336. Bronze Age Apocalypse: How To Survive The End of The World (Ep 5)

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of MPa, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, ad free listening, and a weekly newsletter, sign up to MPa Club at www.mpa.orguk.com Akamai Cloud, GPUs for Agentec AI, bring AI inference in closer to users everywhere. Get started at akamai.com slash GPU. Well, hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnen. And me, William Durumpall. Now, last time we had the wonderful Eric Klein with us, the man I would give up this podcast for if I could go and join his cause, this is so fantastic. Be careful, be afraid, Eric. I know. I would, Eric. It is a threat and a promise altogether. But it was a really interesting, I mean, the reason I find you and this so fascinating is because you're tying together so many things, you know, the huge big ticket stories. We had Troy, we had the Bible, we had the Exodus, yeah. Yeah, droughts, earthquakes, migrations, battles, all of these things happening together to lead to this huge systemic collapse that we're talking about today. We're going to see how these catastrophes play out, Kingdom by Kingdom, how these Bronze Age civilizations fall like dominoes one after the other. Eric, thanks so much for coming back and thank you for not letting us scare you off the last time. My pleasure. It's looking very anxious. No, no. As you sign up for his cause. I'm giving stalker vibes. I realize it as I'm saying it, but I don't care. Take care. It is what it is. Anyway, Eric, let me take you out of your predicament and ask you a question. When you look at Medina Habu, which is what just outside of Thebes, right? Yeah, it's on the way to the valley of the Kings. Yes, it's Ramses III, it's Mortuary Temple. When you go there and you look at those reliefs, do you sometimes feel this isn't just ancient history, this is actually a warning to us today. Do you feel that there's a kind of element to prophecy in those beautiful ancient reliefs? That's not God's dog really quickly. Can I just say something? There's something that's such a choice. Empire, are we doomed? Yes, Eric. Are we doomed? Great. And did they leave a warning for us? Yes, well, interesting. I tell you what I do see. I do see a world back then that thought it was too big to fail. Just like we say about us today, oh, we're too big to fail. They probably thought the same thing. The people 3,200 years ago back in 1200 BC, they were just as smart as us. They were technologically advanced for their time. They were just as connected. We're globalized, they were globalized for their time. And yet, when push came to shove, when the perfect storm hit, when the series of unfortunate events unfolded, the house of God's clapses, yeah. They couldn't hold it together, try as they might. And so I see this as a reminder that civilization, it's a choice that we make every day, and that every society in the history of humankind has collapsed either totally or has had to transform so much that you really don't recognize it in its new iteration. So they were not too big to fail. We're not too big to fail. I would be very worried. I'm trying to take the moral of the story then. Is the moral of the story then, Eric, that they were too interconnected. That was their fragility that they relied on each other too much. And we should, I don't know, pull up the draw bridges, mad, the barriers, you know. Join MAGA. I wouldn't go that far. What do we meant to learn from this? No, this is an excellent question. And when I'm lecturing on this sequel book, I end with this point. You know, seven takeaways from the collapse. What do you do if your society has collapsed? But I would say be aware that it could happen to you, that it's happened to everybody else, as I just mentioned. You know, what brings the society up in the first place is often what also takes it down in the end. So they're very interconnectedness. The globalization is what propelled them to the great heights that they reached during the late Bronze Age. When you had the G8, right, Mycenaeans, Minotans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Hittites, all of that interconnectedness, when one of them went down, or I would actually say two of them, Ugarit and the Hittites, that was, there you go. There's your house of cards. There's your dominoes when two of them fell, the rest followed suit. So what brought them up also brought them down. And since I see us as just interconnected today as they were back then, and that is contributing to our great world these days, that I think we have to be where what happens. If you have supply chain shortages, you know, anything, I mean, think of what's just happened the last ten, fifteen years. Oh, I mean, the pandemic, you said the pandemic mixed with, you know, a war or mixed with something else, you know, you're right. I actually think, I mean, I don't want to be Cassandra or chicken little, but every problem they had back in 1177, we have it today and they collapsed. We're not too big to fail. We've got earthquakes, we've got droughts, we've got famines, we've got