Atlantis,1159 BCE and Rainer Kuhne

Destruction of Atlantis in 1159 BCE

Following up on my recent posting on the remarkable 1159 BCE climate break that was likely driven by an unusual northern volcanic event, I came across this paper by Rainer Kuhne.

When the site of Tartessos was put forward as a possible site for Atlantis over twenty years ago (or at least when I became first aware of the idea) I dismissed it. Since then many lines of investigation have converged to support the concept.

In my own book I argue forcefully for the acceptance of a Bronze Age trade carrying copper and other metals from the Andes and Lake Superior over a thousand year span ending about 1000 BCE. Since I wrote those words, a whole world of infrastructure has begun to be dug up, including the huge terra preta based societies in the Amazon. We can expect to find it all.

Key to this hypothesis was a strong seagoing society based on the Atlantic seaboard of Europe including the Baltic. Da Vinci’s book showing that Homer’s world fitted like a map overlay to the Baltic provided superb cultural support. This was the literature of the ‘Sea Peoples’

The perfect place for the major trading city of such a mercantile confederation would be by Gibraltar.

All of a sudden, Plato’s tale makes sense and becomes very believable. We have a classic Bronze Age confederation centered on its effective capital at Tartessos (later Iron Age name) commanding access to the Mediterranean and the primary port for the American copper trade.

Their heyday came in the centuries before 1159 and saw perhaps the largest single urban center of its time. From there they first encouraged colonies such as Athens, Gaza and Tyre to be set up along the Mediterranean coast. These grew and prospered over the centuries and ultimately triggered major wars with the parent to maintain tribute.

I propose that we have grossly underestimated the extent of this maritime based trade empire. The fact that they could move and were able to land sufficient forces to challenge the powerful Egyptians speaks volumes.

It ended in 1159 BCE. A massive eruption in Iceland likely, but along the mid Atlantic ridge in any event, triggered massive earthquakes. These generated huge tsunamis that inundated Atlantis and its principal plain or delta region. The casualties were massive and northern survivors fled to the colonies throughout the Mediterranean, firming up the emergence of the Greeks. The copper trade collapsed then or at least quickly enough to prevent any rebuilding of the original society in either Europe or the Americas.

In its last decades, Atlantis could deploy thousands of ships carrying thousands of combatants. That allowed them to demand tribute from almost everyone with impunity.

The near simultaneous collapse of the copper trade and the destruction of the capital left behind a shell without the cohesion and wealth to avoid spinning apart. Centuries of consolidation led then to the rise of Tyre and Athens and eventually Rome.

April 2024.  added image. we now understand that this culture was extended globally and centered upon the Azores and Bahama bank .both of which abruptly subsided in all liklihood.  the land area of the azores approached Great Britain and that of the Bahama Bank was close to France.  All Bronze age culture.

Earlier by several thosands of years we had the original Atlantis in North West Sahars that we are now mapping.  likely antique Stone age society but urban complex not unlike Mexico city on the Rachat structure with well watered hinterland draining past it.

It is amusing to see the story so enlarging itself.

Antiquity Vol 78 No 300 June 2004

A location for "Atlantis"?

Rainer W. Kühne


The location and reality of Atlantis continues to invite speculation - reasoned or otherwise. Some recent scientific articles have argued for historical elements in Plato's Atlantis tale. For example the possibility that it may have referred to Troy has been raised and rejected (Zangger 1993, Renfrew 1992, Bloedow & Spina 1994); while for others the place mentioned by Plato is simply fiction (Nesselrath 2001a,b). In two recent articles (2001, 2002), Professor Collina-Girard of the University of Aix-en-Provence suggests that this Atlantis can be identified with Spartel Island which is located at 35°E55' N and 5°E58' W, 50 kilometres to the west of the present Strait of Gibraltar at a depth of 56m below the surface. Professor Collina-Giraud had planned an expedition to Spartel island which was briefly noted in the press. This short note questions the identification of Spartel with "Atlantis" but proposes that nevertheless the place mentioned by Plato does not have to be entirely fictional. The Platonic accounts may have been referring to events which took place in the SW of the Iberian peninsula at the end of the Bronze Age.

