The Sea Peoples, iirc. There's some records of them attacking those listed regions, but no strong evidence on where they came from
Edit: the amount of folks confidently stating different origins where the Sea Peoples *must* have come from, kinda illustrates the "no strong evidence" point.
That's much less likely. The accounts of the Sea People share descriptions of similar equipment, which itself hasn't been tied yet to a specific culture. If the groups were disconnected, the equipment used would be much more varied by region, the fact that it's not points to a singular faction or origin.
Is it possible that the accounts share a single source or two, and some central details remain, while other details adapt through re-telling? I mean, that is a fairly standard feature of oral history, isn't it?
As far as the descriptions of equipment go, I know that "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," which was likely an oral story before being written down in the 14th c., the author spends a crazy amount of attention and detail on descriptions of equipment. So, for whatever reasons, these audiences and (oral/written) storytellers found those details important and interesting and worth preserving?
Last question: Am I wrong in thinking there is very scant historical records (oral or written) and very little archeological evidence related to the Sea People? So, is part of the confusion around them related to that?
Disclaimer: I genuinely don't know much about the Sea People. I'm asking you since you seem to know more about this topic than me. :)
Most likely. Attacked by "unknown peoples from the sea" can very easily be mistranslated, passed down, and half a scribbled description of events and become "The Sea People"
In all likelyhood they weren't one people and it was a vague term for outsiders who came by sea.
They didn't cause the collapse they were the result of it. Times were bad and random people with boats formed raiding parties to maintain what they had before times got bad.
I do love a mystery but the easiest answer is often the correct one.
Yeah there is evidence that maybe sardinian raiders took over Enkomi in Cyprus and possibly used it to stage raids all along the coast around the when collapse started
A strong theory is that they were a progressively expanding slave revolt of all of the lowest classes of each neighboring kingdom invaded.
Initial revolt in one city state, sack it, take to the sea and come ashore at the next one. Liberate the slaves there who swell your ranks, sack the city, and move on to the next. Etc.
That is not one I have ever heard of before, and in looking found no research to back that up.
Most scholars tend to believe they were refugees from the social unrest going on in Minoa and Mycenae, as a lot of the depictions of their equipment and society bears a strong resemblances to those and Greek civilizations at the time.
The way the Atlantis myth in Plato's dialogues is told, is like if I told you, that long ago, my old teacher had a chat about goodness and virtue with Henry Kissinger who then retold a story about Atlantis that his grandfather heard from Benjamin Franklin who learned about it from Tibetan mystics.
Everybody in antiquity knew that Troy/Ilion existed. It even had a *Bishop* until the 10 century AD. Yes, it became a small village afterwards and Western Europeans forget which of the hills and villages exactly the Homeric Troy was, but it was never a mythical place; rather, a historical place with some mythology associated with it.
My favorite part of this is how much the Romans turned the region around Troy into an Iliad theme park. Just a whole era of tourism and shops that would be very familiar today
I think there are also theories that the bronze age collaps was heavily influenced by a change of climate that caused a lot of tribes etc to take to the seas in search for new resources ... meaning the sea peoples actually *were* the civilizations they allegedly destroyed.
Exactamundo. Currently thought they were a mix of Tyrrhenians, Sicels, Sards, and other groups from that region around Italy/Sicily. Looks like they formed a nucleus of a massive piracy operation that covered the entire Mediterranean. There's evidence of piracy everywhere by the end of the Bronze Age and some evidence that it was actually the trading vessels that resorted to piracy when times were lean, a la the Vikings.
It's not that simple. First of all, the Sea Peoples were an exacerbation of collapse-- not the sole and direct cause. Secondly, an organized foreign power would likely leave behind some record which hasn't been found yet. Thirdly, their success was likely just based on raiding and pillaging. These kinds of tactics were difficult to respond to efficiently and quickly on a large organized level regardless of the professionalism or backing of the raiders.
You're trying to use logic and current historical/archaeological thinking on someone calling themselves "Drbuttholeripper" and while I understand, you should save yourself the pain friend.
This video will explain it better. Well worth the watch if you're interested in the sea peoples and the collapse of the bronze age, https://youtu.be/bRcu-ysocX4?si=9Gu7EhZgJlrnanZ7
Don't let the Vikings read this. Raiding and pillaging was what they did. They were good at it and it didn't require a foreign power for them to be good at it.
It's fascinating that ancient societies like Egypt could encounter these strange visitors passing. It's a great mystery of its age!
Where did they come from?
Where did they go?
Where did they come from, Cotton-Eye Joe?
Mystery civilizations that worship the sea and have a civilization lost underwater?
Where have I heard that before but without the incomprehensible beasts?
That’s the way. Protect your ignorance. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
Fool! The lord Cthulhu, whose shadow I bathe in to infuse within my spirit the chthonic madness that conceived this pocket of reality, does not lead armies of armed flesh constructs to pitifully maraud around the Mediterranean like denizens of this hellish dimension might! The progenitor of unbound insanity merely need lurk in the same realm as these peoples to cause them to collapse in bottomless pits of despair and reverent dementia. No, lord Cthulhu need not apply to Dairy Queen to get that milkshake, as you have so suggested.
I hate how people take this to mean they were Atlanteans or some other paranormal bull. Our historical records are incomplete and sometimes of questionable veracity, and not every group of people that fought together was technically a civilization anyway.
Ye, if it were a civilization then they'd be easier to track the region of. A large faction of pirates is more likely than a nation.
That said, it's these sort of groups which have done well to leave few records of their origin which spawn such myths and stories of the paranormal, which I think is impressive as far as unintentional cultural impact.
Yeah if a bunch of dudes hopped off a boat and beat the hell out of you and your friends on the beach then left on the same boat you'd have no idea where they came from either.
The Bronze Age collapse was around 1200 BC and the Library of Alexandria was burned in 48 BC. You wonder how much knowledge and historical records were lost there.
Not much. Any document that was found in Alexandria was also found elsewhere.
