History of the World: Chapter 3: The Apex of the Bronze Age (Patreon)

Bibliography at the end 

The Age of the Chariot

Babylon never truly recovered as a great power. Without a stable agricultural base, they lacked the ability to project power on a great level anymore. Babylonian armies became purely defensive and Babylon lost status as a decisive military power. Babylon however did remain the center of trade and a religious and cultural Mecca, similar to Paris today. The heartlands of the river valleys did not change that much themselves, but we will see the spread of civilization far beyond those low lying irrigated deserts. Civilization's size would more than quintuple over the next few hundred years. However, the world around old Sumer changed unimaginably, creating a political balance that was completely unimaginable in the age of Hammurabi. To see great conquests, one must look north and west of old Sumer. 

When we last left off, the ancestors of the Syrians, the Aramaeans had just conquered the northern half of Mesopotamia and the fertile crescent. The poorly united and settled Syrian tribes made poor resistance against the Kassite tribes, who came out of the northern mountains. After conquering the local population, the Kassites founded the kingdom of Mitanni. Mitanni dominated the entire region for a series of generation, conquering a stretch of land from Babylon to the Mediterranean. Like every other nomadic conqueror, the Kassites over time assimilated into their populations, becoming the feudal aristocracy, lording over the native peasant class, and the rich land in turn making them soft. 

The Mittanni introduced a new technology that would change the region in a serious way, the new and improved chariot. Old chariots were cumbersome things that were not very useful for warfare, which was dominated by large blocks of spearman. The new chariot, likely discovered around the mouth of Danube River in modern day Romania, was a fast affair that could drive circles around the slow infantry, firing arrows into the ranks, while the infantry could do nothing to retaliate. Something we must remember about the ancient world is the technological differences between civilized and barbarian nations was not as great as that between developed and undeveloped nations today. In fact, the barbarians without their stringent theocracries often invented and adopted technologies with greater ease. A modern comparison of the chariots' sheer battlefield capabilities would be between the tank and civil war era formation marching infantry. The tank has absolutely dominated the battlefields of the last hundred years, making infantry almost into a side arm to support the sheer offensive power of the tank. An example of the dominance of the chariot was that at the battle of Kadesh the Hittites never actually used their extensive infantry force in the battle, instead deploying only their chariots to fight the entire Egyptian army—even though they were heavily outnumbered and the battle was easily the most pivotal one of the era. This new technology ushered in a new age of barbarian dominance. 

The Egyptian Empire

Speaking of barbarian conquests, the Hyksos tyranny in Egypt lasted a few hundred years. Over time, the Egyptians learned the technologies of their overlords. Egyptians served in the armies of the Hyksos and thus learned how to use the chariots, bronze weapons, and bows of their conquerors. The Hyksos domination was built off their superiority in arms and so when they lost that they lost the ability to lord over their innumerable subjects. The Egyptian reaction led by Ahmose resulted in a growing Egyptian power base in Upper Egypt driving the Hyksos out of the Nile delta in a brief war. After this point, Egypt was blessed with a new series of dynamic rulers that would lead Egypt into becoming possibly the most powerful empire in the world. These were the glory years of Egypt, called the New Kingdom. 

The Hyksos conquest taught one thing to the Egyptian nation, that they could not take their borders for granted. If Egypt wanted to keep its independence, it should draw one conclusion, to expand its borders so those of Egypt itself would never be conquered again. Over the next few hundred years, the Egyptians would expand into the two directions they were most threatened from, to the South, from the Sudanese tribes, and to the North into the Levant. 

The Nile is a not an easily navigable river for most of its length. There are four cataracts or, waterfalls, that make the Nile unnavigable for its entire length. At the southern edge of the Nile lies massive swamps larger than the British Isles or Germany, which prevented explorers from penetrating central Africa for thousands of years. The historic boundaries of Egypt are the Mediterranean sea to the North and the first of these cataracts to the south. This meant that the boundaries of Egypt was the section that was easily navigable by the river before the first cataract. This meant that the Sudan was a hard region for the Egyptians to occupy, since they had to move men and supplies partially by land around the cataracts. This actually had a profound effect on the Sudan’s history, in they have maintained their independence for most history, but at the same time lay at a serious technological and developmental disadvantage to the lands to the North. The story of the Egyptian conquest of Sudan was the drive from cataract to cataract. By the height of their empire, the Egyptians had driven past the third cataract, deep into Sudan. The Egyptians built enormous fortresses to guard the strategic cataracts and locations in the Nile. The military occupation of the Sudan had great cultural impact in the region among the native Nubian tribes. Egyptian culture had such an effect that there are actually more pyramids in the Sudan than there are in Egypt. 