Atlantis as Spartel

In his dialogues "Timaios'' and "Critias'' Plato described the island state of Atlantis which was defeated by the Athenians in a war (Crit. 108e) and which soon afterwards sank into the sea as a result of earthquakes and floods (Tim. 25c - d, Crit. 108e). Atlantis lay in front of the pillars of Heracles (Tim. 24e) and from it one could travel to other islands (Tim. 24e). It had sunk into the sea approximately 9000 years before Plato's dialogue (Crit. 108e; Tim. 25d). There existed three islands in the neighbourhood of Spartel Island, one to the north and two to the east. The tops of these islands are now 50 to 100 metres below sea level. These islands disappeared underwater in about 9000 BC as a result of the eustatic rise in the level of the sea. There are a number of problems identifying Atlantis with Spartel. For example, at the former location of Atlantis the sea was described as unnavigable and impenetrable (Tim. 25d), because of thick mud (Crit. 108e - 109a). Today, shoal water exists for some 40 kilometres in the north-west of Spartel Island. The size of the plain of Atlantis was said to be 3000 stades (550 kilometres) by 2000 stades (370 kilometres) (Crit. 118a, c) and lay on the southern part of the island (Crit. 118a - b) surrounded by mountains (Crit. 118b) which reached to the sea (Crit. 118a). Apart from this, the country was very high and had a steep coast (Crit. 118a). The Atlantean capital is described as lying on a flat hill (Crit. 115c) on the edge of a smooth and even rectangular plain (Crit. 113c) 50 stades (9 kilometres) distant from the sea .

By contrast, even during the Late Glacial Maximum, 21000 - 19000 years ago, the size of Spartel Island was only 14 by 5 kilometres. The site is also inconsistent with the reported activities of the Atlanteans, and with the historical period about which Plato appears to be writing. In general, whatever the truth of the story, he was probably referring to a different area than Spartel and a much later period than the end of the ice age.

Comparison of Atlantis and the Sea Peoples

In his account of the Atlantean war Plato gives a description of the Athenian acropolis (Crit. 111e - 112e), which can be equated with its appearance in around 1200 BC. For example, Plato mentions the dwellings of warriors north of the acropolis (Crit. 112b) and a spring which was destroyed during earthquakes (Crit. 112d), which might be identified with the spring, destroyed by an earthquake discovered by Oskar Broneer (1939) and dated to the end of the thirteenth century BC. Marinatos (1950) and Göörgemanns, (2000) have suggested that the Atlantean warriors can be identified with the Sea Peoples who were active in this period and are mentioned in inscriptions of the temple of Medinet Habu of around 1180 BC under Pharaoh Ramses III. This idea can be supported by comparison between Plato's description of the Atlanteans and the description of the Sea Peoples by Ramses III as given in the translations of Chabas (1872) and Edgerton and Wilson (1936) (see TABLE 1).

A location on the Iberian peninsula?

If an identification with the Sea Peoples is valid, then "Atlantis" should refer to their place of origin. There is some literary indication of where this might have been. Atlantis was divided under the ten sons of Poseidon (Crit. 113e). The first born, Atlas, obtained the largest and best territory, namely the region around the capital (Crit. 114a). The second born, Gadeiros, obtained the part at the most distant edge which reached from the pillars of Heracles (Gibraltar) to the Gadeirean country (the region around Cadiz) (Crit. 114b). The part of the country belonging to Gadeiros was a coastal region 100 kilometres long. The parts of the later born sons were probably even smaller. Thus, the part of the country belonging to Atlas cannot have been very far from Cadiz.

In fact, near Cadiz there is a rectangular, smooth and even plain which lies on the south coast at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. It is the plain south-west of Seville through which the Guadalquivir river flows, and where the town of Tartessos was thought to have been located. Hennig (1925, 1927), Jessen (1925), and Schulten (1927, 1939) have all supposed that this was a possible location for Plato's Atlantis. In this respect, it is not without interest that large structures have been identified from recent satellite photos in this part of the lower Guadalquivir basin. One shows a rectangular structure with a length of 230 metres and a width of 140 metres. It could be a remnant of a temple of Poseidon, such as that whose length was one stade (185 metres) and whose width was three plethra (92 metres) (Crit. 116c - d). A further "quadratic'' structure of size 280 metres times 240 metres could equate to the temple of Cleito and Poseidon (Crit. 116c ). The geographical co-ordinates of the rectangular structure are 36E°57'25'' +/- 6'' N and 6E°22'58'' +/- 8'' W. The centre of the "quadratic'' structure is 500 metres in the south-west of the centre of the rectangular structure. These structures lie in a mud region named "Marisma de Hinojos''.within the Parque Nacional de Donana. of Andalusia