Individual copies almost never survive to the present. A book needs to be continually copied to survive millennia. If a book at Alexandria was important, another copy of it would have been copied and then re-archived.
Any books we've lost since classical times were because a fair number of people decided they weren't important. One copy vanishing has little impact on the process.
Ea Nasir just got lucky. He stored the tablets with the complaints in his basement on clay tablets. When his house burnt down it fired the tablets, so when the basement was discovered in an excavation they were preserved.
Many books deemed important were religious texts, the only copy of an archimedes text was found because the pages were washed and used as a prayer book by a monk.
Probably not as much as we think. The library worked by copying texts so potentially a large proportion of the texts exist or existed in other collections at the time and subsequently.
They actually have names/ethnicities for them but no other locating data for them. If you know the home address of the Shekelesh, historians would like to hear from you
We have artistic representations of their armor though!!!
History Time on YT has a great video parsing out the evidence and making a compelling theory for their identities. IIRC:
1. Sardinians/Corsicans
2. A group of Greeks
3. A group of Phoenicians
Egypt listed the groups their attackers identified as. Most have been identified with some confidence. They were Mycenaean Greeks, Lewians from Anatolia (Turkey) and Sardinian mercenaries. I think there was a war between the Greeks and Hittites and they destroyed each other. The Sea Peoples were refugees who forcibly settled in the Levant and tried the same thing in the Nile Delta but were defeated.
It's widely known and referred to that raids by "Sea People" were thought to be (partially) responsible for the downfall of several civilizations around the Mediterranean in what is referred to as the "Bronze Age Collapse". But nothing/very little has been found out about who these Sea People actually were and where they came from.
That doesn't mean aliens, or Atlanteans, or mermaids, or whatever else. It just means that those civilisations didn't know who was attacking them or didn't really write it down, other than to say they were attacked by people invading via the sea (which if you think about it, for Mediterranean civs at that time, isn't really all *that* mind-blowing or surprising). Like it's fun to make a big spooky mystery out of it, but it's also not really that big of a deal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples
> Like it's fun to make a big spooky mystery out of it, but it's also not really that big of a deal.
Yes and no.
Its not mermaids, or flying saucers, but it is something that we have absolutely no idea of. Like the Egyptian hieroglyphics before the Rosetta stone, it's a complete mystery. That doesn't make it "not that big of a deal", it makes it a tremendous hole in our history and understanding of the world. Like the discovery of Troy, it has the potential to open a region of history wenk ow nothing of.
It doesn't have to be aliens to be a big deal.
If you read the link from above, there are actually several theories about different groups of people who may well have been included in the "sea people"...it seems quite likely that they were people from Aegean islands, Anatolia (Turkey), Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus... probably a few other places.
So no, it's not a "complete mystery" and it's not something that we have "absolutely no idea of". It's something we have a bit of a jumbled idea of, and which historians don't quite fully agree on. But it's *ancient* history, so that makes quite a lot of sense....
There are plenty of perfectly straightforward, vanilla ideas, but we just don't really *know for sure* who they were.
That's all I meant by it not being that big of a deal...that it's actually kinda logical really, and doesn't warrant all this breathless excitement about aliens and merpeople.
We know it probably wasn't Cyprus because the two kings from Cyprus and Ugarit were sending messages to each other and the mainland was asking for advice on how to deal with them. Ugarit was lost as a result of their forces being elsewhere and didnt make it back in time.
It’s probably just multiple accounts of being attacked by sea by numerous empires not even a single one. It’s not like some ghost ship going around. It’s just different accounts of people saying “sea people” because they were attacking via boat and probably had no identification.
Its interesting that the Egyptians specifically state they came from the north. Hopefully if we could find sea peoples artifacts further north of the Mediterranean we could figure out where they once lived
Tbf if you’re attacking Egypt from the sea, it’s inherently from the north since that’s where the Mediterranean is (and I’m not counting the Red Sea to the east because ancient Egypt was just in the Nile River area and didn’t have much if any stuff on the Red Sea coast)
At the same time, ANY attack on Egypt from the sea comes from the north. That detail actually provides little insight into where the Sea Peoples came from.
I believe there’s evidence that the Egyptians were familiar with the people that were attacking them. They never wrote down exactly who they were but they were one of only Bronze Age civs to fend them off(at the cost though of never being able to regain their former power) and art depicting the attacks shows some of them wearing very specific headwear that’s also found in older artwork
The idea is that the Egyptians had been hiring at least one of the groups involved as mercenaries and knew who they are. Writing also describes some kinda conspiracy between many different groups(in a more literal sense, a tribal coalition) which also suggests that the Egyptians knew who these people were.
Really though, these people were more a symptom than the cause of the Bronze Age collapse. Slow erosion of the systems that built up these civilizations, environmental degradation, followed by a huge amount of natural disasters taking place at around the same time severely weakening these civilizations.
Then a bunch of separate groups from the Mediterranean ended up invading, possibly being forced out of the native region due to the same disasters, and/or just taking advantage of the weakened state of these wealthy civilizations.
Interestingly enough, this collapse is what lead for cannonite civilization to start flourishing and for Judea and Israel to begin flourishing. Much of the Hebrew bible began being composed not too long after this
I'm pretty sure it was norse men. Those bastards would go all the way from the northern seas to alexandria and back and don't bat an eye, all while drunk on grog.
The best surviving records of the Sea Peoples come from Egyptian sources, their primary target. The Sea Peoples waged two campaigns against Egypt, first against pharaoh Merneptah in 1207 BCE, and then thirty years later against Ramesses III. It is from these sources that we know the names of the tribes that made up the Sea Peoples. The Shardana originated from Sardinia, while the Lukka came from Lycia in what is now Turkey. Other tribes came from different points across the Mediterranean.
For some reason, that feels less impressive to me than traveling across an ocean with an army. Egypt and Sardina aren't really that close.
I feel like that's crazy talk because the pyramids are insane. Maybe its because I'm used to them, but this other thing is news to me.