migrations, we've got pandemics. You name it. We have the same things they did and they failed. I just think the past holds a lesson for us if we're willing to listen. So I am a little bit worried because the very interconnectedness of their system is what made it vulnerable and same thing with us. A ship gets stuck in the Suez Canal for six days and we suddenly don't have toilet paper. Right? I mean, we've got that, you know, so I'm a little worried that the Bronze Age collapse, which, you know, most people have never heard of. They hear of the fall of Rome. They don't know about the Bronze Age collapse. I actually think the Bronze Age collapse holds more potential lessons for us today than one might ever expect. I may not have time to do your course. That case without the break. I'll just put something else in the diary. Just read the book. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I've read the book. That's fine. Let's, can we sort of look at, it's a home in on some of these collapses because you know, Kitai and by your saying is one of the main locks. Yeah, let's go right back and, because it's not again, one of the ones we all know about. I mean, in a sense, those of us who grew up in an around London get to see what this serial empire looked like, because all those enormous bulls from Nimrod and Nineveys sitting around the British Museum, Ditto Egypt. But the Kitai stuff is less well known and it doesn't immediately bring images to the minds of most of us. Take us through who the Kitai are and their core. Sure. And I will preface this by saying something I referred to in the previous episode. Then we ran the computer simulations of what would it have taken to bring all of this down? The computer simulations said the only thing that would bring it all down were if the Kitai and Ugarit collapsed at the same time or if the Kitai and Egypt collapsed at the same time. But we know that Egypt did not completely collapse. We know that, which means that Kitai to Newgarit is what happened. But notice the Kitai are in both of those scenarios. So the Kitai were a mystery to us until just over 100 years ago because they had been lost to history. I mean, they're mentioned in the Bible, Hebrew Bible Old Testament. But we didn't know where they were. We couldn't find them archaeologically. And in the meantime, there was this civilization, the ancient ruins up in what is today Turkey, ancient Anatolia. And we didn't know that name. Italy, A.H.S. Archimold Henry Sace, one of the greatest deserialogists said, hey, wait, that stuff up in Turkey is the Kitai and he was right. They absolutely were. And in 1906, Hugo Vincler began excavating at the capital city of Hatoosos, found the archives that we've referred to. And by 1916, Horasni had deciphered Kitai. And it's Indo-European, isn't it? One of the great experts of Kitai is our friend, my just know of dad at Harvard. My father has spent his entire life translating Hunaiiform tablets from Hattushas. So they're using the writing system of Kuneiform, the wedge shape to the Latin for wedge shape. You can use Kuneiform to write a Kedian, a Babylonian, and Sumerian, and Kitai. So once we're able to read these tablets, then we were able to figure out that the Kitai Empire, well, there's the Kitai Old Kingdom and the Kitai Empire, but we're talking about the Empire here. So almost the exact same time as the Mycenaeans, about 1700 to 1200 BC. And they managed to conquer most of H and Anatolia, what is today, Turkey. And visually, it's a world not a million miles from the Syrians and the Persians. And they've all got long beards with curly beards. They've all got the Lion Gates. Are these things we get again as in Mycenae? It's kind of bridge between those two worlds almost. Right. In fact, I think the Kitai were on again, off again, friends and enemies over the Mycenaeans. And yeah, they both have Lion Gates at Mycenae and Hattushas and so on. The Kitai were one of the great powers. I mean, at this time in the late Bronze Age, we have what I just mentioned, the G8, as I call them, right, the Great Brotherhood of Kings. But among those, the top two were Egypt and the Kitai. And they are fighting, for example, over territory in what we would call the Levant Cainan. Modern day, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Palestinian territories. The Egyptians and Hittites are fighting over them. But the Hittites basically own most of modern day Turkey, ancient Anatolia. Militarally, they've got a great bureaucracy, very powerful military, great diplomatic presence. And they're writing everything down. We have historical text. You name it. We've got it. So we now know all about the Hittites. Are they making things? Are they growing things? Are they building things? What's their USP? They're Hittites. All of the above, yes, they're making their growing. They're doing whatever society, every civilization is doing back then. They are trading with everybody else. But there are a couple of things. I mean, the Hittite homelands up in the central plateau of Anatolia. There are some things they can grow and other things they can't. So we