Meanwhile to the North, the Egyptians had a more tough time conquering. The Levant was one of the seats of early civilization. The city of Jericho in modern Jordan is actually the oldest in the world, outpacing the river valleys of Iraq by thousands of years. However it had no major rivers, thus meaning central authority and kingship never evolved there in the way it did in Mesopotamia or Egypt. The region was divided between minor hill kingships who ruled small lands that surrounded their walls. They worshipped similar gods to the Mesopotamians, but added friendly hill spirits, strange fish gods like Dagon alongside the fertility god Baal who required human sacrifice. They were probably of similar stock and had a similar, albeit less advanced civilization then Mesopotamia. 

The Egyptians using their enormous size and strength were able to conquer the minor hill states. The Egyptians led by Rameses were able to smash the unified force of the minor states at the battle of Megiddo. The Egyptians in this campaign learned how to manage an army properly, with rank and officers in ascending power and complex systems of supply, becoming a major military power. The Egyptians built the first major navy in history to maintain their supply lines along the Mediterranean coast. The island of Cyprus, off the coast of Turkey, even became a client state. The Egyptians, so emotionally and demographically tied to their precious Nile, were not able to export their culture or population into these regions and the culture remained unchanged from before. The Egyptians simply forced the local aristocracy to pay tribute payments and acknowledge the inherent superiority of Egypt. The Egyptian empire was less a cultural endeavor than just a military occupation. Led by Rameses the Second in a series of mighty campaigns, the Egyptians drove all the way up to the Tigris and conquered the entire Levant. There they smashed heads with another great empire, the Hittites. 

The Hittites were a part of the grand Indo-European family that were taking the by storm at that time. Horsemen from the steppes of Russia, that had conquered a region stretching from Northern Europe to India, including Anatolia. Due to their Indo-European heritage, the Hittites had far more in common with the later Greeks or Persians cultural than the earlier River Valley civilizations. There they created a kingdom based in the hills, around the impregnable mountain fortress of Hattusa. The Hittites were not a river valley civilization like those to the south, but instead a warrior confederacy of hill tribes. The tribes built high castles instead of cities and the warrior noble chiefdoms dominated the society instead of the priests. The Hittites were the best warriors of their age, the proud Turkish hill peasants fighting well against their stunted and diseased irrigation opponents. Although they may have started out as barbarians, the Hittites quickly developed a quite modern civilization and administrative system. Hattusa, one of the largest cities on earth at the time had the longest walls of any city alongside the world’s largest library. 

The Hittites, originally a raiding tribe more than a kingdom, raided across the North of Mesopotamia, sacking even Babylon. This raid was over a thousand miles and was one of the most impressive military maneuvers in history at the time.They then had a crisis of leadership and pulled back to the Anatolian highlands for a few hundred years. However, regrouping as a developed kingdom, they drove again into the Mesopotamian lowlands and Syria. They broke the back of Mittani, forever preventing it from being a developed power and annexing its western half, while forcing the east into subjugation. They created a string of vassal states in Northern Syria. They clashed in a series of wars with the Egyptians mainly centered around the city of Kadesh in Syria. The prior mentioned battle took place in between the two juggernauts. The battle ended in a draw, which is frankly remarkable in that only the chariots of the Hittite army were able to fight the entire much larger Egyptian army to a standstill. History, however, remembers it as a Egyptian victory since the Pharaoh, needing to be seen as a god came back in Egypt and built great monuments to his “victory” which we later taken literally by Western archaeologists. In reality the battle resulted in the first peace treaty we have from history, one in which the power dynamic returned to a status quo from what it was before. The Hittites controlled the North of Syria, based around their client state of Ugarit, while the Egyptians controlled the South of the region, holding the city of Kadesh. Syria was a wealthy trading center, lying in the middle of the civilized world at the time but lacked the military power to gain political independence. 

A Heroic Age of Kings

Besides warfare, the chariot changed the political and cultural balance of the region decisively. As has been gradually shown, this was an age of empires, in which large empires dominated the Middle East and the city states were generally taken into the fold by these larger kingdoms. This was because the chariots with their complicated mechanical workings and horses were too expensive to maintain for small states, so only large kingdoms were able to keep large chariot forces, thus the smaller states lost power. After the initial barbarian discovery of the light chariot and the accompanying orgy of violence, the barbarians were for a time held at bay because the more numerous civilized states were able to field larger armies of chariots, thus negating the original advantage the barbarians used to have. Like Early Modern Europe, these large nations created a balance of power in which no one nation would ever gain dominance, because the others would ally against it to prevent its hegemony. This balance of power prevented there from being any victor, with the heartlands of each power untouched by war. Instead, a continually shifting frontier in Northern Mesopotamia and Syria changed hands. War was a game of kings, in which the peasants just happened to be the conscripted cannon fodder that had to die. 