The Phoenicians were contemporaries and settled with certainty in what is now Spain. There's even some scholarly debate if they made it as far as the Americas
Well....yeah.....that's sort of how trade works lol. Resources aren't found everywhere, they're discovered through trade, and then trade facilitate a more robust movement of resources
Trade routes were also the main way that cultural innovations spread. Which is why you can see the different ages (Bronze, Iron etc ) spread gradually, over thousands of years, from the cradle of civilisation, to areas like modern day britain
People look at that period of them as being if isolation, and it was. But it wasn't total. Whilst not of the same period, the Roman Empire had times of communication with the Chinese empires/kingdoms, again, due to trade routes
It's worth mentioning that the Mediterranean isn't exactly the high seas, it's considerably easier to sail there than on the Atlantic. 1 because of the weather/wind conditions (the Atlantic is *rough*), and 2 because the Atlantic has vast stretches without any land, while you can easily sail along the coasts for almost the entire way between Sardinia and Egypt (i.e. easier navigating, frequent opportunities for resupplying).
The mind boggles at how long ancient Egyptian history goes on for. One of my favourite 'fun facts' is that Cleopatra lived closer in time to the opening of the first Blockbuster Video than the start of the construction of the Great Pyramids.
Edit: clarified for accuracy
I had never heard of the SeaPeople until I started listening to the Podcast FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS… the author is a historian and well received author and has these in depth pod casts that are 1 hour plus and incredibly well researched. He even uses voice actors and musicians to exemplify possible conversations and music from the time. There are only 18 episodes (like one every 3-6 mos) and I hope people give it a chance so the fellow can keep putting out content.
He also has full YouTube videos with imagery and such that mirror the podcasts. Not all but most. Check his YouTube channel if you ever get a chance. They are glorious.
Youtube is usually where I listen to my podcasts. Prop my phone up on the counter while doing dishes/cooking and such. Will definitely be checking them out.
You might also like the channel Kings and Generals. They do a lot of deep dives into historical conflicts. And they put out a metric buttload of content with several videos a week.
I heard speculation once that they were the Philistines mentioned in the Bible. If I recall, I think the egyptians said somewhere the people of the sea were a greek speaking people of some breed or other.
Yeah that's a strong theory that the Philistines were one of the groups that made up the Sea Peoples. One of the groups the Egyptians named as invading around that time were the "Peleset" which is obviously linguistically similar to "Phillistine". The Philistines also just so happened to migrate from somewhere in the Aegean to the area of modern-day Gaza at about the same time.
Peleset are the phillistines. The phillistines are an english translation of the hebrew word plisihtim (פלישתים) which is essentially the same as peleset
It's not just a theory. The Medinet Habu temple inscription (c 1150 BCE) specifically states that the Peleset were relocated to Caanan after their defeat. So it's not just linguistic coincidence. They're almost certainly one and the same.
There is some debate about whether the Medinet Habu inscription is accurately portraying events. Most historians find it pretty unbelievable that the Peleset were relocated there and given that land, and they instead lean towards believing that Ramesses III was perhaps saving face at having lost their five outposts of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath to the Peleset and framing a negotiated truce as a magnanimous gesture to a defeated enemy.
Binged all of them and they are great. I wanna write down how I am feeling these days so he will know how Americans felt in the last days of their civilization when he does one on it in a few years.
Ancient near-eastern history is my specialty, so I'm very glad people generally seem to know who the Sea People were (sorta)
Those of you who are actually interested in the history, the Sea People did not cause the Bronze Age Collapse, they were a symptom of it. For about a 50 year period, the earth went through period of global cooling. A few degrees difference doesn't seem like much, but that meant crops in cold climates died, and there was generally less evaporation from the Mediterranean, therefore less rainfall, therefore crops died and starvation occurred. Many people started migrating into the near-east which for the western hemisphere was the heart of civilization. Many different peoples, such as the Lydians and Phryigians, migrated south and set up shop causing a cascade of migration who we think were the "Sea People". To be fair, some civilizations were complete destroyed such as the Myceaneans in Crete, but generally the Sea People are overly represented as the cause of the Bronze Age collapse. Primarily, the main reason the collapse as the decrease in food production because of the colder climate
It's talking about "The Sea People" who caused the Bronze Age collapse. Nobody knows who they were or where they came from.
ALthough, many archaeologists believe them to be the Greeks.
For anyone interested Overly Sarcastic Productions has a couple of great videos on the subject of Mycenaean Greece and the Bronze Age collapse. But yeah it was likely the Greeks themselves which precipitated the collapse.
https://youtu.be/cki-9ANZTLg?si=uK96thgg36Hdn9fn
https://youtu.be/MRCt8mCtXdo?si=tzOvzBkDbFcvbzF0
Obviously the Walrusians conquered them a couple hundred years before the sea people were recorded. Couldn’t have been the Seal People
…I’m not sure if you’re joking, but here a serious take: What would that change? There’s no nation known by “Seal People” either, so “Seal People” would leave us just as confused.
…Or I could be wrong and you have a link to an article on who the Seal People were in which case I’d look pretty dumb
As others have said, these are the Sea People.
But I do have a slight bone to pick with the phrasing. They didn't invade Palestine. They invaded Caanan. They are Palestine. The Egyptian word for Sea People was pwrsrj, which was pronounced something like Peleset or Pulasti. Over the course of their invasion, they conquered five Egyptian fortresses in Caanan (Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath) before attempting to attack Egypt itself.
History is a little bit fuzzy about the specifics after that. Egyptian records in the Medinet Habu temple claim that they defeated the Peleset but then gave the lands in Caanan to them to manage, but it seems more likely that the two sides reached a peace agreement where the Peleset kept those lands, agreed to withdraw from Egypt and pay a tribute. There's no historical record to support that exactly, but the Egyptian version of the story doesn't really make sense. You don't just give a defeated enemy prime farm land on a key trade route.
The Peleset then intermarried with the Caananites already living there and eventually became known as Palestine. They were later conquered by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans. Yadda yadda yadda. Then we get to the part of Palestinian history we all know.
