WTF Happened in the Bronze Age Collapse? (This Video Broke Me) DOCUMENTARY

I really like this kind video. It makes the uncertainties clearer and the process of studying history. I mean we talk about events 3500 years ago it should be unclear. Fun video.

I think it's wonderful that we are able to discover so much data about such a period.

It is also terrifying how strongly equivalent forces are present today, and how the centres of power tending to destroy state capacity and weaken the resilience of civilisation are able to control mainstream media and politics so as to propagate ignorance and denial about the growing problems capable of causing civilisational breakdown. Namely privatisation of utilities and public services, private monopolies, and out of control banks and financial sectors.

As I look around the world, it is only countries like China, which have strong centralisation and state direction of the economy which look resilient enough to adapt and survive. The kind of policies which are bolstering their resiliency, such as nationalisation, market regulation, effective taxation of the rich, and protectionism with import-substitution industrial policy and developmentalist orientation rather than an austeritarian orientation, meanwhile are vilified and threatened with war for their refusal to be looted by the same financial institutions and neoliberal scam economics which are rapidly weakening the civilisation in the Collective West's ability to survive.

We suffer instead from the looting of national revenues and public assets to further enrich Rentiers with more privatization and more tax cuts for the rich and corporations, more defunding of infrastructures, more rent-gouging impoverishing the population, more downsizing and closure of public services, more deindustrialisation that simply reduces production creating inflation and shortage, and more economic and military warfare destroying trade networks and wasting the remaining resources of states and societies.

My brain likes this layout. Cheers!

Good work. Thanks! Respect from Finland.

I see the so called Bronze age collapse as a process that's has many similarities to the end of the classical era and the start of the middle ages. In the fall of the west Roman empire there were dramatic episodes like the invasion of Attila but it was a long process of attrition. Climate worsening contributed to population movements. During the fall of the classical world there were not just the Huns but also various Germanic tribes, Bagaudae, Picts, desert nomads,Slavs, Arabs, Berbers and others and is in the Bronze age with it's sea people's, Phrygians, Dorians, Arameans, Hebrews, Libyans, Nubians and many others. In both cases trade declined, piracy rose, countryside became prey to warbands, populations dispersed and in remaining civilized centers the temples (of Amun or the church) gobbled resources.
In the end of both upheavals some new kingdoms and later new empires rose with somewhat different society structures. Some of the older empires also managed to survive and reform like the East Romans or Assyria.

You should say “Sea Peoples” more often in this video! *unsubscribe after 6 minutes….

Thank you

i much prefer this style of video. with pop history, it can be hard to differentiate embellishment with data, especially in ancient archeology. seeing the actual citations is pretty important for me to care about a video, would love to see more in this style in the future!

In the very first line of narration: I believe he says "An ANOMONOUS quote." Bruh. It's "aNONomous".

Excellent analysis, thank you.

TW:Pharaoh had ehrm.. a lot of community issue things.. most of the TW community is not happy about Total War: Pharaoh and the direction CA is taking it towards. I really do hope CA will figure out a way to fix the Total War series, even Manor Lords will come with better army control features compared to the 10+ years that CA has primarily removed features from their games.. sigh..

Egypt - Anatolia - Babylonia - Greece.
Long ago, the Mediterranean lived in peace and harmony, than everything changed when the Sea People attacked.

Breakfast or brunch "jerky" salad In all of this ive thought of a new salad. Salad with microdosed chocolate protein chunks with beef protein powder in chunks and citrus dressings ect ect. @DeptOfDefense

Historians generally identify the Peleset Sea Peoples as the Philistines of the Palestine area in modern day Israel. There is an etymological link between the phoenichian words and the Hebrew words.

I hated history as a kid, but this was pretty riveting.

Amazing presentation, somebody who has read a fair bit I think I learned a lot. Thank you for your amazing content

God Bless Time Stamps.

The rise of iron seems like the most obvious reason for change to me.

Well not only was it a long time ago but a time of chaos and what records there were probably got destroyed so we're luck we know anything about it.
I think Homers Iliad has something To do with it, it's set around the same time and involved a sea voyage to attack the right area and it lasted 10 years

The fall of the Minions and Theara, plus the fall of the city of Troy could all be things that made a start of the sea people

The new buzz phrase "with that being said" is already on my nerves. Other than that. I appreciate your thoughts and the work that went into this video. I love that we keep looking for clues. ..and patterns.