see a great trade in things like olive oil with others. There's a great trade going on in terms of ceramics. We also have, I mean, some of the tin from the ancient world comes from the southeastern and Anatolia. I mean, some might come from Cornwall. Most came from Afghanistan. These are long way apart. These three sources of tin. Afghanistan, Cornwall, and other... Exactly. The hundreds, if not thousands, of miles apart. And think what happens if they're cut for any reason? Do you talk about supply chain problems? And actually, that has been suggested towards the end of the late Bronze Age that the supply chain for tin might have been cut. In which case, you can't make bronze. So you have a problem. But the Hittites are happily working and controlling and doing everything for about 500 years. The whole of the late Bronze Age. But one last thing before we move on though, they should not be called the Hittites. That's our name for them. Huh. Yeah. So, the Hittites, the Hittites, the Hittites, the Hittites, the Hittites. The Hittites called themselves the Nesites and they spoke Nesian because the initial capital was at Karim Kanesh, which is still around today. And from Kanesh, you get Nesha and the Nesites. But by the time we were able to read the tablets and realize that we should call them Nesha. And they had already been labeled the Hittites. So it's too late. Now, Eric, we've talked about the, now this bureaucracy, everything's looking fine. It goes down slightly differently from Ugarit. A guy we talked about people arriving in boats and then arrowheads and bodies in the streets. With the Hittites, there's a kind of slow emptying of Hattushash. And it's half empty when disaster strikes. There isn't invasion, but it's already half ruined. Yes, it's one of these things like, there's a saying, it went really slowly until it didn't. Right? It went very fast at the end, but it was very slow up until then. The problem with the Hittites is that they themselves had internal problems. They were, it's looking now more and more, they were more vulnerable and fragile. Then they appeared to the outside observer, if you will. They were having problems within the royal family. The two brothers had fought. This side is rather familiar to any of us, Brits, this thing to this. There's nothing new under the sun. So they had actually abandoned their capital. Hattushash was based on the Hittites. It was basically empty or at least half empty. By the time all this was happening, they are still fighting other people. One of the last Hittite kings tries to invade Cyprus. I mean, they are still being Hittites, but they have moved out. And it looks like the capital city of Hattushash, when it is finally invaded and destroyed and burned. It's only partially and it may be that it has nothing to do with the sea peoples. Maybe the Kashkha, who are they? Who are the Kashkha? The Kashkha are up to the northeast. They had already actually invaded and destroyed Hattushash. Modern Aminear and Jojah, that's the area. I don't think it'd be quite there for it, it's still in Turkey, but it's up towards the shores of the Black Sea. They were, you know, age old enemies. They had already sacked Hattushash back in 1400 BC. And it looks like they come back in 1200 as well. We're still finding out more about them. We need to do more excavation up there. But it looks like they're the ones that end the Hittite Empire. But I think the Hittite Empire would have fallen anyway. The big question for me is, okay, and again, it's very much like the Mycenaeans. The palaces go down. Same thing, you know, Hattushash goes down. How would the average person, not in the street, but out in the hinterlands? How would the average person have felt about that? And I think, you know, it wouldn't have affected them all that much. Life would have continued on. But, you know, now who are they going to pay taxes to? But in terms of administration and bureaucracy and the army, as I say to people in my lectures, don't be a Hittite. Do not be a Hittite. They are in my lowest category. I do, I have the temerity and the sequel to rank the societies as to how well they did in the aftermath. And the Hittites are dead last. Do not be a Hittite. Okay, so do not be a Hittite. I want to do what you say. I don't want to be a Hittite. But tell me, did they just disappear overnight after facing all these difficulties? Or did you have them sort of, I don't know, sort of little gangs of Hittites going and settling and saying, you know, we are Hittite. But let's whisper it in case we get killed. Or how does it work out? So what had actually happened, and this is absolutely, I think, fascinating, is when you have the major empire, if you will, or kingdom of the Hittites collapsing, the satellite areas continue on. And I will have the temerity to compare it to the British Empire. No, no. No, no. Yes, I must. I must. We no longer have the British Empire today last time I checked. It's not going to come in place in the Caribbean. You hang on to. Well, there are places though that were former parts of the empire where they still drink tea and play