The balance of power was complex and ever changing. As mentioned before, the once great power of Mitanni fell to the Hittite ascendancy. The Egyptians often allied with the Babylonians against the Hittites, the old world of irrigation civilization fighting against the new Indo-Europeans. The island kingdom of Cyprus alternated between Greek, Hittite and Egyptian influence alongside at times being a power broker itself. Outer powers around the central spoke in Northern Mesopotamia included the Myceneanens in Greece and Elam, continually lurking just outside the pages of history in the east. I pray that in the future Elamite architecture gets the rich attention it deserves. In the wars, peasant levies were continually raised to act as cannon fodder for the dominant charioteers. Politics were incredibly personalized, with the great kings of Thebes, Hattusa, Babylon and Ninevah in direct personal communication with each other. It is somewhat amusing to read their letters to each other in which they refer to the other rulers as their "brothers" and then bestow great gifts on them for alliances. This is indicative of the sharply aristocratic and personal control of power. The chariot buttressed a palace based politic system in which power was held by a few families. A telling moment was when the queen of Egypt offered to have a Hittite prince inherit the throne of Egypt by marrying her daughter. When he travelled to do so he was suspiciously killed by bandits on the way, triggering a war between the two powers. 

If there ever was a nation that was in a bad geographic place, Assyria would be it. Assyria took all of the worst parts of Mesopotamia’s geography and magnified them. They were surrounded on all sides by bloodthirsty barbarians, but also had to face attacks from the West, from the Levant and from the Sumerian south. Assyria had no natural borders to protect it and so was conquered by everyone: be it Kassites, Hittites, Syrians, Babylonians or Sumerians. It was the Poland of the ancient world. The Assyrians were Syriacs who had settled to the north of Mesopotamia. They were a Mesopotamian civilization, culturally related to Babylon but in a newer vein, sort of similar to the relationship between Greece and Rome or America and Europe. Assur was their patron god and all government was technically only in his name. Like Germany, however, it grew tired of its vulnerable position and decided to be the conqueror and not the conquered. Under a series of mighty and charismatic leaders such as Nabopollasar, the Assyrians were able to force Babylon into submission. This was followed by the the conquest of Mitanni from the Hittites, thus securing the entirety of Mesopotamia into their sway. They however collapsed into a leadership crisis again and lost their empire for a few hundred years. Afterwards, however they rose again and around 1000 BC, Assyria was the rising power, breaking the Egyptian-Hittite control over Syria. Perhaps Assyria would have broken the Bronze Age balance, gaining the empire they did later several hundred years earlier. On the other hand, the balance survived so long because it was so stable and the Egyptians and Hittites would have probably put aside their differences to put Assyria in its place. 

Egypt’s Reformation

Egypt was always a closed society, one in which originally foreigners were barely heard of and external trade practically nonexistent. This meant that Egypt did not take its role as empire well, for it chafed against its very soul. Egyptian peasant boys fought in far fields, seeing other gods and temples, as did the merchants and bureaucrats. As Egyptian armies were defeated, it begged the question whether the pharaoh was truly a god. The entire structure of Egypt was built upon the complete dominance of the gods and their human representatives. As it quickly became clear that the Egyptian model was not the only form of doing this, it made Egyptians question why they followed the priesthood. The priesthood, being unchallenged for thousands of years, started to constrict the society it lived in, which irked the newly worldly Egyptians. The priests prevented any advance in the arts and science while controlling huge parts of the economy. Religion had descended into a bureaucratic parody of itself, with every little action in life requiring a ceremony to to be right with the gods and the priests asking for small payments for these little ceremonies. Superstition became the norm, with spells and incantations becoming more important than actual faith and good action. 

Thus, especially in the military and in the government, a general distrust and outright hatred of the priests developed. The army, staffed mainly by foreigners who cared not for Egypt’s peculiar gods were often at odds with the priesthood. This grew to head when the pharaoh Akhenaten decided to destroy the old gods and replace them with a new single god, Atun, or the immortal sun. The priestly lands were confiscated and all the statues of the gods were replaced with those for Atun. A new capital was even built in the middle of the desert to escape the omnipresence of the old gods in the old cities and be as near to the sun as possible. As the Egyptians wandered the earth they saw many different gods, but the one constant was the worship of the sun, so it made a great deal of sense to worship the one universal god, the one universal truth. The temples and statues to the previous gods were defaced, thus inventing one of the failings of monotheism, intolerance and belief in its own omnipotence. This was likely not a purely spiritual decision. The temples controlled so much land, wealth and power that seizing it must have seemed impossible to a greedy pharaoh. Some believe this monotheism was the predecessor to that of the Jews, since they would have been in bondage in Egypt during this age. The worship of Atun however did come with negative side effects. Akhenaten was a good man, but he had no spine and knew that Egypt had no right to conquer other peoples. Without the forcing of tribute payments and military subjugations the empire collapsed. 