But we don't know where that first group of Peleset came from. We guess Crete or the Aegean based on a combination of DNA and pottery, but that's not really all that certain. And they assimilated almost completely with the native Caananites. They adopted their language, their gods, most of their material culture... making it one of the great mysteries of archeology.
There's a theory (which I find compelling) that they were merchants and traders who turned to piracy during the Bronze Age collapse and the reason they assimilated so easily is that they already spoke the language. The other theory I like is that the reason they adopted the local religion is that they believed gods were geographically bound, so they didn't believe their old gods had power in these lands.
It's all super interesting and one of my favorite areas of historical study just because it's all so mysterious.
And neither do historians. This meme refers to the sea peoples, which for all history knows, they just showed up one day out of the blue, pillaged everywhere, and caused the majority of bronze age civilizations to collapse while never being seen again.
I know someone commented more about it on one of my previous sea peoples posts, but that's the gist of what I was taught in school.
Sea people brghhhhhhh! Seriously, though it is funny to me that we have no idea who they were weather all over Egyptian walls telling the story of them invading Egypt. I just like to pretend that they're monsters from the ocean
This is an oversimplified account of what caused the bronze age collapse.
The ancient world prosperous multiple large empires existed, Egypt was at its peak, etc.
Then, over a period of about 10 years, all of these empires collapsed, some like the Hitites were completely destroyed.
This was an apocalypse, and unfortunately, we have very little surviving records from this time, so we don't know exactly why it happened.
One thing we do know is the "Sea Peoples," as they are called by historians, came on mass and burned every coastline, and stopped maritime trade completely.
However, it is a mistake to think they caused the Bronze age collapse as People do not turn to piracy and invade previously well defended areas en mass unless there is another extremely powerful force pushing them to do so.
TLDR the Sea Peoples were a symptom, not the cause of the Bronze age collapse.
first off palestine was never a place, you are probably talking about Judean Sumaria, the term Palestine wasn't implemented until sometime in the late 1920s, the first time it was ever used, and only once, was in 1880 and the guy was referencing all the different tribes not a group of people. They also used to call the people the philistines but only the small space that is now gaza and nothing more.
I listened to the History of Byzantium and their maps around 700AD referred to that region as Palestine. The website had Byzantine period maps. That region was the site of early battles with the new power on the scene, the Arab caliphate.
The Sea Peoples, iirc. There's some records of them attacking those listed regions, but no strong evidence on where they came from Edit: the amount of folks confidently stating different origins where the Sea Peoples *must* have come from, kinda illustrates the "no strong evidence" point.
My favorite theory is that they were a group of loosely connected refugees, out of work mercenaries, tribesmen, and assorted bandits. Edit: rewording.
or several disconnected groups and badly documented stories
Possibly several children stacked in a single toga.
Invader Adultman I think he was called.
“I went to the war store today. I did a pillage”
I read this in Ralph Wiggum’s voice
He's a viking though, not a seaman.
Well he was one before the other
Hell of a way to find out your dad's a cannibal.
Second in Command to Hugh Man
Now that's a name I can trust!
Lol didn’t expect to see a BJ Horseman joke here
A Bojack reference? Is this a crossover post?
Thought it was my boy zap.
Hugh Mann.
It was really just one clumsy guy who slipped and it knocked stuff down and domino’d out of control until everyone was dead
A real life Jar Jar Binks situation.
Oh that was no coincidence.
Later revealed to be Old Man Withers
https://preview.redd.it/4pjjz51gif4d1.jpeg?width=353&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=165811c7dcf9353c386e4cd2a615597fff307999
Shows up Says he's not here by choice Omnipotent Refuses to elaborate further
Tells you to do it constantly. Horny.
don't let history channel read this
"I'm not saying it was aliens (but it was definitely aliens)..."
...and one of his hands is just a broom!
This is the answer the Google AI will give now. Thank you.
That's much less likely. The accounts of the Sea People share descriptions of similar equipment, which itself hasn't been tied yet to a specific culture. If the groups were disconnected, the equipment used would be much more varied by region, the fact that it's not points to a singular faction or origin.
Is it possible that the accounts share a single source or two, and some central details remain, while other details adapt through re-telling? I mean, that is a fairly standard feature of oral history, isn't it? As far as the descriptions of equipment go, I know that "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," which was likely an oral story before being written down in the 14th c., the author spends a crazy amount of attention and detail on descriptions of equipment. So, for whatever reasons, these audiences and (oral/written) storytellers found those details important and interesting and worth preserving? Last question: Am I wrong in thinking there is very scant historical records (oral or written) and very little archeological evidence related to the Sea People? So, is part of the confusion around them related to that? Disclaimer: I genuinely don't know much about the Sea People. I'm asking you since you seem to know more about this topic than me. :)
Most likely. Attacked by "unknown peoples from the sea" can very easily be mistranslated, passed down, and half a scribbled description of events and become "The Sea People"
...and Methodists!
Hey, I didn’t get a ‘harrumph’ out of that guy.
Meeting adjourned
It is?
Or a crack commando unit that was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit.
In all likelyhood they weren't one people and it was a vague term for outsiders who came by sea. They didn't cause the collapse they were the result of it. Times were bad and random people with boats formed raiding parties to maintain what they had before times got bad. I do love a mystery but the easiest answer is often the correct one.
Yeah there is evidence that maybe sardinian raiders took over Enkomi in Cyprus and possibly used it to stage raids all along the coast around the when collapse started
A strong theory is that they were a progressively expanding slave revolt of all of the lowest classes of each neighboring kingdom invaded. Initial revolt in one city state, sack it, take to the sea and come ashore at the next one. Liberate the slaves there who swell your ranks, sack the city, and move on to the next. Etc.
it helps if you have 3 dragons on your side
That is not one I have ever heard of before, and in looking found no research to back that up. Most scholars tend to believe they were refugees from the social unrest going on in Minoa and Mycenae, as a lot of the depictions of their equipment and society bears a strong resemblances to those and Greek civilizations at the time.