cricket, right? Which is the vestiges. Same thing with the Hittites. Apart from tea drinking, cricket playing country. I mean, I don't suppose India would pretend to be sort of Hittite light, if you like, you know. I know. They kept bits that they liked, but they wouldn't say that they were, they were Britain's. Do you know what I mean? So did you have then Hittites just evaporate or did they influence other places and, you know, go Hittite light? I mean, just explain. I wouldn't know. I'm worried about the Merrick. This is what it is. I wanted to know what happens to them. Right. So the Hittites proper in Central Anatolia. They do go away. I mean, there are remnants of the society that keep going, but they really do go away. And they are overtaken by new groups, the fridgents come in. The irarsians start their civilization. And they're going to be big in the Iron Age in there. So no more Hittites. But in North Syria, where the Hittites had been and had been fighting the Egyptians for control. And we had had these proxy wars during the Amarna Age in the 14th century. That area keeps going and we get what we call the neo-Hittites. Hittite light. I knew it. Okay, go on. Yes. You know, neo-Hittites, meaning the new Hittites. These are the Hittites of the Bible. When the Bible talks about the Hittites, these are the Hittites they know. Because they wouldn't have known about the Bronzeites. They were gone. But these are the Hittites that the Bible mentions. And these neo-Hittites who are up in Northern Syria, basically right where it meets Turkey today. This is where you've got Carcamèche and various other cities. They keep going. They have the same names. Chupi Luduyoma, for example. And I do hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. That was very good. I like that. Yeah. One of these days, I wanted this, if I say it in my lecture, I want to travel back in time and meet Chupi Luduyoma, mostly to find out if I'm pronouncing his name correctly. Right. So they keep the names for the Hittite kings. They in fact keep kingship. They keep writing. They're still writing in Luvian, which is used for the royal inscriptions. They keep everything. They are the Hittites, the Hittite light, if you will. But they are much smaller. They're smaller city-states, Aleppo, Carcamèche, all of that. Carcamèche was the site to which T.E. Lawrence dug on as a youth in the name. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think he might have actually been the photographer there to begin with. That's right. But he was definitely there. Yes. And so there's actually been some wonderful works. James Osborne, University of Chicago, has written an entire book on these Neo Hittite. Or now they want to call them zero Hittites, city-states, or kingdoms. And they come up against the new version of the Assyrians. We have Neo Assyrians, and then eventually Babylonian, Neo Babylonian. So the Iron Age, which is in the aftermath of the collapse, everybody's new again. So you've got Neo whatever, Neo Hittites, Neo Babylonians. One thing that occurred to me reading your book, Eric, or reading your book plural, is that the guys who do better the Neo Hittites and the Assyrians and the Babylonians are all further in land. They're less likely to be raided from the seas than a feature. Yes, I think so. And actually trying to figure out why some went down and the others didn't, or why they went down at different times, is part of the mystery that we're trying to figure out. And so yes, the Assyrians and the Babylonians are much further in land, and they are on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates. So they've got two major rivers there. So they don't subject to drought, like Egyptians are not subject to drought, because they've got the Nile, not as much. Right. We do know from the Neo Assyrian texts that they are hit by drought, but about a century after everybody else. And even then the drought gets so bad that at one point, one of the texts says that they are eating their own. They are cannibalism, kind of cranky. So it is delayed. It is delayed. I think there are other factors besides the Water too. They had good leaders that were there at the right time. But the Egyptians did have the Nile. The one thing to notice, we have Egyptians and Hittites as the big two. The big four are Egyptians, Hittites and Assyrians, Babylonians, of those four, the only one that's not on a major river system are the Hittites. And they are the only one of the four that do go down. So water is important. So more open to rainfall fluctuations. Yes. Right. So water is important. One thing I didn't understand in your book, Eric, was the chronological order. Is it a west to east tumble of the dominoes? Does it start with my senior, then go to Troy, then go to Hattushash and the Hittites, then go to a Garrett and what's Assyrian finally end up at Egypt? Is that the order? Or is my senior and Troy collapsing alongside this? What sort of chronological order do you put this all in? I wish I knew. I wish we knew. We can't get that specific that way. Yes, I can tell you my gut feeling. Yes, I think it's coming west to