Conclusion

Plato's war between Atlantis and the Eastern Mediterranean countries finds echoes with the activities of the Sea Peoples around 1200 BC, and may be based on Egyptian reports and Greek traditions preserved in the Athens of his time. While a location on the sunken post-glacial island of Spartel is unlikely, there is a possibility that the city and society of Atlantis may refer to either Iron Age Tartessos or a Bronze Age culture in the same area of south-west Spain.

This is a list of claims. Go to the original paper online to locate the specific reference.
___________________________________________
The Atlanteans fought against Europe and Asia (Tim. 24e) and "every country within the mouth'', i. e. against the Eastern Mediterranean countries (Tim. 25b). The Sea Peoples destroyed Hatti in Anatolia, Qode and Qarkemish in northern Syria, Arzawa in south-west Anatolia, and Alasia on Cyprus (Plate 46.16 - 17) and fought against Egypt.

The Atlanteans lived on an isle (Tim. 24e, 25a, 25d, Crit. 113c) and reigned over several other islands (Tim. 25a). The Sea Peoples also came from islands (Pl. 37.8 - 9, 42.3, 46.16).

The Atlanteans reigned in Africa from the pillars of Heracles (Gibraltar) to the frontiers of Egypt (Tim. 25a - b). The war of the Sea Peoples against Egypt occurred simultaneously with the war of the Libyan Meshwesh. According to Ramses' report they appeared to be allied.

Atlantis consisted of ten countries (Crit. 113e - 114a, 119b). According to the Karnak inscription (Chabas 1872, de Rougéé 1867) written under pharaoh Merenptah around 1200 BC, the Sea Peoples consisted of the Ekwesh, Teresh, Lukka, Sherden, and Shekelesh. According to Ramses III their confederation consisted of the union of the countries of the Peleset, Theker, Shekelesh, Denen, and Weshesh (Pl. 46).

In the case of war the Atlanteans had more than one million soldiers (Crit. 119a - b). Ramses III claimed to have beaten hundreds of thousands of enemies (Pl. 18.16, 19.4 - 5, 27.63, 32.10, 79.7, 80.36, 80.44, 101.21, 121c.7). Occasionally, he spoke of millions (Pl. 27.64, 46.4, 46.6, 79.7, 101.21) and myriad (Pl. 27.64) enemies who were numerous like locusts (Pl. 18.16, 80.36) or grasshoppers (Pl. 27.63).

The Atlanteans had 1200 war ships (Crit. 119b). The ships of the Sea Peoples entered deep into the delta of the Nile (Pl. 42.5) and destroyed the Asian Arzawa, the Cypric Alasia, and the near-eastern Ugarit and Amurru.

The Atlanteans had chariots pulled by horses (Crit. 119a). The Meshwesh had horses (Pl. 75.37) and carts (Pl. 18.16, 75.27) which, however, were pulled by oxen (figures to Pl. 32 - 34).

The Atlantean kings reigned for several generations (Crit. 120d - e) and after this they lost their good attitudes (Crit. 121a -- b). Ramses III wrote about the Sea Peoples that they had spent a long time, a short moment was before them, then they entered the evil period (Pl. 80.16 - 17).

During a day and a night Atlantis sank by a earthquake into the sea (Tim. 25c - d). Ramses III wrote that he let the Sea Peoples see the majesty and force of (the God of water) Nun when he breaks out and lays their towns and villages under a surge of water (Pl. 102.21), moreover the mountains were in travail (Pl. 19.11).

Israeli and Palestinian Ongoing Water Crisis

This enunciates the underlying problem facing the Israelis and the Palestinians. It is not going to be solved accessing any further sources of fresh water. It is not going to be solved by shifting the available water away from agriculture either because the population is expanding. The whining over the current water split reflects past arrangements based on available agricultural land, most of which is in Israel.

If the water issue were to be totally resolved by deus ex machine, everything else would sort itself out.

In terms of current options, a desalination plant could supply potable water sufficient to supply the consumer market. It is expensive but it puts the burden directly onto the user population and allows natural surface water to be used in agriculture.