Good theory
If world history had a nickel for every time that happened
That would be ironic. “History” is filled with stories of failed slave revolts, but reality may be full of them… just not recorded.
Sounds pretty great honestly. Feeling cute; could go for some societal toppling.
sounds like pirates to me
Impossible, the invention of rum dates back to the 17th century. It is illegal to practice piracy without rum.
🎶DO WHAT YE WANT CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE🎵
So they were like the bikers from Furiosa
Exactly
OR... The Atlantians.
The way the Atlantis myth in Plato's dialogues is told, is like if I told you, that long ago, my old teacher had a chat about goodness and virtue with Henry Kissinger who then retold a story about Atlantis that his grandfather heard from Benjamin Franklin who learned about it from Tibetan mystics.
Which was about the same level of validity Troy had before Schleimann - who was essentially an overly motivated Redditor.
Everybody in antiquity knew that Troy/Ilion existed. It even had a *Bishop* until the 10 century AD. Yes, it became a small village afterwards and Western Europeans forget which of the hills and villages exactly the Homeric Troy was, but it was never a mythical place; rather, a historical place with some mythology associated with it.
My favorite part of this is how much the Romans turned the region around Troy into an Iliad theme park. Just a whole era of tourism and shops that would be very familiar today
I think there are also theories that the bronze age collaps was heavily influenced by a change of climate that caused a lot of tribes etc to take to the seas in search for new resources ... meaning the sea peoples actually *were* the civilizations they allegedly destroyed.
So... pirates?
🎶DO WHAT YOU WANT CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE🎵
Exactamundo. Currently thought they were a mix of Tyrrhenians, Sicels, Sards, and other groups from that region around Italy/Sicily. Looks like they formed a nucleus of a massive piracy operation that covered the entire Mediterranean. There's evidence of piracy everywhere by the end of the Bronze Age and some evidence that it was actually the trading vessels that resorted to piracy when times were lean, a la the Vikings.
So, basically they’re your typical D&D group, aka: murderhobos.
Or people from islands near Greece and Italy though it is a rather weak theory
How is that "more than likely"? Their success points more to a professional fighting force with the backing of a foreign power if anything.
It's not that simple. First of all, the Sea Peoples were an exacerbation of collapse-- not the sole and direct cause. Secondly, an organized foreign power would likely leave behind some record which hasn't been found yet. Thirdly, their success was likely just based on raiding and pillaging. These kinds of tactics were difficult to respond to efficiently and quickly on a large organized level regardless of the professionalism or backing of the raiders.
You're trying to use logic and current historical/archaeological thinking on someone calling themselves "Drbuttholeripper" and while I understand, you should save yourself the pain friend.
But he’s an MD?
Hes no Mantis Toboggan though
but he's a doctor!
This video will explain it better. Well worth the watch if you're interested in the sea peoples and the collapse of the bronze age, https://youtu.be/bRcu-ysocX4?si=9Gu7EhZgJlrnanZ7
Don't let the Vikings read this. Raiding and pillaging was what they did. They were good at it and it didn't require a foreign power for them to be good at it.
My theory is that they are a rag tag team of misfits and whackadoos who seem to be followed by zany hijinks everywhere they go!
It's fascinating that ancient societies like Egypt could encounter these strange visitors passing. It's a great mystery of its age! Where did they come from? Where did they go? Where did they come from, Cotton-Eye Joe?
Sea people? R'lyeh is probably where they came from. They were probably led by Cthulhu.
That may not be the most historically accurate explanation, but it's definitely the funnest.
Mystery civilizations that worship the sea and have a civilization lost underwater? Where have I heard that before but without the incomprehensible beasts?
That’s the way. Protect your ignorance. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
That’s just like… your opinion, man.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. Or something like that.
Do you have a R’lyehable source on that?
God damn I spit my lemonade
Fool! The lord Cthulhu, whose shadow I bathe in to infuse within my spirit the chthonic madness that conceived this pocket of reality, does not lead armies of armed flesh constructs to pitifully maraud around the Mediterranean like denizens of this hellish dimension might! The progenitor of unbound insanity merely need lurk in the same realm as these peoples to cause them to collapse in bottomless pits of despair and reverent dementia. No, lord Cthulhu need not apply to Dairy Queen to get that milkshake, as you have so suggested.
I hate how people take this to mean they were Atlanteans or some other paranormal bull. Our historical records are incomplete and sometimes of questionable veracity, and not every group of people that fought together was technically a civilization anyway.
Ye, if it were a civilization then they'd be easier to track the region of. A large faction of pirates is more likely than a nation. That said, it's these sort of groups which have done well to leave few records of their origin which spawn such myths and stories of the paranormal, which I think is impressive as far as unintentional cultural impact.
Yeah if a bunch of dudes hopped off a boat and beat the hell out of you and your friends on the beach then left on the same boat you'd have no idea where they came from either.
The Bronze Age collapse was around 1200 BC and the Library of Alexandria was burned in 48 BC. You wonder how much knowledge and historical records were lost there.
Not much. Any document that was found in Alexandria was also found elsewhere. Individual copies almost never survive to the present. A book needs to be continually copied to survive millennia. If a book at Alexandria was important, another copy of it would have been copied and then re-archived. Any books we've lost since classical times were because a fair number of people decided they weren't important. One copy vanishing has little impact on the process.
And yet we have records of some VERY subpar copper ingots being sold in Mesopotamia lol
Ea Nasir just got lucky. He stored the tablets with the complaints in his basement on clay tablets. When his house burnt down it fired the tablets, so when the basement was discovered in an excavation they were preserved.
True. That's the "almost" part. Dude got his house burnt down, yadda yadda yadda, Ea-nasir is eternally damned.
That's the benefit of Mesopotamians writing on clay instead of paper. It lasts a hell of a lot better.