east. You're starting with a drought in land in Europe, which is driving people down into my senior. They are then raiding Troy. Troy is then rebellion against Hattushash. All these different Okis in boats are then going to a Garrett and Syria and finally ending up at Egypt and Libya. Yes, though. I would start it actually a little bit further west. I would say that the drought in Europe is driving people down also into Italy. And we see now that there is an exodus from northern Italy of as many as 25,000 people is the latest estimate by Christian Christian Senate and other people like that. This summer I went to an Ionian island site, which was also part of this Bronze Age claps. It was a beautiful evening and gorgeous headland with the perfect water. But when you get there, the archaeology is exactly the same. It's a very prosperous Bronze Age trading settlement selling obsidian. It makes these little, these little gorgeous sort of shiny glass-like black arrowheads and spears, which it's doing very nicely out of and selling to the people. It's going to be out of and selling over a wider and then one day, a bunch of boats turn up, raid it and it's gone. I think that's kind of the case that we've got here. I am backed up to a certain degree because Rams is the third in the inscription that we've already talked about with the wives and the kids and the luggage and all of that. Actually says no land could stand before them and then he names them. He says hotay, kode, karkamash, artsua, alashia on. And we know these places and they're actually kind of in order. Hati, those are the hitites. Karkamash and kode, that's right. I mean those are the neo-hitites later. That's where Turkey meets Syria in today's lingo. Artsua is on the western coast of Turkey, south of Troy. And alashia, of course, alashia is most likely Bronze Age Cyprus. And so we can see that Ramzi says they have come basically west to east and he actually then says they have set up a camp in Amuru. Now Amuru we know from other texts including the Imarnilators back in the 14th century. Amuru is just south of Ugarit. So we can see that. Now we also have these texts at Ugarit that we've mentioned where they talk about the enemy coming. Well, we actually do have a date for the destruction of Ugarit. Near as we configure because there's an Egyptian Chancellor mentioned, there's an eclipse that is mentioned. It looks like Ugarit is still existing in 1192, 1191. So the earliest it would have been destroyed is in about 1190. The latest is probably about 1185. So there's about a five year window when Ugarit is destroyed by these ships and invaders that have shown up. However, Ramzi's the third is not invaded until 1177. So even if we take 1190 and go down 1177, that's 13 years. If it's 1185, that's what about eight years. Meaning that the Egyptians had warning of about a decade. And in that time they could prepare, I think that is why they beat them. Because they've had 10 years to get everything ready. So they saw the storm coming, coming, coming, coming. It's going to get to us so we better do something. And they had the sea people's as messengers. So they knew they're fighting techniques and their weaknesses and strengths. And that's where it gets even more interesting because people like the Shardana and others maybe even the Shectulas, we see them in Egyptian records as early as the 14th century. And they are, as you say, they are mercenaries fighting on both sides. So now when they come back as the enemies, as the sea peoples, they're a known quantity. And in fact, it's been recently suggested. I mentioned before that there was a land battle and a naval battle. It's been suggested now that the land battle might actually have been fought up in what is now Northern Syria. And that the Egyptians went on, if you want to call it an offensive defense, let's not wait for them to come to us. Let's go and attack them. So it may be that we have the sea peoples up by Ugarit 1190. And then by 1177, the Egyptians go up and attack them. Which explains why they would also encounter the Israelites, who seed are no more in that first same stellar. Could possibly explain all sorts of things, but I still kind of like the land battle being fought down by the naval battle, which is most likely in the Nile Delta. Either way, this is in part why I think the Egyptians are able to beat the sea peoples in 1177. Is because, just as you've asked, we can trace them coming from west to east and then north down south, and the Egyptians are ready and waiting. And it might even have happened in 1207 also when they came from Libya, and were allied with the Libyan chief, and again, the Egyptians might have had some time to prepare. So Eric, if they have warning, is there any signs that the Egyptians are fortifying, or anything can we see that? Because there are places we see mycene fortifying before it collapses, and the tyrants and pillows, the Greek cities fortify, but it isn't good enough. They fall anyway. For Egypt, it's hard to tell. We do have a series of Egyptian forts that go up, you know, the way of the sea. But it's much easier to see in