This was fascinating. However, I was frustrated by the speed and frequency with which you zoomed in and out and moved around on and between the pages so that I had to pause and back up and pause again so that I had time to make legible and read what was there but not lose track of your narrative. Sometimes you moved unnecessarily as you had zoomed in close enough that I could have just moved my eyes to the relevant part of the screen. It would be helpful if you could somehow provide a legible screen to flip to or screens one could use to print out all the parts legibly. This not to diminish what you have collected, analyzed and organized so impressively, just some observations to consider when thinking of your audience. And if you ignore them in future efforts, I’ll still read and pause and back up as I need to, because it has been worth the effort.

Pop history...? Science?..Aaaand out.
Facts.
Not pop history.

I hate to say it, but it always seems that the big issues of the modern day are projected onto the crisis of the past. "Eat the rich" & "climate change" caused the collapse in the 2020s "invaders" in the Soviet era... etc. This isn't something that appears to be unique to Bronze Age Collapse disaster... again, I'm not saying it wasn't these issues, but it's interesting how whatever is popular in the modern era gets fixed to all types of things in the past.

If the academia ESt. has their way every single collapse, disaster or downturn event in history will be CLIMATE CHANGE🙄

The bronze age didn’t collapse. The collapse happened during the bronze age.

I knew there was a reason why I subscribed to this channel! This is a pure gold. Yes, yes, yes! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

It is obvious to me that pre bronze age people were not just tribal savages. There were people that build Stonehenge and clearly had the precursor organizations to allow the rise of the kingdoms and expires of the bronze age and the beginning of recorded history.



It seems to me some event caused these people to submit to living in empires. Something motivated the massive building projects. I suspect there were two factors. Massive climate change provided the motivation and advances in technology channeled the motivation into cultures with the necessary central authority to launch the bronze age. These empires created the stability to enable long range trade on a scale not previously known.
As these empires became successful, the initial insecurities that provided the launching of these cultures became less of a motivation for the masses of people. Power became an end in itself even as popular support waned. Then extreme hard times returned and the systems could not hold things together. This did not result in the complete return to the pre history cultures because the population had increased in spite of the losses, advances in technology survived, and the people remembered the good of the bronze age civilizations even as they tried to reject its failures.


I think the beginning and the end of the bronze age cultures was driven by the global climate change of the end of the last glacial period.

Watching this video reminded me of a phrase a friend from Arabia once said describing how is he being called “sea splash” or “sea wave” because he is not indigenous. Just maybe sea people is a phrase describing immigrants and foreigners.

Amazing, subscription acquired 🫡

Nobody cares about your crisis. Get to the point

I really need you to ditch the short form and start exclusively making long form content like this.

Very good video! It is nice to be presented with the process of understanding instead of just the result.

All known minable tin depots were exhausted.

THANK YOU FOR NOT BLINDSIDING ME WITH THE AD. Its always deeply appreciated when an ad read is either preemptively discussed and / or natural fits with the content. The power of warning the viewer is massively underestimated. Way to many channels will be like "lets get into the video" then hit you with a three minute ad read. I will literally never watch a channels content if theyre willing to be sleezy with the ad placement.

Excellent exposition. Thanks for your painstaking research.

I can't believe what started as a TW strategy and tactics channel has evolved into one of the best history channels on this platform. Tackling not just historical topics but also peeling back the layers how historiography is done and laying out the evidence gathered to reach the points being shared in the video.

Most of the time the academic front lines have us being flanked by the truth, especially regarding our previous cycle of civilization which supposedly didn't happen

Fascinating! Thanks for an amazing in depth analysis.

Excellent work! Well done!

My personal example for linguistic similarities. Comes from modern Russian. водка vs вода. Being vodka and water respectively. So one letter can change the meaning of a word to well roughly 50% or technically 60% the same word. But that 40% difference can really mess your day up if you try to drink 12 ounces of it. Lol

Patrick Wyman moment

Yes, discredit every other theory as a conspiracy except my "insert whatever" theory. Why does every content tool get their rocks off to climate change?

Massively appreciate the detail looking at academic sources and highlighting how much work can sometimes be necessary just to dig into your sources bias. Very good move to show and explain as much as you could considering how complex the inconsistencies are!

The god damn vikings probably did it.

What was the reasoning behind leaving out the Mesopotamian empires? Were they too minor at the time? I’m used to them being included in all this.

Iltam sumra rashupti elatim 🗿

Top of the Hittite Parade.