This was a brief blip in the long history of Egypt being dominated by the priests. The peasant kept worshipping the gods of old and the priests were still needed. When it came down to it, the priests were far more central to Egypt than the pharaoh and so Akhenaten could never hope to remove the priests and still have a functioning nation. The gods were necessary for the peasants to pray to and the rituals were comforting. Akhenaten died too young for children and upon his death conservative forces regained power and put the priests back where they belonged. Just in the same way Akhenaten defaced the statues of the previous gods, the images of Akenaten were in turn defaced and his name struck from the rolls of pharaohs. Geopolitically, Egypt was exceptionally lucky and were able to reconquer the Old Empire in a matter of decades with relative ease. It seemed as if Egypt was back to old ways, but in reality Egypt was never able to recover from this trauma. The spine of Egypt was the cooperation of the church and pharaoh. The fight between the two tore Egypt’s soul in half. This was compounded with the knowledge of the outside world caused by large immigration into Egypt, foreign wars, and trade. With the loss of faith in the church which held Egypt together, the government had to bloat to keep the state functioning. This had the effect that exists in all bureaucracies of becoming inefficient self parodies. This made the peasant lose faith to the divinity of the pharaoh, which in turn struck at the heart of Egypt. 

Civilization Spreads out from the Near East

The arrival of the chariots combined with agricultural advances allowed the spread of civilization outside the river valleys. For thousands of years civilization had no reason to spread beyond the river valleys, because there was no need for the authority of the kings to spread where there was no irrigation canal. Meanwhile, before harnessing the chariot for the state the military advantage lay more often with the barbarians than civilization. Civilization in the years of the River Valley civilizations survived more by their sheer numbers and organizational skill rather than their ability to actually win battles. The farmers of the rain watered lands had not yet learned to manage the soil responsibly and so would farm the soil until the fertility was gone, and since the world was lightly populated then, they simply moved over other lands and farmed them until they lost fertility. They would often use slash and burn techniques, burning the forest to clear it enhance the soil and when the land was denuded, moving onto the next piece of woodland. 

Many of the natives of the New World lived this way when Europeans arrived and many people in Africa and South America still live this way. However the constant mobility and bloodshed of the gaining of land meant that urbanization and thus civilization could never develop. However, farmers over time realized that they could make a percentage of their fields lie fallow for a certain part of the year, thus allowing them to farm a single field for hundreds of years. This allowed population to congregate and thus create cities. Also, once the barbarians conquered the cities, they incorporated part of their homelands into the kingdoms they conquered. The sheer size of the civilizations meant that they incorporated the barbarian lands nearby. The massive amount of diseases generated in the large irrigation based cities likely killed many of the surrounding tribal peoples in the early years as well, thus easing the spread of civilization. The rise of the chariot let the rich civilizations crush the small rain watered peasant villages, thus also spreading civilization out of the river valleys. This did not just apply to the spread of civilization around the Middle East, in the Levant and Turkey. Civilization developed towards the fringes of the Middle East, namely in Greece in the West and India in the East.

Hundreds of miles east of Mesopotamia across mountains and deserts lies the Indus Valley, in modern day Pakistan. Civilization started in the Indus for the same reasons it started anywhere else, there was a desert and a river and people needed to manage the water rights. In the Indus, civilization started around 5,000 BC, a few thousand years after Sumer and Egypt. Along the banks of that river, dozens of cities were built. This civilization was actually unknown to us until a mere century ago, when British archaeologists dug up mighty ancient cities in the deserts of Western India. It used to simply be called the Indus Valley civilization, but archaeology has radically expanded the size of the region this civilization was believed to inhabit. It is now thought to range from the neighborhood of New Delhi in Central India deep into the hills of Afghanistan. A trading post has even been found in Uzbekistan of the same model as cities in India. This was a massive region nearly as large as the matrix of civilization based around the Near East. We still do not know much about this elusive civilization, it left us no records, no daughter societies who can share its history, or any context to understand it. However we can piece together some assumptions.  