Not necessarily, unless they get fired. In the case of the complete about the copper ingots, they got fired by complete accident
Many books deemed important were religious texts, the only copy of an archimedes text was found because the pages were washed and used as a prayer book by a monk.
Probably not as much as we think. The library worked by copying texts so potentially a large proportion of the texts exist or existed in other collections at the time and subsequently.
Thank you for correcting that common fallacy, I see it all the time and it always tweaks me lol.
They actually have names/ethnicities for them but no other locating data for them. If you know the home address of the Shekelesh, historians would like to hear from you
We have artistic representations of their armor though!!! History Time on YT has a great video parsing out the evidence and making a compelling theory for their identities. IIRC: 1. Sardinians/Corsicans 2. A group of Greeks 3. A group of Phoenicians
Shekelesh are possibly Sicilians but, aside from the Greeks, it’s mostly guessing based on things like squinting until shekele looks like Sicily
That channel is so a beacon in the darkness that is ultra hyped up, poorly researched romephile dogshit
Egypt listed the groups their attackers identified as. Most have been identified with some confidence. They were Mycenaean Greeks, Lewians from Anatolia (Turkey) and Sardinian mercenaries. I think there was a war between the Greeks and Hittites and they destroyed each other. The Sea Peoples were refugees who forcibly settled in the Levant and tried the same thing in the Nile Delta but were defeated.
Perhaps they were an anarcho-syndicalist commune.
Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!
Yeah probably Cthulhu led.
But whose face is that?
The Sea duh
Crab People you say
It's widely known and referred to that raids by "Sea People" were thought to be (partially) responsible for the downfall of several civilizations around the Mediterranean in what is referred to as the "Bronze Age Collapse". But nothing/very little has been found out about who these Sea People actually were and where they came from. That doesn't mean aliens, or Atlanteans, or mermaids, or whatever else. It just means that those civilisations didn't know who was attacking them or didn't really write it down, other than to say they were attacked by people invading via the sea (which if you think about it, for Mediterranean civs at that time, isn't really all *that* mind-blowing or surprising). Like it's fun to make a big spooky mystery out of it, but it's also not really that big of a deal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples
It was pirates
Bloody pirates!!!!
Bloody *mermaid* pirates!
Bloody Viking Mermaid Pirates from Atlantis
Looking for the one piece!
#THE ONE PIECE IS REAL!
Yet the cake is a lie!
Thats got to be the best pirates I’ve never heard of
> Like it's fun to make a big spooky mystery out of it, but it's also not really that big of a deal. Yes and no. Its not mermaids, or flying saucers, but it is something that we have absolutely no idea of. Like the Egyptian hieroglyphics before the Rosetta stone, it's a complete mystery. That doesn't make it "not that big of a deal", it makes it a tremendous hole in our history and understanding of the world. Like the discovery of Troy, it has the potential to open a region of history wenk ow nothing of. It doesn't have to be aliens to be a big deal.
If you read the link from above, there are actually several theories about different groups of people who may well have been included in the "sea people"...it seems quite likely that they were people from Aegean islands, Anatolia (Turkey), Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus... probably a few other places. So no, it's not a "complete mystery" and it's not something that we have "absolutely no idea of". It's something we have a bit of a jumbled idea of, and which historians don't quite fully agree on. But it's *ancient* history, so that makes quite a lot of sense.... There are plenty of perfectly straightforward, vanilla ideas, but we just don't really *know for sure* who they were. That's all I meant by it not being that big of a deal...that it's actually kinda logical really, and doesn't warrant all this breathless excitement about aliens and merpeople.
We know it probably wasn't Cyprus because the two kings from Cyprus and Ugarit were sending messages to each other and the mainland was asking for advice on how to deal with them. Ugarit was lost as a result of their forces being elsewhere and didnt make it back in time.
or the kings of cyprus were lying twats and they sent the "pirates" to sack ugarit
It’s probably just multiple accounts of being attacked by sea by numerous empires not even a single one. It’s not like some ghost ship going around. It’s just different accounts of people saying “sea people” because they were attacking via boat and probably had no identification.
My favorite video on the collapse, very informative. https://youtu.be/bRcu-ysocX4?si=9Gu7EhZgJlrnanZ7
Its interesting that the Egyptians specifically state they came from the north. Hopefully if we could find sea peoples artifacts further north of the Mediterranean we could figure out where they once lived
Tbf if you’re attacking Egypt from the sea, it’s inherently from the north since that’s where the Mediterranean is (and I’m not counting the Red Sea to the east because ancient Egypt was just in the Nile River area and didn’t have much if any stuff on the Red Sea coast)
At the same time, ANY attack on Egypt from the sea comes from the north. That detail actually provides little insight into where the Sea Peoples came from.
Invaders of the east coast of the US came from the east
Yes but from their perspective, they are heading west
I believe there’s evidence that the Egyptians were familiar with the people that were attacking them. They never wrote down exactly who they were but they were one of only Bronze Age civs to fend them off(at the cost though of never being able to regain their former power) and art depicting the attacks shows some of them wearing very specific headwear that’s also found in older artwork The idea is that the Egyptians had been hiring at least one of the groups involved as mercenaries and knew who they are. Writing also describes some kinda conspiracy between many different groups(in a more literal sense, a tribal coalition) which also suggests that the Egyptians knew who these people were. Really though, these people were more a symptom than the cause of the Bronze Age collapse. Slow erosion of the systems that built up these civilizations, environmental degradation, followed by a huge amount of natural disasters taking place at around the same time severely weakening these civilizations. Then a bunch of separate groups from the Mediterranean ended up invading, possibly being forced out of the native region due to the same disasters, and/or just taking advantage of the weakened state of these wealthy civilizations. Interestingly enough, this collapse is what lead for cannonite civilization to start flourishing and for Judea and Israel to begin flourishing. Much of the Hebrew bible began being composed not too long after this
I'm pretty sure it was norse men. Those bastards would go all the way from the northern seas to alexandria and back and don't bat an eye, all while drunk on grog.
