Seriously, what the fuck happened?

Presumably something to the effect of

>urban centers grow due to increased agriculture and trade
>successive crop failures
>people who are starving to death raid neighbors for food
>warfare discourages trade
>more starvation
>???????
>profit

>>1619722
>people who are starving to death raid neighbors for food

Considering Myceneans were a war like people I doubt they could be beaten by some warring faggots

>>1619701
Well if you read about, you would find out that we have no idea. There are theories around climate, volcanoes, barbarian migrations and what else.

The best clue is in Egypt, since they managed to hold on for a while before going to shit with the dusk of the New Kingdom. They have stellas describing successful battles against the "Sea Peoples", who were supposed to come from "all lands north". There were also multiple fortresses raised in Lybia to prevent the raids.

Some of the last surviving reports in linear B type writing come just from before the collapse (which is called Late Bronze Age Collapse), and detail an increase in piracy and slavery across eastern Mediterranean Sea. This coincides with a rather large migration into the Balkan region, as well as a significant move in general.

So tl;dr is pretty much what happened during the Fall of Rome, but much earlier and thus with no survivors.

considering how widespread the "decline" was, and how little written records exist detailing the wide spread downfalls, it probably had to do something with global climate.
might have been some slightly colder period and lot of failed crops. maybe some large volcanic eruption somewhere causing global temp drop for a long while, or even something as massive as shift in oceanic currents that dried aforementioned regions for a while.
could also be a large scale pandemic leading to large scale population decline.

>>1619722

Unlikely:

>At many of the Greek sites destroyed in the Caiastrophe there is in fact evidence that the arsonists must have been looking for something other than food. The destruction levels at these sites yielded carbonized remains of wheat, barley, olive pits, and grape seeds and evidence that the enemy destroyed pthoi and stirrup jars without emptying them of their contents. That storerooms of food were burned to the ground by starving mobs would be suprising. What we see in the eastern Mediterranean ca. 1200 is a general pattern of destruction by fire, and both logic and data indicate that the sites were razed by well-armed enemies” (The End of the Bronze Age, by Robert Drews, p.84).

>>1619701
SEA PEOPLE

>>1619701

as far as I know it coincided with the depletion of tin deposits and thus the collapse of the bronze production

with it's staple material the people from the region warred each other for dominance

the period coincided with volcanic activity in the region and failing of crop harvest

add some nomad raids and you have a recipe for disaster

>>1622037
We wuz vikings and shit?

>>1619701
Sea mongols

>>1619701
Attack of approximately 10 ancient Germans.

It is said that one of them attacked a big Egyptian city, completely unarmed, when Egyptians tried to kill him he grabbed one of them, split him in half with his bare hands and used his ribs as a boomerangs to kill everybody in vicinity.

At some point the amount of those riboomerangs increased to the point where said German was juggling around 100 thousands of them, killing people in droves. In this way a city of 20 millions was destroyed.

We could've all been like that but jews had to make Germany lose two world wars.

>>1622225
I think he was one of the few who remembered the ways of the ancient Finnic Jedi Knights

>>1622037
I hope you mean crab people.

>>1622081
>he period coincided with volcanic activity in the region

Not really, that happened more than 4 centuries before the bronze age collapse.

>>1619801
>>1619759
>>1619722

Could changes in the earths temperature or volcanic eruptions be seen in polar ice?

I know it is possible to look decades back through ice but is there still ice around that is that old?

>>1622419
Kind of. There are ice sheets on Antarctica that date way back to prehistoric times IIRC, and scientists are able to extract air from cavities in it, thus checking the chemical composition of it.

In result you may also confirm that CO2 levels change naturally and that the process cannot be stopped, but hey let's buy new lightbulbs eh?

>>1619701
Atlantis sunk into the ocean. Da sea people were just lookin for a new home dey din do nuffin k? Dey wuz enlightened n sheit inventing ancient computerz n sheit k?

>>1622426

Pls dont start a climate change debate.