They had many similarities with the Sumerians to the west of them. This may not be coincidence, since trade has been proven between the two civilizations and Sumerian merchants may have helped create the Indus Valley civilization. However many of the similarities could just exist due to the similar conditions in both regions. They both seem to be run by some sort of priest class initially. Like the Sumerians and Egyptians, their art is lifeless due to the constraints of a dominating priest class. They had amazing sanitation, with some of their cities having sewer systems beneath them, clearing the filth out into the river, a full 4,000 years before our own civilization developed them. Large public baths existed throughout these cities, like those of the Romans 2,000 years later. Cities had an upper defensible acropolis and a larger lower city, suggesting a violent lifestyle. They seem to have worshipped some sort of fertility religion from some of the artifacts we have found. We know absolutely nothing about their political history.

There are strange parts of the Indus Valley Civilization. There is insane conformity in construction styles, pots, road size, tool kits, arrows and other similar artifacts from city to city. This begs questions about political unity. Was there some enormous central empire that enforced standardization or some cultural reason for this lack of difference among the different cities? Unity of this level is difficult to enforce without political unity but at the sea time the large fortifications suggest a lack of political unity and order. Their cities lacked mighty wonders or temples. They fulfilled their simple purpose of housing people. This partially makes sense considering the lack of construction materials, especially wood, in the Indus Valley, but on the other hand that did not hold back the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, who had practically the same climate, in their extravagant constructions. The Mesopotamians built their enormous stepped pyramids out of mud clay brick. One gets the sense that there is a story or mystery behind the Indus Valley civilization that is likely very interesting and convoluted, but will sadly never be told. 

Actually, as the civilization grew older it showed serious signs of decay. As the monsoon that had earlier sustained it moved further east in India, droughts likely got much worse. This likely led to a similar reaction as the events in Mesopotamia. The Indus Valley civilization carries the taint of enormous violence, cities would simply vanish off the map in a few years. Archaeological evidence suggests rapid and enormous destruction of the Indus cities. This over time weakened the fiber of the civilization, thus making it easy prey for the Indo-Europeans who would arrive later. There is a similarity to the later destruction of the Maya, which was caused by a climactic changed that was combined with a series of destructive wars that left them open to external invasion. Civilization had not only expanded east from the Near East but also west and that is where we shall direct our gaze next. 

Crete from one point of view is a small rocky island in the middle of nowhere. Its soil is weak and stony, unable to produce enough to feed itself in any age. It’s smaller than the US state of Delaware. However from another point of view, Crete is the center of the world. Across the sea from Crete lies Greece, Italy, Egypt, Asia Minor and the Levant. Crete is the perfect stopping place for a voyage across the Mediterranean. This is why Crete was the home of the first civilization in Europe, the Minoan. 

Most people know of the Minoans as the people of Greek mythology. They think of them as the people of the Minotaur, or those who enslaved Daedalus. These myths show truths, like the Cretans worshipped the bull for its sexual prowess or that their central palace was an enormous underground labyrinth. They followed a leader named the Minos, which was a title along the lines of Emperor, instead of being the name of single ruler. These distant murmurings from the past give an image of Cretan civilization, but do not give the whole picture. The Minoans are an enigma, they take so much of their architecture and culture from Egypt that people for centuries thought them to be a colony of Egyptians. In reality, they were likely Indo-Europeans from Anatolia, probably related to the Hittites. However, the regional importance of Egypt likely meant that they were sucked into Egyptian culture once their civilization was founded. 

Given their geography, the Minoans did the best they could to succeed, which was look out towards the oceans. The Minoans were foremost a race of seamen and traders, peddling their goods across the Eastern Mediterranean. In that age pirates dominated the seas and thus to maintain their trade, the Minoans became the first naval power. The Minoans made the Eastern Mediterranean safe, but also replaced the tyranny of piracy with that of the Minos. In the myth of the Minotaur, Crete’s oppressive tribute of Athens was likely a symptom of their control over the seas of the region, thus nothing capable of countering their tyranny existing and they became a regional bully (at least from the Greek perspective that the story is being told from). However, like the Egyptians their “empire” was a purely military one, Cretan settlers never made the Peloponnese worship the Bull or make new Knossus in Sicily. 

Crete is an island, thus meaning their powerful navy prevented them from foreign invasion and raiding for hundreds of years at a time. This meant that Cretan boys were never drafted in their thousands to die in some foreign land or the cities were not burned and forced to be rebuilt. Tyrannical warlords never took power like they did in Mesopotamia without the endless wars that created them. This meant that the Cretans had a sense of freedom that would have seen insane to any other civilized people of the time. Cretan men were born with rights and Crete was run by semi-democratic noble councils. The average Cretan grew rich and lived life peacefully. Cities and workshops sprung up over the island, transforming especially the Eastern half into an economic powerhouse. The regime as well grew rich, building amazing palaces for their rulers. Without constant war, Cretan women competed with the Egyptians to be the best treated women in the civilized world, having the similar rights to men. 