The plant(s) would have to be on the coast were much of the population is anyway. I was previously involved with an innovative desalination technology that could have economically resolved this problem. Regrettably, the physicist died and it was stillborn. I am waiting for it to be reinvented again.

More likely we will get there with the Eden Machine sooner. Recall that all these hillsides were covered with woodlands and forest soils. There is enough rain, even today to support such forests. That means that restoration will entail a temporary use of the Eden Machine to establish cover from a fast growing tree. Soil will also need to be manufactured, but that trick is in hand with the advent of biochar.

Restoring the native forest cover on the hillsides will restore natural ground water in the valleys were agriculture is undertaken.

Most of Israel and Palestine can become forested and water retaining with ample surplus available for human usage. The same applies north into Lebanon and Northern Syria as we restore the natural forests of the Fertile Crescent. Recall that the demands of the Bronze Age destroyed all these forests and soils. Yesterday’s post on Bronze makes this abundantly clear.

Solve water problems before peace deal: Abbas

4 days ago

ISTANBUL (AFP) — Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas accused Israel on Thursday of forcing Palestinians to live in chronic water scarcity and declared a "rightful share" of water should not be tied to a peace deal.

In a message read at the World Water Forum in Istanbul, the Palestinian Authority president said Israel's unilateral control over rivers and aquifers meant scarce water resources were not being shared equitably "as required by international law."

Palestinians had four times less water per capita than Israelis living in Israel, a consumption level that fell far below the World Health Organization's guidelines for minimum daily access to water, Abbas said.

"The reason for this disparity has nothing to do with lifestyle between Palestinians and Israelis -- for when it comes to water all human beings have the same needs -- but due to Israel's control and inequitable distribution to the Palestinians," Abbas said.

"It is with dismay that I see 9,000 Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley utilise one-quarter of the water that the entire Palestinian population in the West Bank utilises," he said.

"It is also with dismany that we witnessed Israel's systematic de-development and destruction of Gaza's water infrastructure, where today only 10-20 percent of the water there is drinkable."

Abbas said the situation "is not only unjust, but unnecessary."

"Palestinians should not be forced to wait until a peace agreement is reached before (they are) allowed (their) rightful share of the transboundary water resources. Water is an essential human necessity that should not be subject to the dictates of a single party or used as a tool of control."

The statement was read at a press conference by Shaddad Attili, head of the Palestinian Water Authority.

Attili said Israel uses 90 percent of transboundary water resources, and Israelis have per-capita water consumption of 348 litres (76 gallons) per day; the Palestinians are alloted the remaining 10 percent, and have daily consumption of 78 litres (17.6 gallons) per day, compared to WHO recommendations of at least 100 litres (22 gallons) a day.

Abbas also said the Palestinian Authority, upon gaining statehood, would become party to a 1997 UN pact on water supplies that cross international boundaries.

This document -- the Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses -- requires a country that controls an aquifer or watershed that straddles an international boundary to ensure other parties have equitable use of the water.

Only 16 countries have ratified the convention so far; 35 are needed before it becomes international law. France this month announced its intention to ratify.

In the Palestinian-Israeli case, the struggle over water supplies pertains to the basin of the Jordan River and a coastal aquifer that stretches underneath Gaza.

The World Water Forum has gathered more than 27,000 policymakers, corporate executives, water specialists and activists in a broad conference focused on the globe's worsening problems of freshwater. The seven-day event winds up on Sunday.

Hamas and Iran

The Israeli operation against Hamas is unfolding as we predicted a couple of weeks ago and is likely well on the way to completion. The objective is to dig up and destroy every Hamas asset including any fool desirous of martyrdom. There is no creditable diplomatic activity that will even slow this process down.

The residents of Gaza will then be in a position to take control of their own destiny if they have the stomach for it. The remaining living members of Hamas will be badly shaken.

This represents one more incremental step in the resolution of the historic conflict between Israel and the Islamic world. The door is now open for the Palestinian political infrastructure to assert real command and control and to enter into a settlement with Israel that can last. A chastened Hamas may stay in the background and learn to behave.

Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon after claiming a great victory have good reason to keep their heads down. Everyone likes to savor success even when it is at best a Pyrrhic victory when your side did most of the dying and burning. Next time the Israelis will be providing the Hamas treatment and will come fully prepared.

