0:40

Hi, Hello, Welcome. This

0:43

is Let's talk about myths baby,

0:46

and I am your host live

0:48

here with the final

0:51

episode in our series on

0:53

the Bronze Age and its

0:56

Collapse. We've brought you

0:58

through the Bronze Age civilizations

1:00

of Greece into a

1:03

little bit as much as we could about the wider

1:05

Mediterranean during this period.

1:08

Then it's collapse and

1:10

all the many things that contributed to it.

1:13

And so today I have for you a

1:15

conversation with doctor Eric Klein, who

1:17

is honestly probably the biggest name in Bronze

1:20

Age slash the end of the Bronze Age

1:22

and It's Collapse. Like you google

1:24

Bronze Age Collapse, you're probably gonna get his book. It's

1:26

called eleven seventy seven BC. And

1:29

then there's a new one that's just come out very

1:31

recently that is a sequel after

1:34

eleven seventy seven. So that comes up a

1:36

lot in this conversation where we talk about

1:38

what little things contributed to

1:40

the collapse, what we do, what we don't

1:43

know, what is still being learned,

1:45

what has changed in the many

1:47

many years that we have been studying this stuff

1:50

as humans and finding

1:52

new things and using new technologies,

1:54

like all the ways this stuff changes all the time,

1:56

just because we change, and therefore we have

1:59

better ways of interpreting the

2:01

past. It's utterly fascinating.

2:03

Eric and I had a really really

2:05

fun conversation, such

2:07

a joy and just oh,

2:10

I cannot wait for you to listen. So I'm

2:12

just going to stop rambling and let you get right into

2:14

this incredible conversation conversations.

2:33

When the network went down, the

2:35

Bronze Age collapsed with doctor Eric

2:37

Klein. But

2:54

thank you so much for doing this. I'm very excited

2:56

to talk to you.

2:58

Well, it's fun for me and thank you

3:00

for having me on. It's looking

3:02

forward to it.

3:03

I'm so glad I have an assistant

3:05

producer who's been working on a lot of the research

3:07

because she's currently My background

3:10

is in mythology and my degree is

3:12

quite old, but she's currently studying

3:14

and obsessed with the Bronze Age, and so she is very

3:16

excited that I'm talking to you, and she gave me some

3:19

questions to ask and stuff. So there's

3:21

a Mikayla's somewhere being very excited.

3:24

Yes sounds

3:26

good, and Mikayla's at UBC at the

3:28

moment, right.

3:29

Yes, exactly, Yeah, yeah.

3:32

Good good. Well, hopefully I'll be able to

3:34

meet everybody in person at some point, but

3:36

yeah, over the internets

3:39

we'll do for now.

3:40

It's nice. At least we have this, right.

3:42

I feel like it's opened up a lot in the last few years.

3:44

So it has. Yeah,

3:47

just saying to my son that when previous

3:49

books have come out, I mean ten

3:51

years ago, fifteen years ago, it was all radio

3:53

interviews, and now it's all

3:56

podcasts. The technology has

3:58

totally changed.

3:59

Yeah. Yeah, well, and podcasts are great. I mean

4:01

it's so easy to record remotely. And I

4:03

started it in the pandemic where I had was having

4:05

these conversations with experts, and

4:08

I mean it's just easy and fun. And my show

4:11

started out as a very casual, just like silly

4:13

mythology podcast and grew to being

4:15

an incredibly deeply researched and accurate

4:18

mythology podcast where I touch on history.

4:20

But yeah, no, it's good.

4:22

That's good, and we need we need more of

4:24

those ones that are fun,

4:26

interesting and historically accurate.

4:29

So there you go. You touch all the buttons.

4:31

That is my goal always.

4:34

I do have to share too. I was in uh

4:37

it would have been just last year. Last year, I was

4:40

on a boat ride from Naxos to d Loos,

4:42

and there was this American couple sitting across

4:45

from my friend and I and they started they struck up

4:47

a conversation and we're chatting about,

4:49

you know, where we were going and everything, and the

4:52

man holds up a book and he was like, Oh,

4:54

I'm so excited. I've been reading all about you know,

4:56

the ancient world and we're going to day Los. I'm

4:58

and it was your book. I was like, oh, yeah,

5:00

no, I know very well.

5:03

Like I was like, I'm hoping to have them on my show

5:05

eventually. So yeah, it was very

5:07

fun.