With a charmed existence like this, Cretan civilization could never have hoped to have survived. The first decline occurred during the reign of Akhenaten and trade with Egypt collapsed. Like Britain thousands of years later, the Minoans came to depend upon the trade and fruits of foreign shores for survival and so when that collapsed, so did the vitality of Crete. However, the island recovered, albeit never re-achieving its old heights. The second blow came with the eruption of mount Thera. Thera is a volcano that lies on a small island between Crete and the Greek mainland. When it erupted in 1351 BC, it spread ash over the entire Eastern Mediterannean, destroying the harvest for years. Also, the tsunami that followed wrecked the boats along the Cretan coast, a crippling attack for a predominantly naval civilization. Starvation and decline ensued as the island collapsed into violence and anarchy. There is serious evidence for large scale child sacrifice in this dark age. However, when the horrors were over, Cretan civilization was still able to recover, albeit again weaker than it used to be. 

Through all these struggles, the Cretan navy and thus the force that maintained their military dominance collapsed in the region. This created a power vacuum in the region filled by the Mycenaeans. The Mycenaeans were Indo Europeans who wandered down from the Balkans into the Greek peninsula. They arrived in the region at the same time as the Minoans, but were slower to develop since they were further away from the centers of civilization like Egypt. With Greece’s poor soil they naturally turned to the oceans. They became a race of pirates and rovers. Crete was rich and weak, thus making it the perfect target. With the lapse from power, the Mycenaeans gained the initiative on the ocean and raided the shores of Crete. Crete, a charmed society with no standing army had no chance of fighting of fighting off the invaders from the continent. Likely the Minoan elites were wiped out—replaced with the Mycenaean warrior elite, while the peasants continued to do what they always did—simply without the Minoan lords to tell him how to do it. 

The best way to understand the Mycenaeans is with a comparison with the Vikings of medieval Europe. They were both peoples on the fence between barbarism and civilization, imitating and leeching off the much older civilizations around them. They both did the dual role of trading and piracy. They had a strong sense of manly honor and freedom. They were both young peoples filled with barbaric vigor that would create civilizations that would rock the world. After the Mycenaeans destroyed Crete, they created an almost geometrically opposite culture from the one that preceded one around the Aegean. Based around their fortress city of Mycenae in central Greece, the Mycenaeans were led by lords who built hill forts and constantly warred with each other. Mycenae was based around a single high king, with power delegated to tribal war chiefs.The chariot became an obsessive piece of culture, with it being a symbol of power in the Iliad. The warrior aristocracy, named Promakoi, dominated the populace atop their chariots. This is partially demonstrated in the Iliad’s obsession with personal individual heroes and their honor, like that of Achilles, who personally turned the tide of battle. This is probably evidence of the sheer power of the chariot in the battlefields of the time, in which a small cadre of warriors could dominate the battle. 

The Iliad and Odyssey were about this age, although they were only transcribed from the oral tradition 400 years later. Like the characters of the two epics, the Mycenaeans wandered across the Earth, raiding and trading all the way between Sicily and the Levant, dominating the seas of the Eastern Mediterranean. 

The Mycenaeans became players in the politics of the Bronze Age. Called Annahiyawa by the surrounding powers, there is even evidence that the Egyptian royal family visited the Egyptian for diplomatic deals. They became the bitterest of rivals with the Hittites. When the western Hittite provinces rebelled, the Mycenaeans would support them. There is evidence that there was even an economic blockade between the two powers, a state of affairs that the Cypriots took good advantage of. The city of Troy did in fact exist and there is archaeological evidence that there was the Trojan war. It was likely a Hittite vassal named Wilusa and dominated trade across the Hellespont straight, and thus with the Black Sea. The war was likely started over control of the Hellespont and the wealthy trade that Troy dominated. On the other hand, a war over Menelaus' slighted honor of losing a wife may have been justification enough in Mycenaean society. Mycenaean society did not raise taxes, but the armies demanded booty. This resulted in the kings being forced to raid foreign shores in order to support their own militaries. Thus a war that mayor seem to be fought for superficial and dumb reasons was in fact a rational and stable part of the society it represented. Also, war might have been caused by the need to control the trade across the Hellespont with which Troy was endowed. 

In fact, Troy also shows one of the great issues of Mycenaean civilization, the need for loot and raiding. The need to supply larger and larger war bands resulted in the need for larger and more spectacular raiding. The 10 year war in Troy, although likely exaggerated in the story, still demonstrates a society with an increasing need to stay in the field and steal more gold from the outside world to maintain the system inside it. This would in the end result in the explosion of violence known as the Sea Peoples.