A more difficult situation is the Iranian standoff. Obama has signaled a williness to open discussions. This is something that I fully support. Isolating petty dictators, whatever their stripe has ever proven to be at best a simple failure. It is a failure because it permits the targeted leader to fully deploy homeland security apparatus in his country under visible duress and pushes him into an accommodation with your stronger enemies.

At present we are getting buzz regarding a possible Israeli air raid on Iranian nuclear targets. It is not going to happen because it really does need US cooperation for air space access. The news that such a request was turned down was a forcible reminder to the Iranians that the USA is shielding them.

Iran is still a problem that belongs to the USA. The good news is that the leadership is aging out and burning out their internal political support. The challenge is to contain their nuclear enthusiasms while nature takes its course as happened to the USSR. It has served their ends to be paymasters for the thugs in Gaza and Lebanon and Syria. At the same time, those same thugs have depleted their political capital by accepting Iran’s money and are all seriously isolated.

The present danger is that these folks will see it as advantageous to humiliate the new president in some way or the other. That has been their folly to date. Can you imagine now different the Middle East would look today had the Iranians not humiliated Carter with the hostage crisis? It was an Iranian ego trip at the time that utterly backfired and set the diplomatic stage for the Iraq – Iran war. And everything else that followed including the ongoing support for their clients in Gaza and Lebanon.

What has changed? The end of the oil age has been announced and everyone is now on notice that the globe will now move heaven and earth to leave the rest in the ground. This war is now been fought economically and Iran political structure is an oil financed theocracy that has failed to advance the internal economy significantly. This contradiction is now been exposed as pressures build.

In the long term they could be as bankrupt as the old USSR and naturally vulnerable to internal upheaval and the impact of external pressure.

In the long term they and their clients are on a downward spiral of systemic failure that no amount of American cash can stave off.

Let us hope that Prime Minister Whack Job who is great at overplaying his hand to the local rabble does not convince someone outside Iran that he can deliver before he is bundled of to retirement. At least they are pretty quick about that in Iran.

Bronze Age Collapse

I have posted extensively on the collapse caused by the 1159 BC Hekla blast and tsunami that destroyed the city of Atlantis at Gibraltar. This entry from Wikipedia gather together the known fallout from this single event as is known by today’s scholarship.

Of course, this scholarship continues to ignore the clear evidence of a huge copper trade between the Americas and the Old world. Bronze manufacturing required strong local sponsorship in the form of the palace economies described herein. These factories were the sub factories of a global copper trade that passed through the Atlanteans.

I suspect that the Atlantean fleet of perhaps a real ten thousand ships like they love to claim in Homer was making itself felt along the Egyptian coast in the years prior to the Hekla blast. They had unity and a system of confederate palace states. Recall that these were not particularly large cities so much a palace household and retainers. The surrounding population surely benefited and was certainly ruled by this caste of merchant princes who traded value for value. That all ended abruptly with the loss of the copper trade. These palaces were all then overthrown.

More critically, the surviving populations in Europe faced a twenty year collapse of their livelihoods and those that could took ship and joined in a sea borne migration into the Eastern Mediterranean. This was likely expressed as colonization including Gaza, Athens and Carthage, where already established factories were in position to absorb the refugees. We may never develop the details, but the advent of a surplus of desperate pirates surely explains the swift collapse of the many isolated trade palaces.

The other putative possibilities of causation are simply insufficient and were all easily handled in the course of business as usual. An influx of the desperate from the north was another matter and these guys were the original pro0viders of the best weapons. Is it any surprise that they were able to make the Egyptian state accommodate them? And recall that this was the single largest and strongest state in front of them.

Imagine a group of refugees landing in New Jersey and forcing the USA to make room for them? Pretty good trick even at a three thousand year remove.

This entry also confirms that iron was not seriously used until the loss of the copper trade. This clearly implies that the copper trade and its control was the road to wealth. Bronze made excellent weapons that were not likely surpassed by iron for centuries. They were simple to cast and work harden in the forge whereas iron needed to be laboriously converted into steel in very small batches.

In fact steel making did not change at all right into the industrial age which is why cannons were first made from bronze, then cast iron and then, very late in the day from steel. What this means is that had copper been available, the use of bronze would certainly have continued centuries more.