>>1619701
The Hittite Empire was fractured. Its eastern client states were frequently attempting to revolt, often attacked by Mycenaean Greeks, and often allied with Mycenaean Greeks against the Hittites.

We have records that prove some 200 years of revolts, expeditions, treaties, etc. between Hittites and Mycenaeans and Luwians.

It appears that peoples from Sardinia and Sicily were often employed as mercenaries, perhaps by the Mycenaeans but more likely by whoever could pay.

It appears that there was a period of roughly 20 years beginning around 1200 where warfare was pretty constant in Anatolia and this coincides with the last expeditions of the sea people.

It seems likely that the Mycenaeans and their allies comprised all or most of the sea peoples. Why they went ahead and attacked Egypt and the Levant is uncertain. But they only contributed in part to the collapse.

Migrations within Anatolia itself appear to have triggered the Hittite collapse, possibly because of an influx of Thracian or Phrygian peoples from Europe which triggered a domino effect.

As for the Mycenaeans... they probably destroyed themselves for the most part. No signs of foreign weapons, no signs of foreign burials.

Some sites were probably destroyed by Sardinians and Sicilians, such as Pylos, but I doubt that all of them were.

The Iliad and Odyssey give a very well defined timeline and that timeline matches surprisingly well with archaeological evidence & historical records, and even the ancient Greeks came to the same date for the Trojan War as modern scholarship.

In all likelihood the suitors from Ithica and the whole Menelaus affair probably represent the power struggle and collapse that followed the latest series of Anatolian conflict.

And Ios, in Boatia, wasn't even a city it was just a fort. So the fact it was destroyed indicates a military or power motive for its destruction, as it likely did not have valuables comparable to Thebes or Athens or Tiryns.

>>1619759
Sea people were Berbers and Sardinian-like people right?

>>1623445
They came from north of Greece afaik. I haven't read this book but it's about the topic.

https://www.amazon.com/1177-B-C-Civilization-Collapsed-Turning/dp/0691168385/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472585306&sr=8-1&keywords=bronze+age+collapse

>>1623445
Sardinians and other sea peoples were often allied with Berbers against Egyptians, yes, but Sardinians and Berbers were different ethnicities

>>1623369
>As for the Mycenaeans
i think there are evidence pointing to a doric migration, a new dialect emerging and a different burial type
also classical greek historians had the same hypothesis

>>1623509
There isn't much evidence that a mass migration caused the destruction.

Nor can we say for absolute certainty that a new dialect entered the region. The only surviving example of archaic Greek is Mycenaean. Aeolic and Ionic and Doric can't be traced back to any specific point in the bronze age, nor can their introduction be pin pointed.

In all likelihood it is probable that the Doric Invasion was a mass migration triggered by the arrival of Thracian tribes... but what sort of impact this migration had is uncertain.

Nothing in the region of Epirus and Macedonia really indicates that the bronze age cultures living there had the sophistication of the Mycenaeans. And the Mycenaean citadels/cities were very well stocked with food and very well fortified. Hard to imagine they would all fall like that. Mycenaeans were very militaristic.

I rather believe that it was in-fighting or another militaristic people that did them in.

Were they the Philistines?

>>1623553
Some of them

>>1623530
Look at the Arcadian dialect or Messenians, there were migrations

>>1623530
>>1623571
Yes there was a migration from the Danube valley, not from the Epirus or Thrace in particular.

They were urnfield peoples, with their cremation burials and typical weapons and corselet.

Now, were the sea peoples Dorians?

Not really, some of them might have been though, the sea peoples were attested much before these Dorian invaders came, and their culture was typically Aegean or in some cases probably Central Mediterranean.

The Philistines, for instance, had individual "pit" burials, similar to those of the Cypriots and only 4 out of the hundreds burials found were cremated among Philistines, suggesting that the majority of them was Aegean, not Urnfield/Dorian.
The Philistines also built towns with a city planning similar to the Cypriot and Mycenean towns.