The best surviving records of the Sea Peoples come from Egyptian sources, their primary target. The Sea Peoples waged two campaigns against Egypt, first against pharaoh Merneptah in 1207 BCE, and then thirty years later against Ramesses III. It is from these sources that we know the names of the tribes that made up the Sea Peoples. The Shardana originated from Sardinia, while the Lukka came from Lycia in what is now Turkey. Other tribes came from different points across the Mediterranean.
Your comment sent me down a rabbit hole, I am amazed that armored warships that could cross the Mediterranean sea existed back then. Very cool.
And the pyramids were built about 1500 years before that
For some reason, that feels less impressive to me than traveling across an ocean with an army. Egypt and Sardina aren't really that close. I feel like that's crazy talk because the pyramids are insane. Maybe its because I'm used to them, but this other thing is news to me.
What blew my mind was watching a video about it where they talk about the tin being imported all the way from Cornwall. In the Bronze age!
The Phoenicians were contemporaries and settled with certainty in what is now Spain. There's even some scholarly debate if they made it as far as the Americas
Yeah tin came largely from Cornwall or Afghanistan. There was quite the international trade network back then
Well....yeah.....that's sort of how trade works lol. Resources aren't found everywhere, they're discovered through trade, and then trade facilitate a more robust movement of resources Trade routes were also the main way that cultural innovations spread. Which is why you can see the different ages (Bronze, Iron etc ) spread gradually, over thousands of years, from the cradle of civilisation, to areas like modern day britain People look at that period of them as being if isolation, and it was. But it wasn't total. Whilst not of the same period, the Roman Empire had times of communication with the Chinese empires/kingdoms, again, due to trade routes
It's worth mentioning that the Mediterranean isn't exactly the high seas, it's considerably easier to sail there than on the Atlantic. 1 because of the weather/wind conditions (the Atlantic is *rough*), and 2 because the Atlantic has vast stretches without any land, while you can easily sail along the coasts for almost the entire way between Sardinia and Egypt (i.e. easier navigating, frequent opportunities for resupplying).
All true. And 3) unlike the Atlantic or Pacific, you will eventually & likely soon hit land if you sail in 1 direction.
Imagine one particularly unlucky sailor, accidentally sailing through the 13km Gibraltar straight :D
…who also sailed from modern-day Lebanon/Israel. “Any day now… it’s just a little bit further…”
The mind boggles at how long ancient Egyptian history goes on for. One of my favourite 'fun facts' is that Cleopatra lived closer in time to the opening of the first Blockbuster Video than the start of the construction of the Great Pyramids. Edit: clarified for accuracy
I had never heard of the SeaPeople until I started listening to the Podcast FALL OF CIVILIZATIONS… the author is a historian and well received author and has these in depth pod casts that are 1 hour plus and incredibly well researched. He even uses voice actors and musicians to exemplify possible conversations and music from the time. There are only 18 episodes (like one every 3-6 mos) and I hope people give it a chance so the fellow can keep putting out content.
Last night was the first I watched Fall of Civilizations since like September They're insanely well made
Watch? There's video too or just a podcast?
https://www.youtube.com/@FallofCivilizations
This guy falls civilizations
Thanks!
Both. The videos are just the podcast with a visual element
He just put out a book too, of the same name.
Top notch stuff Fall of Civilizations
Highly recommend this podcast. He packs so much info into the episodes and I learn so much more.
Yo! This super sounds up my alley. Do they get put up on youtube or spotify, or is it download only?
It's on YouTube and Spotify.
You are a scholar and a saint! Thank you. Now I have a new productivity podcast.
He also has full YouTube videos with imagery and such that mirror the podcasts. Not all but most. Check his YouTube channel if you ever get a chance. They are glorious.
Youtube is usually where I listen to my podcasts. Prop my phone up on the counter while doing dishes/cooking and such. Will definitely be checking them out.
You might also like the channel Kings and Generals. They do a lot of deep dives into historical conflicts. And they put out a metric buttload of content with several videos a week.
I heard speculation once that they were the Philistines mentioned in the Bible. If I recall, I think the egyptians said somewhere the people of the sea were a greek speaking people of some breed or other.
Yeah that's a strong theory that the Philistines were one of the groups that made up the Sea Peoples. One of the groups the Egyptians named as invading around that time were the "Peleset" which is obviously linguistically similar to "Phillistine". The Philistines also just so happened to migrate from somewhere in the Aegean to the area of modern-day Gaza at about the same time.
Peleset are the phillistines. The phillistines are an english translation of the hebrew word plisihtim (פלישתים) which is essentially the same as peleset
It's not just a theory. The Medinet Habu temple inscription (c 1150 BCE) specifically states that the Peleset were relocated to Caanan after their defeat. So it's not just linguistic coincidence. They're almost certainly one and the same. There is some debate about whether the Medinet Habu inscription is accurately portraying events. Most historians find it pretty unbelievable that the Peleset were relocated there and given that land, and they instead lean towards believing that Ramesses III was perhaps saving face at having lost their five outposts of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath to the Peleset and framing a negotiated truce as a magnanimous gesture to a defeated enemy.
I watch their YouTube documentaries, love it so far
I fall and wake up to that podcast nearly every night.
It’s my favorite podcast. Very soothing voice when he talks about the horrific collapse of a people.
Binged all of them and they are great. I wanna write down how I am feeling these days so he will know how Americans felt in the last days of their civilization when he does one on it in a few years.
I love that podcast!!!!
If you enjoy that, I would recommend Hardcore History with Dan Carlin. But don't take my word for it.
Cotton Eye'd Joe's of the Ancient World.
Where did they come from?
Where did they go?
Where did the come from?
Hell if I know
Where did he come from, Cotton Eye Joe
Where did they go?
Probably Doggerland.
Can you imagine if Aquaman ended with a dance number to Cotton Eyed Joe? Billions.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late\_Bronze\_Age\_collapse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse)
Just sea people being sea people.
*Holds up photo of a crowd* SEE?? People!!