This item gives a really good snapshot of the time and place and is very consistent with the implied conjectures.

Bronze Age collapse --- From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Bronze Age collapse is the name given by those historians who see the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, as violent, sudden and culturally disruptive, expressed by the collapse of palace economies of the Aegean and Anatolia, which were replaced after a hiatus by the isolated village cultures of the Dark Ages period of history of the Ancient Near East. The Bronze Age collapse may be seen in the context of a technological history that saw the slow, comparatively continuous spread of iron-working technology in the region, beginning with precocious iron-working in what is now Romania in the 13th and 12th centuries.[1] The cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and Syria, and the Egyptian Empire in Syria and Canaan, bringing the scission of long-distance trade contacts and sudden eclipse of literacy, occurred between 1206 and 1150 BCE. In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Troy and Gaza was violently destroyed, and often left unoccupied thereafter (for example, Hattusas, Mycenae, Ugarit).

The gradual end of the Dark Age that ensued saw the rise of settled Neo-Hittite Aramaean kingdoms of the mid-10th century BCE, and the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Regional evidence

Anatolia

Main article: Downfall of the Hittite Empire
Every site important during the preceding Late Bronze Age shows a destruction layer, and it appears that here civilization did not recover to the same level as that of the Hittites for another thousand years. Hattusas, the Hittite capital, was burned and abandoned, and never reoccupied. Karaoglan was burned and the corpses left unburied. Troy was destroyed at least twice, before being abandoned until Roman times.

Cyprus

The catastrophe separates Late Cypriot II (LCII) from the LCIII period, with the sacking and burning of the sites of Enkomi, Kition, and Sinda, may have occurred twice, before being abandoned. A number of sites, though not destroyed, were also abandoned. Kokkinokremos was a short-lived settlement, where the presence of various caches concealed by smiths suggests that none ever returned to reclaim the treasures, suggesting they were killed or enslaved.

Syria

Syrian sites previously showed evidence of trade links with Egypt and the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age. Evidence at Ugarit shows that the destruction there occurred after the reign of Merenptah, and even the fall of Chancellor Bay. Letters on clay tablets found baked in the conflagration of the destruction of the city speak of attack from the sea, and a letter from Alashiya (Cyprus) speaks of cities already being destroyed from attackers who came by sea. It also speaks of the Ugarit fleet being absent, patrolling the coast.

Levant

Egyptian evidence shows that from the reign of Horemheb, wandering Shasu were more problematic. Ramesses II campaigned against them, pursuing them as far as Moab, where he established a fortress, after the near collapse at the Battle of Kadesh. These Shasu were problematic, particularly when during the reign of Merneptah, they threatened the "Way of Horus" north from Gaza. Evidence shows that Deir Alla (Succoth) was destroyed after the reign of Queen Twosret. The destroyed site of Lachish was briefly reoccupied by squatters and an Egyptian garrison, during the reign of Ramesses III. All centres along the sea route, now being called Via Maris, from Gaza north were destroyed, and evidence shows Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Akko, and Jaffa were burned and not reoccupied for up to thirty years. Inland Hazor, Bethel, Beit Shemesh, Eglon, Debir, and other sites were destroyed. Refugees escaping the collapse of coastal centres may have fused with incoming nomadic and Anatolian elements to begin the growth of terraced hillside hamlets in the highlands region, that was associated with the later development of the state of Israel.

Greece

None of the Mycenaean palaces of the Late Bronze Age survived, with destruction being heaviest at palaces and fortified sites. Up to 90% of small sites in the Peloponnese were abandoned, suggesting a major depopulation. The End Bronze Age collapse marked the start of what has been called the Greek Dark Ages, which lasted for more than 400 years. Other cities, like Athens, continued to be occupied, but with a more local sphere of influence, limited evidence of trade and an impoverished culture, from which it took centuries to recover.

Mesopotamia

The cities of Norsuntepe, Emar and Carchemish were destroyed, and the Assyrians narrowly escaped an invasion by Mushki tribes during the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I. With the spread of Ahhlamu or Aramaeans, control of the Babylonian and Assyrian regions extended barely beyond the city limits. Babylon was sacked by the Elamites under Shutruk-Nahhunte, and lost control of the Diyala valley.