Sadly, the Philistines are the only ones that we can study accurately, since they were the only ones whose sites we can identify with certainty.

The rest: Weshesh, Shekeslh and Sherden are much more difficult to study, they were most likely Central Mediterranean peoples (Sardinians and Sicilians) who we know that had interacted with the Myceneans and Cypriots for centuries and were present in the Eastern Mediterranean as mercenaries and pirates.

The Weshesh, probably Oscians, were most likely an Urnfield people much like the Dorians, who settled in Soutern Italy instead of Greece.

>>1622147
The finest seahorse riders in the world

>>1623571
Arcadian is an evolution of Mycenaean.

Ionic, Aeolic, Doric are not. So how can we say they arrived in Greece after the collapse, or before the collapse, if none of them are attested at all in Linear B, which recording exclusively Mycenaean.

And of course there were migrations. Mycenaeans (not necessarily speakers of Mycenaean though) colonized Asia Minor, Crete and Cyprus. But what actual evidence is there for a 'Dorian' invasion or migration?

>>1623701
I've never heard of the idea that Dorians came from the Danube before. Since the Doric dialects are concentrated in Northern Greece, and the proto-Greek homeland is identified with Epirus roughly, it seems more likely that the Dorians were just the last tribe to migrate south.

And the evidence for the Sardinians being the Sherden is much, much more conclusive then for the Peleset being the Philistines.

>>1623721
That theory comes from the fact that the new type of burial (cremation) was not usual in Mycenean Greece but was common practice among the Urnfield people, the new type of weapons (Naue II sword) came from the Danube too, though that could be explained by trading after all.

For the Philistines being the Peleset I think it's pretty obvious, not only for the new burial type and city planning of the Philistine, which was not seen in Canaan but was usual in Cyprus and the Mycenean world, but also because of the fact that the Egyptians say themselves that after the failed invasion of Egypt the Philistines settled in the area of Canaan which would be later called Palestine.

>>1623369
>collapse triggered by a European migration
That is code for MONGOLS.

>>1623465
The book is too divulgative

>>1622426
If you look at ancient ice core samples you see that changes in CO2 levels and in global climate happen much more slowly than what is currently being observed. As in scales of 10 000 years vs. 100-200

Yes it can just be a coincidence.

>>1629917
It can't.

>>1619701
As always when shit goes down in old Yurop, it was ze Germans: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/slaughter-bridge-uncovering-colossal-bronze-age-battle

>>1631369
That didn't happen in Greece though.

>>1631578
So? The most massive battlefield known from bronze age is in northern Germany, at the same time the mediterean colapses. Also, the culture in Germany changed drastically in the years after the battle. Seems to be a larger event then just Greece.

>>1631646
>The most massive battlefield known from bronze age is in northern Germany

That would be the battle of Kadesh in Syria fought between Egyptians and Hittities

>>1631654
How many bones did they find? Weapons? Other artefacts? Tollense is the biggest known battle of the bronze age, everything else is just Egyptian propaganda.

>>1631672
Both Egyptians and Hittities recorded the battle actually, the battle of Megiddo is another of similar size too.

Also Egypt had millions of people in it, Hittities had vassal states from all of Anatolia and part of Syria, it's only logical that the battles between actual empires would be bigger than a battle between some Central European tribesmen

>>1619701
Proto-Latin Crusaders

>>1623465
I've read the book, the main idea is that of a collapse of civilisation due to multiple factors, much like the collapse of Rome. But there is invasion as attested by the clay tablets found at Ugarit. As to what caused the movement of people and what triggered it is not said. Nice easy read though.

>>1631713
The invasion is attested really well in Egypt too.

It's attested in Pylos too though in that case is much more difficult to identify the invaders.

>>1631646
Influx of Pre-Proto Germans from the Balto-Slavic migration from the PIE homeland.

Thracians ended up in the Balkans and forced their way into Anatolia and pushed the Greeks down and the Phrygians into Anatolia as well.