places like mycene, as you mentioned, where they have reinforced the outer walls, they put up the lion gate, they build a tunnel down to water. And we do see these elsewhere as well. But since the Egyptians are able to basically defend their country before the sea peoples ever make inroads into Egypt proper, I think we need to look a little bit further north at what's happening in Canaan, and ask if the Egyptians help to fortify any of the cities like Maghito, or Hotsor, or others that they controlled up in Canaan. I think that's a better place to look. It's a good place to take a break. We've been talking about the places that are collapsing and when and how, and in which order they might have done. But what happens to the people in those places? We sort of dealt with the hit heights and where, you know, sort of hit heights have ended up afterwards. But what about the rest of these populations in these huge major cities? Join us after the break. Hi, this is Hannah and Michael from Gohangers, the Rested Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. Radio therapy is over a century old, but it is still changing. 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For more information about cancer research UK, their research and breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org forward slash The Rest Is Science. Hey, Saints Breeze! We get through so many snacks. Have you gone to help me save? Well, we're always matching and lowering prices. So hundreds of Saints Breeze fresh fruit, veg, and everyday products are priced match to algae. And every week with nectar you can save money on thousands of the products your family loves. So you can snack away knowing you're saving money. Saints Breeze! Good food for all of us. Selected products, algae price match not in an eye. Nectar prices require nectar account. Terms at saintbreeze.co.uk slash algae price match and nectar.com slash prices terms. So Eric has led us through the Bronze Age claps. This decline and fall of a civilization that in many ways resembles very globalized, very interconnected, and suddenly it is no more. Eric, in this half, perhaps you'd take us through what happens to all these different citadel and cities and peoples after the claps. Sure. So if we look at the Mycenaean palaces in Greece, the collapse there, it follows a similar pattern to other places. The problem is we don't know exactly what happened to them. We know they were destroyed. We don't know who did it. We don't know what did it. We don't know why. For example, Mycenaean is destroyed around 1200 BC. It looks like it was affected by an earthquake at some point, maybe 1250 BC. But as I've said, that's not enough to stop it. But we do know that by 1200 by 1150 it's destroyed. It has been now suggested that it was an internal rebellion and that might have been the case for other cities as well. Pylos is destroyed in about 1200 BC. It baked the tablets and all of that. Terence is damaged. Terence is inhabited for maybe another century. Terence is close to Mycenaean, isn't it? It's the kind of neighboring city. Just a couple of kilometers. And in fact, trying to figure out a little relationship between Terence and Mycenae is an interesting problem we've been discussing for decades now. But here they're both destroyed within a century of each other. And Mycenaean economy ends. The palatial economy ends. Literacy goes away. What they had known went away by 1050 BC. Nobody is calling themselves a Mycenaean anymore. It's gone. I have a question. We've repeated this a few times in this series. Suddenly overnight literacy disappears. Why do people suddenly not write things down? Why do we know the collapse of a city doesn't mean the knowledge of that writing goes with? Yeah, you're supposed to use full skill to have. It's sort of leaving notes by the side of the road. We've gone here just in case you look. Why does it all suddenly evaporate? Right. I'm glad you asked that. Yes. Writing does seem like it would be essential. But writing in the Mycenaean period, which is linear B, which Michael Ventress showed in 1952, is an early version of Greek. It was used by the scribes in the palace to record what was going in and coming out of the palace. That was all it was used for. Sheep olive oil, cows, chariot wheels, tin, copper, right. No history, no epics, no poems, no, you know, pre-homer type things. It is all economic. And that means that when the palaces were destroyed and the palatial economy went away, there was no need for that anymore. And remember, you know, maybe 1% of the population could read or write. And in that particular case, it was the scribes in the palace. No palace, no economy, no scribes. And with that, I would say within a decade or who knows, they no longer know how to do linear B. They can't read or write anymore. That's amazing. And it's going to take until the Phoenicians come to bring the alphabet. Well, that answers that question. And do you think illiteracy is a driving factor in collapse or is it actually reinvention that if you don't have these old ways or any vestige or connection to those old ways, people become