Egypt

Main article: Third Intermediate Period of Egypt

After apparently surviving for a while, the Egyptian Empire collapsed in the mid twelfth century BCE (during the reign of Ramesses VI). Previously the Merneptah Stele spoke of attacks from Lybians, with associated people of Ekwesh, Shekelesh, Lukka, Shardana and Tursha or Teresh, and a Canaanite revolt, in the cities of Ashkelon, Yenoam and the people of Israel. A second attack during the reign of Ramesses III involved Peleset, Tjeker, Shardana and Denyen.

Conclusion

Robert Drews describes the collapse as "the worst disaster in ancient history, even more calamitous than the collapse of the Western Roman Empire".[2] A number of people have spoken of the cultural memories of the disaster as stories of a "lost golden age". Hesiod for example spoke of Ages of Gold, Silver and Bronze, separated from the modern harsh cruel world of the Age of Iron by the Age of Heroes.

Nature and causes of destruction

As part of the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age Dark Ages, it was a period associated with the collapse of central authorities, a general depopulation, particularly of highly urban areas, the loss of literacy in Anatolia and the Aegean, and its restriction elsewhere, the disappearance of established patterns of long-distance international trade, increasingly vicious intra-elite struggles for power, and reduced options for the elite if not for the general mass of population.

There are various theories put forward to explain the situation of collapse, many of them compatible with each other.

Earthquakes

Amos Nur shows how earthquakes tend to occur in "sequences" or "storms" where a major earthquake above 6.5 on the Richter magnitude scale can in later months or years set off second or subsequent earthquakes along the weakened fault line. He shows that when a map of earthquake occurrence is superimposed on a map of the sites destroyed in the Late Bronze Age, there is a very close correspondence. [3]

Migrations and raids

Further information: Sea peoples, Mushki, Aramaeans, and Ancient Iranian peoples

Ekrem Akurgal, Gustav Lehmann and Fritz Schachermeyer, following the views of Gaston Maspero have argued on the basis of the wide spread findings of Naue II-type swords coming from South Eastern Europe, and Egyptian records of "northerners from all the lands"[4]

The Ugarit correspondence draws attention to such groups as the mysterious Sea Peoples. Equally, translation of the preserved Linear B documents in the Aegean, just before the collapse, demonstrates a rise in piracy and slave raiding, particularly coming from Anatolia. Egyptian fortresses along the Libyan coast, constructed and maintained after the reign of Ramesses II were constructed to reduce raiding.

Ironworking

Leonard R. Palmer suggested that iron, whilst inferior to bronze weapons, was in more plentiful supply and so allowed larger armies of iron users to overwhelm the smaller armies of bronze-using maryannu chariotry.[5] This argument has been weakened of late with the finding that the shift to iron occurred after the collapse, not before. It now seems that the disruption of long distance trade, an aspect of "systems collapse", cut easy supplies of tin, making bronze impossible to make. Older implements were recycled and then iron substitutes were used.

On the other hand, technology cannot be so quickly dismissed as a factor. The invention of the technology of metallurgy is not generally regarded as a Paradigm Shift, in a class with the technologies of agriculture, city-building, industry and electronics. Yet metalworking had a profound impact on the course of mankind's development. Warfare on the scale with which we are familiar today was not possible when sharpened sticks and flint points and blades were the only weapons available. The first bronze swords and armor were surely regarded as "weapons of mass destruction" by the last inhabitants of stone age cities because of the carnage they made possible.

Still, the very nature of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, forces at least a grudging equilbrium on man's violent nature. Deposits of copper ore and tin ore almost never occur in the same region. In order to make bronze, two cities a fair distance apart must maintain peaceful relations and trade raw materials with each other.

Iron metallurgy destroyed this equilibrium. Only one ore is required to make iron artifacts, and deposits of it are abundant. The only trick to smelting iron is the creation of hitherto unimaginably high temperatures, because the melting point of iron is hundreds of degrees higher than that of copper and tin. But once that information became well known, there was nothing to stop even the most uncivilized of the remaining Neolithic tribes from arming their warriors, proclaiming themselves "kingdoms," and attacking the cities. Even worse, the cities were no longer dependent on each other for complementary ores, and had no more reason to maintain peaceful relations.

The Iron Age may not have been the cause of the collapse of civilization in its first place of origin, but it is difficult to dismiss iron as a possible reason for its slow recovery.