The First World System

There was also much social effect caused by the rise of the chariot. Without the fancy chariots the peasants were unable to resist the whims and cruelties of the lords and governments. This was an age of deep class division and oppression. Bronze also aided this process, in that the expense of producing it meant that the aristocracy and militaries mostly had a monopoly, thus giving only them high quality weapons and armor. The peasants had to make by with flint or clay in their daily lives. The process of the rule of by primarily warriors, not priests, that began in Mesopotamia continued. The only nation to maintain rule by the priests was Egypt, in which the warriors were often raised from the subjugated peoples under Egyptian rule or were professionals kept on the borders of Egypt and thus far from the pharaoh’s attentions. 

However, the social effects were not entirely negative. The relegation of war to the frontiers, away from the heartlands, allowed wealth to accumulate in said heartlands due to the stability. This allowed a flourishing of wealth and trade. For the first time we saw cities expand away from the river valleys, with a ring of urbanity stretching from the Sudan to Elam and Greece. This era was a golden age of trade, with the old Sumerian routes to far Afghanistan and the Baltic surviving with the addition of new trade connections to the east coast of Africa and Indus Valley. The bonds that tied together the centers around the Near East together grew stronger. Thus, although the chariot increased the power of the palaces it decreased their economic power by creating a stable environment that promoted complex and diverse economies. A few years ago we discovered a truly wealthy ship in the Aegean from the late Bronze Age, sailing from Canaan to the Myceneans ladened with wealthy treasures, demonstrating the wealth and ability of the Bronze Age economy. We even see fashion trends, such as the popularity of Minoan murals on the Asian continent or Caananite gold-wear throughout the region. 

This was the first time a world system developed and like the others, the sheer complexity and size became a weakness. Large supplies of tin were needed for the functioning of the system and the political balance was a massive interconnected--and interdependent web. The system was so large and connected that a few issues somewhere could cause issues everywhere--And that's exactly what happened. 

The World System Collapses

In around 1200 BC it would appear as if Bronze Age civilization was invincible. For hundreds of years, the warrior aristocracies of the Near East had dominated from atop their chariots. Beneath the general facade of wealth, internal peace and interconnectedness lay a weak supporting network that could not stand up to stress. W ithin 30 years, the entire Bronze Age network of kingdoms, carefully built after hundreds of years, collapsed into barbarism and anarchy. 

The crisis was started by a series of nasty droughts and earthquakes that weakened the Eastern Mediterranean's agricultural base. The world was coming out the climactic optimum, an era in which the world's weather was the warmest, and in the Near East, wettest it has ever been since the Last Ice Age. The mini-ice age of the more recent 17th century resulted in crippling droughts that nearly brought on the downfall of the Ottoman Empire. A similar drop in temperatures might have had a similar effect in the same region of the world 3,000 years earlier. The kingdoms of the Near East would have likely survived had that been it but the effects of the climactic changes were not limited to the Near East.

The north of Europe had discovered improved bronze forging that allowed the productions of longer swords alongside likely iron working. This combined with the cooling of temperatures resulted in a migration into Mediterranean Europe. This in turn sparked a migration, likely coming from Sardinia, Sicily and Southern Italy against Greece. These people were referred to by the Egyptians as the Sea Peoples due to their piratical tendencies. 

The arrival of the Sea Peoples coincided with the destruction of the important forts and cities of Mycenaean Greece. This in turn sparked a migration of Greeks into Cyprus and the Levant. The Mycenaeans themselves were a race of pirates and thus likely joined the ranks of their pirate conquerors with joy. Whether or not this was violent is not known. Later on, the Mycenaean's and their descendents became an important part of the Sea Peoples. 

They came in two armies, one on land the other following the sea. The land army marching across Turkey, destroying the Hittite empire easily, which had already been wracked by droughts and a failing war against Anatolian hill tribes. In fact, evidence suggests the Hittites were already suffering from internal revolts inside Hattussa, with the gatehouses and certain government buildings already destroyed but nothing else, suggesting an internal political motivation. The Sea Peoples then continued, destroying Cyprus and the Hittite client states in Northern Syria. Afterwards, they continued to the shores of Egypt and the Levant. Surprisingly, what would become Phoenecia remained unscathed, perhaps allowing its future rise. Meanwhile, the land army marched down the coast of the Levant, reaching the outskirts of Egypt. The Egyptians had fought the Sea Peoples a few years before in what is today Libya when they had allied with the Libyans against the Egyptians. The Egyptians only remembered their victory in this battle rather than the bloody casualties they took against the chariotless Sea People swordsman. Meanwhile, both of the Sea People armies converged on Egypt. The Egyptians, led by Rameses the Second were heroically able to defeat the land based army on Egypt’s north-western border. This force settled down on the Levantine coast and became the Philistines. Meanwhile, he commandeered all the ships near the mouth of the Nile and destroyed the Sea People’s fleet in a naval battle at the Nile’s mouth. The survivors were settled in Egypt's north-western delta. Egypt survived, but at what cost? The raids had weakened Egypt while meanwhile destroying the rest of the region. Egypt at this point finally turned in on itself, never again to become an empire. 