more innovative. They become, I don't know, better at doing things without, you know, sort of a courtly language. Is it almost good that it goes? Because you know, people have to look to themselves to do things rather than a palace economy and scribes to tell them what's coming in and what's coming out. Yeah. Well, yes and no, I would say. And this is becoming a major area of debate. Some scholars have said one person's collapses and other person's opportunity. Right. And in fact, it's been suggested by Eric of Iberg and Martin Fene, who are at Uppsala. They have said that when the Mycenaean palaces went down like Pylos, like Mycenae, that the ordinary people probably rejoiced because they had been abused. In building things like the land gate, in draining the copayas basin, that they had been taken advantage of and delivering the chariot wheels and the wine and the olive oil that the B's recording. Exactly. Exactly. And the Mycenaeans may have been more fragile and vulnerable than they appeared. And this is also what Joseph Moran, the excavator of Tyrannes at the moment, he has suggested that perhaps the Mycenaean economy and the Mycenaean world was not as solid as it appears as we have thought. And that not only the peasants might have been rejoicing when the palaces went down, but some of the second and third tier nobles might have been rejoicing. The ones who were not the first sons who were going to inherit everything, sons number two and number three, but Yahoo! Thank you, see people. This is now our choice. As a son number four, I'm very much on that side. And those might have also been some of the Mycenaeans that joined the see people. The way I thought about it is that it's like the only people who could write with the tax inspectors and the tax office is burnt down. They don't, they're just not necessarily, everyone can just do what they like. Yes. Yes. So it's a liberation, basically. It's a liberation of centralized control. And I would agree with that. And then to jump ahead when the Phoenicians bring the alphabet, you know, by the A century, if not earlier, and by the way, I think the alphabet came earlier, I think recent publications have shown it might have been as early as the 11th century. That is very liberating because the alphabet is much easier to learn and to use than linear B. And now pretty much anybody could do it for any reason. And so I think it was very liberating when the Phoenicians bring back what becomes the Greek alphabet. A more democratic language. Much, much more democratic. Yes. Eric, take us next maybe to Cyprus because there you also get devastation, don't you? Yes, we do, but there we also get innovation. And one thing I would stress is that the period after the collapse is usually called the world's first dark age. And I would rather call it the Iron Age as many archaeologists have said. And if we look at the adaptive cycle, for instance, which people usually use in biology and environmental science, after every collapse, there's a period of innovation and invention. And that's what I think we should look at in these centuries right after the collapse. And Cyprus is a prime example because Cyprus is devastated. We do get major Bronze Age sites like Enchemy, like Kyrgyn. We do see that they are destroyed or have evidence for at least some destruction right around 1200 BC. Now remember Cyprus is where the copper came from. Tin we argue about Afghanistan, Southeast, Anatolia, Cornwall, no argument for copper. Copper is from Cyprus. That is what they did. And when the collapse happened and perhaps copper production was affected, they are the people on Cyprus that become innovative. And one of the things that they do is turn to iron. And it looks now as if they may have been at the forefront, that while extracting copper and copper ore, that they figured out how to smell iron at the same time. And so it does look like the earliest iron weapons and iron tools that start being used in the aftermath of the collapse are on Cyprus. And let me emphasize, you will see on the internet and such people saying, oh, the sea people's had iron weapons and that's why they won. And that iron brought an end to the Bronze Age. No, it did not. Iron comes in after the collapse or at least during it. But it does not contribute to the collapse. It's what you do in this period of innovation and invention afterward. And Cyprus, even though it is majorly affected, like all the other societies, they immediately pivot. They and the Phoenicians are in my top category as to what to do if your society is affected. And in their case, it's iron. And they also, they take the cities that have been destroyed and they move like three kilometers away and start a new city. Can I ask about another place which we've again referred to as, I mean, we've sort of made it seem as though it's a success story of this collapsing period. That's Egypt, which doesn't collapse. But it doesn't fare well. I mean, it suffers, doesn't it? So can we talk about that? Because it doesn't buy any stretch, get away, Scott, free. Despite all the kind of victory proclamations of Medina Habu, it