A deep dive into the explanation behind the Bronze Age Collapse! You can immerse yourself in the era with Total War Pharaoh: https://play.totalwar.com/Invicta

When I started this documentary, it was my intent to produce a succinct recap of why the Bronze Age Collapsed. However as I began to dig it proved not only difficult to provide a cohesive narrative but also to tie together a web of potential factors which themselves contained many inconsistencies. I had a crisis and couldn't produce the documentary without seriously compromizing the content. This ultimately led me to decide to entirely ditch our usual YouTube video conventions and just present the raw academic papers to you. I hope this pulling back of the curtain proves educational on both the topic of the Bronze Age Collapse and the broader idea of critical thinking.

In this video we cover the following topics. An intro to the Bronze Age Collapse, the claims of destruction of the Bronze Age, the Sea Peoples invasions, the fall of the major powers, and the idea of a total systems collapse.

Sources:

BRONZE AGE
1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/1177...)
Crisis in Context: The End of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3764/...)
Tin Trade Routes of the Bronze Age: New evidence and new techniques aid in the study of metal sources of the ancient world (https://www.jstor.org/stable/27843879)

LEVEL OF DESTRUCTION
The Fall of the Bronze Age and the Destruction that Wasn’t By Jesse Millek (https://www.academia.edu/93497310/The...)

SEA PEOPLES
The ‘Sea Peoples’ in Primary Sources (https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...)
Understanding Collapse: Ancient History and Modern Myths (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/...)
Ancient DNA sheds light on the genetic origins of early Iron Age Philistines (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...)

CLIMATE CHANGE
The influence of climatic change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greek Dark Ages (https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...)
Climate and the Late Bronze Collapse: New Evidence from the Southern Levant (https://www.academia.edu/6053886/D_La...)

MYCENAEANS
THE MYCENAEAN PALATIAL ECONOMY: MAKING THE MOST OF THE GAPS IN THE EVIDENCE: (https://www.cambridge.org/core/servic...)
Demographic and Domestic Economic Change in Early Greece: Factors of Supply and Demand Sarah C. Murray (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/...)

HITTITES
Hittite Water Works: (https://www.academia.edu/39720738/Hit...)
Severe multi-year drought coincident with Hittite collapse around 1198-1196 BC (https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...)
From Hattusa to Carchemish: The Latest on Hittite History (https://www.researchgate.net/publicat...)

NEW KINGDOM EGYPT
State and Economy in Ancient Egypt: Fiscal Vocabulary of the New Kingdom (https://www.academia.edu/56869090/Sta...)
The King's Privy Purse During the New Kingdom: An Examination of INW (https://www.jstor.org/stable/40000962)
The Redistributive Economy in New Kingdom Egypt: An Examination of Bȝkw(t) (https://www.jstor.org/stable/40000876)
The Ancient Egyptian Economy (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/...)

Time Stamps:
00:00 Intro
06:10 Bronze Age World
10:10 Levels of Destruction
16:30 The Sea Peoples
26:57 Sea People Origins?
32:40 Climate Change
42:19 Earthquake Storm
44:16 Fall of the Mycenaeans
55:45 Fall of the Hittites
1:04:14 Fall of Egypt
1:14:48 Systems Collapse

#history
#documentary
#bronzeage