The Bronze Age was a good time to be alive, it comes after the Neolithic Stone Age and the invention of farming. Populations increased and monuments that amaze us to this day such as Stone Henge were created.
Meanwhile in the Middle East we see the first great civilisations. On Crete we see the Minoans, mainland Greece the Mycenaean civilisation, we further east we see the Hittites, Canaanites and the powerful kingdom of Egypt. These civilisations throve in an atmosphere of peace and war. They traded together, cross pollinated each others culture and arts and regularly engaged in warfare. This is the age of the chariot, the heroic champion and the famous Trojan war.
This state of affairs continued and must have seemed like normal life. Harvests were collected, kings and queens ruled and wars rumbled on until a series of catastrophes caused what is known as the Bronze Age Collapse during the 12th century BC. First there was a super volcano explosion on the island of Santorini and Helka III on Iceland caused a volcanic winter that brought famine to Egypt and by extension to the rest of the northern hemisphere. Failing crops caused unrest and social collapse as well as greater conflict amongst the civilised states. Furthermore we see migrations of the Dorians in Greece and the infamous Sea Peoples from the ‘west’.
When I teach the Bronze Age Collapse I joke that the Sea Peoples are a little bit like ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ we don’t know where they come from and we don’t know where they go. They are mysterious and sweep in from the west and plunder the east. The eastern powers already under strain from climate catastrophe and earthquakes are destroyed. The Sea Peoples then continue to move west and potentially pick up collaborators from amongst the Greeks. The Hittites send pleading messages to the Egyptians for help but they and the Canaanites fall to the pressure. It is only the Egyptians who are able to stand against them, resist them and even defeat them. Never one to let an opportunity pass the Egyptians then may have settled the survivors in Israel as a client state to protect the Egyptians trade routes to the Red Sea and onto the Indian subcontinent.
So why did the Sea Peoples destroy Bronze Age Greece its because their descendants would be known as the Philistines of Biblical fame and archaeology of the earliest Philistines does show Greek pottery. Its fun to imagine that Golliath of Gath might have been the Great, great grandson of a Greek hero like Agamemnon.
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