without modern sanitation would be a prime breeding ground for a number of pathogens. Plague, dysentery, smallpox, influenza, and others have been speculated about, but at this point, that’s about all it is. Like earthquakes, this may have contributed in certain places, but likely wasn’t the primary factor in the collapse.

Many believe that the combined effect of invasions, internal dissension, famine, natural disasters, and disease led to cascading system failures throughout the region. The collapse of trade, governments, and the social order was the result. The dark age that came out of the Late Bronze Age Collapse resulted in smaller and more isolated kingdoms. Eventually, techniques for producing equipment and weapons out of steel emerged leading to new civilizations and a new classic age of antiquity. A renewed Egypt along with the Greeks, Persians, and eventually the Roman Empire came to dominate these lands.

Unavoidable in any discussion of these events is the question I alluded to in the introduction. Could it happen again? Large, interconnected civilizations thrown into chaos resulting from climate change, I mean how can you not speculate about it. It’s not hard to imagine a world that continues to rely on fossil fuels until it’s hit by the twin blows of out-of-control climate change just as our reserves of petroleum begin to run dry. A chain reaction of mass starvation, millions migrating in hopes of better lands, civil unrest, the fall of governments, and the failure of infrastructure needed to make modern life possible could result. It’s not an unavoidable destiny, but it really could happen.