The Sea Peoples were not the only barbarian people to join in the collapse of civilization. The Syrians poured out from the desert once again into Mesopotamia. Both Assyria and Babylon pulled back into their old heartlands, leaving roving bands of Syrians to control the borderlands and Syria. As barbarians harassed the trade routes, international trade and commerce collapsed, leaving the global economy a wreck. Civilization in almost any sense, art, architecture, technology or literature went into a dark age throughout the entire region. 

How was this allowed to happen? Much of the answer is a single invention, iron. We’re not sure where Iron was discovered, the most likely answer is a multitude of places: Africa, Cyprus and Central Europe seem the most likely answers. The ascendancy of the chariot was based upon a small well armed aristocracy. The Bronze supply was weak and expensive. Iron, however was a quality metal that was easily accessible. It suddenly made the use of metal for armor and weaponry cheap and easy. Armies of armored spearman and swordsman could deflect the archery of the chariotry, using their superior numbers for victory. The aristocracies were slow to use this technology, since it weakened their hold on the populace. The barbarians, however, had not qualms over that and used iron to destroy the chariot states of the Near East. The second factor was climate change. With the climate change resulting in angry and starving peasants and the barbarians much better equipped, the charioteer states were unable to survive. Egypt was supported by a relatively popular peaceful priest class more than the charioteers, so it was able to survive the deluge. 

None of these reasons seem fully convincing in of themselves. Likely a systems collapse contributed to the failure of the whole order. Although there has never been a study on this, what makes sense to me is that we saw a cycle that we see many times in history. The stability of the Bronze Age allowed populations to rise to the threshold of what was sustainable for their agricultural output. The cities and trade thrived as the rural populations thrived in the late Bronze Age as the countryside grew overpopulated. The various wars and geographic expansions were ways of dealing with the excess rural population. When climates and droughts lowered agricultural production, the societies involved buckled and rebelled against their overlords. In a very unequal society, hatred would be directed against the upper classes and centers of government. As this society fell apart internally, the barbarians, spurned on already by the same climactic changes that weakened the advanced states destroyed the already weakened centers of urban Bronze Age civilization. In fact the process was almost exactly the same as that that befell the major civilizations of the world during the first stages of the mini ice age. As the weather cooled in the 14th century, China, Europe and Islam fell into internal wars, famine and social disorder followed by plague that killed half of the population of civilized Eurasia. The high populations sustained by the medieval warm period could not be sustained by the cooler climate. The only difference between these events is that the 100 million man civilizations like those of China and European Christendom were durable enough not to be destroyed by the Mongol and Turkic barbarians. However, the years after those dark times became dark ages in China, Islam and India. 

There are many lessons to draw from the civilizations of the Bronze Age. Firstly, that although something may appear powerful at some point, that does not mean it is strong. Houses may be blown away if their foundations stand on feet of clay. Another would be that although the facts of change may be untenably horrible for your current worldview, they exist nonetheless. Those who are incapable of adapting will be blown away, no matter how strong at one point. One of the foundational moments of my youth was visiting Hattusa and coming to terms that this was once the center of the world but now was an uninhabited frozen hilltop. My father and I drove two hours from Ankara and we were the only visitors that day. There was just a small office and the only living things in site were a few sheep grazing on a neighboring hill. This city once housed hundreds of thousands of people but isn’t even a major tourist attraction today. My primary thought on the drive back to Ankara was “We’d be lucky if anyone is visiting the ruins of Philadelphia in 3,000 years”.

Selected Bibliography: 

A History of the Ancient World, Susan Wise Bauer

The Peopling of Europe, Jean Manco

A World History, William McNeil

Our Oriental Heritage, Will Durant

1177 BC, The Year Civilization Collapsed, Eric Cline

Empires of the Word, Nicholas Ostler

War, What is it Good For, Ian Morris

Rise of the West, William McNeil

Plagues and Peoples, William McNeil

India, John Keay

The Life of Greece, Will Durant

The Iliad, Homer

The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin

The Great Wave, David Hackett Fischer

I've really loosened up on editing here since I'll be very surprised if more than two of you have read this far.