thinks there's something rotten in the state of Egypt. Exactly, exactly. And actually in the first book, the 1177 BC, I kind of ended up leaving the impression that Egypt was one of the ones that did the best. And in fact, it's not as I show in the sequel after 1177. And as I've just mentioned, the Phoenicians and the Cypriots do the best. The Syrians and Babylonians are the next best for reasons that we've talked about with the Attigris and the Euphrates. The Egyptians come in third in my category out of five. And I put them in because it's like here in the United States is what we would have called in previous generations. A gentleman C, right? They're not, they haven't failed, but they haven't gotten an A. They, they survive. Let's put it that way. The way I put it, I have three different categories. You can transform, which is the best. You can adapt, which is second best, or you can cope. And I think the Egyptians have kind of coped, slash adapted. So I put them in my third category, but it would probably be better to say it survived, but that it was like a Piric victory. Right? They're still there, but they lost control over their foreign territories. They leave Canaan by 1140. Where they've been for a long while. Very long. They had been there since, well, at least the time of Tumosus III, when he fought the Battle of Maguito, right? Back in the 15th century. 400 years earlier. Yeah. 400. Yeah. So they've lost all that. They are, they do remain in tenuous contact for trade. They, they're going up into what's now Jordan and such, but their trade networks have been completely disrupted. They are no longer a member of the great powers. They're not an imperial power. They're just retreated back to modern Egypt. Exactly. They have, they've retreated back within their borders. And it, it does get worse than that, because at one point, and we're into now where we've got the 19th dynasty and then until the 20th and 21st, we're now into the period that Egyptologist called the third intermediate period, which is usually described as a period of anarchy and chaos. At one point, there are three, if not four, different people, each claiming that they are a Pharaoh of Egypt and each one in a different region of Egypt. So when you compare it to new kingdom Egypt, 18th dynasty, right? King Tut, 19th dynasty. There's no comparison. And so that's why I put Egypt in the middle. But two, two brief comments. One, one Egyptologist pointed out to me or said, that's unfair comparing third intermediate to new kingdom. That's an unfair comparison. I'm like, why? I'm comparing iron age to Bronze Age. That's exactly the comparison. And then I was giving a lecture and I said Egypt in category three and one graduate student stood up and raised his fist and said, were number one or nothing? And I said, I guess you're nothing, because I'm not going to put you in category one. I might move you up to category two and be equivalent to a series of Babylonians. But I really do think that the Egyptians, they're hanging on by the skin of their teeth. They are surviving, but they are not what they were in the Bronze Age. How we heard she said, who your number one is? You're dissing left right and center every ancient civilization, tumbling the Nanyel ranking. Who is Eric Client's number one? Number one or the Phoenicians. We are coming to the Phoenicians in the next episode. We very much have been told to this. Yeah, the Phoenicians and the Cypriots are my number one, the two of them. And we actually do see it. Maybe we'll talk about this in the future. But wherever we see Phoenician goods in the Aegean, we also find Cypriot goods. So the question is, are they working in tandem or are they competitors? Maybe they're competitors? Who know? But those are my number ones. So, you know, if you're going to survive a collapse, you should be like the Phoenicians or be like the Cypriots. But don't be like the Egyptians. And remember. And God's like not a hit height. Never a hit. I'm actually having t-shirts printed up. There you go. But to round it out for those who haven't figured it out yet in my category for my Seneans and my noons, they're not as bad as the Hittites, but they're not even as good as the Egyptians. So, you know, to come full circle, like I said, the the myseneans basically had to start all over again after 1050. Nobody's a mysenean. That doesn't mean that they went away totally. I think the membrane is permeable. So, you know, Bronze Age, myseneans and Iron Age Greeks, they're still worshiping Zeus and Hera and Poseidon and Athena. Some stuff makes it through, but they really do have to start over again. That's not the case in Egypt. They did not have to start over again. It's just their government kind of fell apart. So, we are going to be looking at Eric's superstars, the Phoenicians in the next episode and also seeing how the Israelites and the Philistines emerge from this mess of the collapse in the next episode. You don't have to wait. You can join the club at mpapoduk.com for less than a frothy coffee. Anyway, see you next time. Goodbye from me, William Drympel. And from me, Anisa Arno.