Bronze Age collapse

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The fall of Troy, an event recounted in Greek mythology at the end of the Bronze Age, as represented by the 17th century painter Kerstiaen De Keuninck.

The Bronze Age collapse is a transition in the Aegean Region, Southwestern Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age that historians, such as M. Liverani, S. Richard, Robert Drews, Frank J. Yurco, Amos Nur, Leonard R. Palmer, and others, believe was violent, sudden and culturally disruptive. The palace economy of the Aegean Region and Anatolia which characterised the Late Bronze Age was replaced, after a hiatus, by the isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages.
Between 1206 and 1150 BCE, the cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and Syria,^[1] and the New Kingdom of Egypt in Syria and Canaan^[2] interrupted trade routes and severely reduced literacy. In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Pylos and Gaza was violently destroyed, and often left unoccupied thereafter: examples include Hattusa, Mycenae, and Ugarit.^[3]
The gradual end of the Dark Age that ensued saw the eventual rise of settled Syro-Hittite states in Cilicia and Syria, Aramaean kingdoms of the mid-10th century BCE in the Levant, and the eventual rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

Changes in warfare

Robert Drews argues^[17] 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,^[18] and javelins, and the appearance of bronze foundries, suggest "that mass production of bronze artifacts was suddenly important in the Aegean". (For example, Homer uses "spears" as a virtual synonym for "warriors".) Such new weaponry, in the hands of large numbers of "running skirmishers" who could swarm and cut down a chariot army, would destabilize states that were based upon the use of chariots by the ruling class and precipitate an abrupt social collapse as raiders began to conquer, loot, and burn the cities.^[19][20][21]

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 BC and the rise of the Celtic Hallstatt culture in the 9th and 10th centuries BC.^[22] This theory may, however, simply raise the question of whether this collapse was the cause of, or the effect of, the Bronze Age collapse being discussed. General Systems Collapse theory, pioneered by Joseph Tainter,^[23] hypothesizes how social declines in response to complexity may lead to a collapse resulting in simpler forms of society.
In the specific context of the Middle East, a variety of factors — including population growth, soil degradation, drought, cast bronze weapon and iron production technologies — could have combined to push the relative price of weaponry (compared to arable land) to a level unsustainable for traditional warrior aristocracies. In complex societies that were increasingly fragile and less resilient, this combination of factors may have contributed to the collapse.
"The growing complexity and specialization of the Late Bronze Age political, economic, and social organization in Carol Thomas and Craig Conant's phrase,^[24] is a weakness that could explain such a widespread collapse that was able to render the Bronze Age civilizations incapable of recovery. The critical flaws of the Late Bronze Age are its centralization, specialization, complexity and top-heavy political structure. These flaws then revealed themselves through socio-political factors (revolt of peasantry and defection of mercenaries), fragility of all kingdoms (Mycenaean, Hittite, Ugaritic and Egyptian), demographic crises (overpopulation), and wars between states. Other factors that could have placed increasing pressure on the fragile kingdoms include piratical disturbances of maritime trade by the Sea Peoples, drought, crop failures, famine, Dorian migration or invasion.
A more speculative theory is Jaynes' bicameralism which claims that the complexity of society at this time called for a large-scale shift in human cognition, from instinctive and religious behaviour to logical reasoning. This is still a fringe theory, but has recently attracted the attention of several scholars and conferences.^{[citation needed]}

Links to religious texts

The collapse occurred at around the time that Jewish and Christian scholars place the character of Moses. Their text (the book of Exodus) describe a series of events similar to natural disasters and events in Egypt at this time, followed by a back migration of Semitic people from Egypt back into Canaan. The Harris Papyrus tells of the expulsion of Asiatics by Setnakhte in the chaos at the end of the 19th Dynasty.
The Greek Iliad's historicity is still disputed, but is currently usually assumed to be based on events in Troy VII also around the time of the collapse.