Drought

Barry Weiss [6], using the Palmer Drought Index for 35 Greek, Turkish, and Middle Eastern weather stations, showed that a drought of the kinds that persisted from January 1972 would have affected all of the sites associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse. Drought could have easily precipitated or hastened socio-economic problems and led to wars. More recently Brian Fagan, has shown how the diversion of mid-winter storms from the Atlantic were diverted to travel north of the Pyrenees and the Alps, bringing wetter conditions to Central Europe, but drought to the Eastern Mediterranean, was associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse[7]

General systems collapse

Main article: Societal collapse

A general systems collapse has been put forward as an explanation for the reversals in culture that occurred between the Urnfield culture of the 12-13th centuries BCE and the rise of the Celtic Hallstatt culture in the 9th and 10th centuries.[8] This theory may, however, simply beg the question as to whether this collapse was the cause of or the effect of the Bronze Age collapse being discussed. General Systems Collapse theories have been pioneered by Joseph Tainter[9] who shows how social declines in return to complexity leads often to collapse to simpler forms of society.

In the specific context of the Middle East a variety of factors - including population rise, soil degradation, drought, cast bronze weapon and iron production technologies - conceivably could have combined to push the relative price of weaponry compared to arable land to a level that ultimately proved to be beyond the control of traditional warrior aristocracies.

Changes in warfare

Robert Drews argues[10] that the appearance of massed infantry, using newly developed weapons and armor, such as cast rather than forged spearheads and long swords, a revolutionizing cut-and-thrust weapon,[11] and javelins, the appearance of bronze foundries itself suggesting "that mass production of bronze artifacts was suddenly important in the Aegean". Homer uses "spears" as a virtual synonym for "warrior" suggesting the continued importance of the spear in combat. Such new weaponry, furnished to a proto-hoplite model who were able to withstand attacks of massed chariotry, destabilized states that were based upon the use of chariots by the ruling class and precipitated an abrupt social collapse when raiders and/or infantry mercenaries were able to conquer, loot, and burn the cities.[12][1][2](-5-)

References

^ See A. Stoia and the other essays in M.L. Stig Sørensen and R. Thomas, eds., The Bronze Age—Iron Age Transition in Europe (Oxford) 1989, and T.H. Wertime and J.D. Muhly, The Coming of the Age of Iron (New Haven) 1980.
^ Drew 1993:1 quotes Fernand Braudel's assessment that the Eastern Mediterranean cultures returned almost to a starting-point ("plan zéro"), "L'Aube", in Braudel, F. (Ed) (1977), La Mediterranee: l'espace et l'histoire (Paris)
^ Nur, Amos and Cline, Eric; (2000) "Poseidon's Horses: Plate Tectonics and Earthquake Storms in the Late Bronze Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean", Journ. of Archael. Sc. No 27 pps.43-63 - http://srb.stanford.edu/nur/EndBronzeage.pdf
^ Robbins, Manuel (2001) Collapse of the Bronze Age: the story of Greece, Troy, Israel, Egypt and Peoples of the Sea" (Authors Choice Press)
^ Palmer, Leonard R (1962) Mycenaeans and Minoans: Aegean Prehistory in the Light of the Linear B Tablets. (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1962)
^ Weiss, Barry: (1982) "The decline of Late Bronze Age civilization as a possible response to climatic change" in Climatic Change ISSN 0165-0009 (Paper) 1573-1480 (Online), Volume 4, Number 2, June 1982, pps 173 - 198
^ Fagan, Brian M. (2003), "The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization (Basic Books)
^ http://www.iol.ie/~edmo/linktoprehistory.html - a page about the history of Castlemagner, on the web page of the local historical society
^ Tainter, Joseph (1976)"The Collapse of Complex Societies" (Cambridge University Press)
^ Drews pp192ff.
^ The Naue Type II sword, introduced from the eastern Alps and Carpathians ca 1200, quickly established itself and became the only sword in use during the eleventh century; iron was substituted for bronze without essential redesign (Drews 1993:194.
^ Drews, R. (1993) The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. (Princeton 1993).
Oliver Dickinson, The Aegean from Bronze Age to Iron Age: Continuity and Change Between the Twelfth and Eighth Centuries BC Routledge (2007), ISBN 978-0415135900.