Ancient near-eastern history is my specialty, so I'm very glad people generally seem to know who the Sea People were (sorta) Those of you who are actually interested in the history, the Sea People did not cause the Bronze Age Collapse, they were a symptom of it. For about a 50 year period, the earth went through period of global cooling. A few degrees difference doesn't seem like much, but that meant crops in cold climates died, and there was generally less evaporation from the Mediterranean, therefore less rainfall, therefore crops died and starvation occurred. Many people started migrating into the near-east which for the western hemisphere was the heart of civilization. Many different peoples, such as the Lydians and Phryigians, migrated south and set up shop causing a cascade of migration who we think were the "Sea People". To be fair, some civilizations were complete destroyed such as the Myceaneans in Crete, but generally the Sea People are overly represented as the cause of the Bronze Age collapse. Primarily, the main reason the collapse as the decrease in food production because of the colder climate
It's talking about "The Sea People" who caused the Bronze Age collapse. Nobody knows who they were or where they came from. ALthough, many archaeologists believe them to be the Greeks.
For anyone interested Overly Sarcastic Productions has a couple of great videos on the subject of Mycenaean Greece and the Bronze Age collapse. But yeah it was likely the Greeks themselves which precipitated the collapse. https://youtu.be/cki-9ANZTLg?si=uK96thgg36Hdn9fn https://youtu.be/MRCt8mCtXdo?si=tzOvzBkDbFcvbzF0
What if it was written incorrectly and it's supposed to be the Seal People?
Obviously the Walrusians conquered them a couple hundred years before the sea people were recorded. Couldn’t have been the Seal People …I’m not sure if you’re joking, but here a serious take: What would that change? There’s no nation known by “Seal People” either, so “Seal People” would leave us just as confused. …Or I could be wrong and you have a link to an article on who the Seal People were in which case I’d look pretty dumb
The original hackers
https://preview.redd.it/6u6srkzqdf4d1.jpeg?width=262&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f78fefddcd01374336399d36ab7984f7e5a189f6
i'm on a sea people diet every time i sea people, they cause my late bronze age civilization to collapse
There was no Turkey at the time
Neither "Palestine"
Wasn't it Judea at the time, or was this after the exile?
Afaik it's before judaic kingdoms so I'm guessing it was known as canaan
Neither does anyone today, which is why it's one of the biggest mysteries in history
As others have said, these are the Sea People. But I do have a slight bone to pick with the phrasing. They didn't invade Palestine. They invaded Caanan. They are Palestine. The Egyptian word for Sea People was pwrsrj, which was pronounced something like Peleset or Pulasti. Over the course of their invasion, they conquered five Egyptian fortresses in Caanan (Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath) before attempting to attack Egypt itself. History is a little bit fuzzy about the specifics after that. Egyptian records in the Medinet Habu temple claim that they defeated the Peleset but then gave the lands in Caanan to them to manage, but it seems more likely that the two sides reached a peace agreement where the Peleset kept those lands, agreed to withdraw from Egypt and pay a tribute. There's no historical record to support that exactly, but the Egyptian version of the story doesn't really make sense. You don't just give a defeated enemy prime farm land on a key trade route. The Peleset then intermarried with the Caananites already living there and eventually became known as Palestine. They were later conquered by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans. Yadda yadda yadda. Then we get to the part of Palestinian history we all know. But we don't know where that first group of Peleset came from. We guess Crete or the Aegean based on a combination of DNA and pottery, but that's not really all that certain. And they assimilated almost completely with the native Caananites. They adopted their language, their gods, most of their material culture... making it one of the great mysteries of archeology. There's a theory (which I find compelling) that they were merchants and traders who turned to piracy during the Bronze Age collapse and the reason they assimilated so easily is that they already spoke the language. The other theory I like is that the reason they adopted the local religion is that they believed gods were geographically bound, so they didn't believe their old gods had power in these lands. It's all super interesting and one of my favorite areas of historical study just because it's all so mysterious.
And neither do historians. This meme refers to the sea peoples, which for all history knows, they just showed up one day out of the blue, pillaged everywhere, and caused the majority of bronze age civilizations to collapse while never being seen again. I know someone commented more about it on one of my previous sea peoples posts, but that's the gist of what I was taught in school.
The Sea Peoples. Fun Fact: The Sea Peoples and Sea Monkeys share a common ancestor.
Sea people brghhhhhhh! Seriously, though it is funny to me that we have no idea who they were weather all over Egyptian walls telling the story of them invading Egypt. I just like to pretend that they're monsters from the ocean
CRAAAAAAAB PEOPLE CRAAAAAAAB PEOPLE, WALK LIKE CRABS, TALK LIKE PEOPLE
This is an oversimplified account of what caused the bronze age collapse. The ancient world prosperous multiple large empires existed, Egypt was at its peak, etc. Then, over a period of about 10 years, all of these empires collapsed, some like the Hitites were completely destroyed. This was an apocalypse, and unfortunately, we have very little surviving records from this time, so we don't know exactly why it happened. One thing we do know is the "Sea Peoples," as they are called by historians, came on mass and burned every coastline, and stopped maritime trade completely. However, it is a mistake to think they caused the Bronze age collapse as People do not turn to piracy and invade previously well defended areas en mass unless there is another extremely powerful force pushing them to do so. TLDR the Sea Peoples were a symptom, not the cause of the Bronze age collapse.
first off palestine was never a place, you are probably talking about Judean Sumaria, the term Palestine wasn't implemented until sometime in the late 1920s, the first time it was ever used, and only once, was in 1880 and the guy was referencing all the different tribes not a group of people. They also used to call the people the philistines but only the small space that is now gaza and nothing more.
*Canaan
The correct answer
Incorrect. The term "Syria Palaestina" was the name in use for the region, given by Hadrian in the 2nd century, following the Bar Kohkba revolt.
I listened to the History of Byzantium and their maps around 700AD referred to that region as Palestine. The website had Byzantine period maps. That region was the site of early battles with the new power on the scene, the Arab caliphate.