5:08

Yeah, it is funn You never know

5:10

the ripple effects. You never know who's

5:12

reading it, you know, as they say, you

5:14

put it out into the wild, and then you

5:16

don't know where it goes. So that's cool.

5:18

Thank you for sharing that.

5:20

Yeah, no, you're welcome. I recently had an

5:22

experience like that myself where I wrote

5:24

a book, but it was a book of mythology

5:26

out and it was commissioned by the publisher, which tends

5:28

to mean that they do a lot of things without bothering to

5:30

tell me and I just find out later. And

5:33

I recently had someone send me a picture of it in Turkish,

5:36

and so that's how I learned that it exists in

5:38

Turkish and I would love to see it myself, but at

5:40

least I have a photover.

5:41

Now, yeah, that's funny, yeah,

5:44

yeah yeah. If you have it in your contract

5:47

that they have to talk to you about it when it's

5:49

translated, then you find out if

5:52

it's not on the contract, then you have no

5:54

idea.

5:55

Oh it is in the contract. I actually

5:57

used to work for paying in random house in contracts, so

5:59

I know what's in my contract. They just don't

6:01

do it. But that's okay. I emailed them and eventually

6:03

I'll follow it.

6:05

But did they send you a copy of it?

6:07

They are technical supposed to. So that's what

6:09

my email was was because I found out that

6:11

it existed a couple months ago, and I emailed and my

6:13

editor was like, oh, yeah it does. And I was like, okay, great, can

6:16

I get a copy? And she was like yeah, we'll send you on. And now

6:18

I see that it's in bookshops. So

6:20

I said to another being like, okay, where

6:22

is it now? Oh?

6:27

Thank you, Well,

6:31

I'll get us right in so we, you know, use up all

6:33

of our time on this I'm so excited.

6:36

The Bronze Age, like I said, has very much been

6:38

Michaela's pet project, but I've been working through

6:41

all of her research and fortunately have

6:43

a good grounding now before we speak.

6:46

But yeah, essentially, I'd love to love

6:48

to know more details about sort of all the different I

6:50

mean, obviously so many things went into

6:52

the collapse of the Bronze Age, and I'm

6:54

fascinated in sort of the I guess

6:57

the outside forces. Maybe could

6:59

we can focus on or the theories

7:01

rather and

7:04

but maybe we'll start it off with just very something

7:06

very simple, which is, you know, do you have

7:09

do you a favorite thing to talk

7:11

about when it comes to this aspect

7:13

the end of the Bronze Age? Do you have like a pet

7:16

bit that's your favorite?

7:20

What is my favorite part of the collapse?

7:22

Yeah?

7:25

Good question, good question. I

7:28

actually think my favorite part about the

7:30

collapse, if one is allowed to put

7:32

it that way, is

7:35

the fact that out

7:38

of all the things that have been suggested, and

7:41

somebody says, choose one, which one

7:43

do you like? Was it earthquake, was it disease,

7:45

was it migration? Was it drought?

7:47

And my answer is yes, yes,

7:51

it's all of the above, and as my kids

7:53

would say, it was a series

7:56

of unfortunate events to

7:58

quote Limony Snicket, right. So I

8:01

think that's my favorite part is it's all of

8:03

the above, right, So it's

8:05

not one you don't have to choose, you can

8:07

take them all well.

8:09

And I think that's what makes it so much more interesting too,

8:11

like it, and so much more believable,

8:14

because I mean, I have this

8:16

this video I saw years ago that

8:18

just keeps coming up in this series because it's

8:21

all I can think of. And it was this one

8:23

of those guys on on Instagram, you

8:25

know who who talks about history in that

8:27

really loud and fast way where

8:29

they can kind of make it sound like they know what they're talking

8:31

about, even if they're spouting utter nonsense.

8:34

And this guy had this whole thing about, you know,

8:36

the greatness of the Mycenaeans and how incredible

8:39

they were, and then how one day they just disappeared

8:41

and all died out, and the people

8:43

of the Greek mainland lost

8:45

the ability to understand written

8:48

word. And then from the dark ages,

8:51

Homer came up, you know, fully

8:53

formed like a theene out of Zeus's

8:55

head and gave us these this language

8:57

and these stories and it's

8:59

just like the confidence with which these people say

9:01

this, and then of course so many people believe them. And

9:04

so it's the thing I keep returning to when

9:06

it comes to this topic of you

9:09

know how, no lots

9:11

of things happened. We know generally why,

9:14

you know, why the Mice and Knean

9:16

period ended, why the Bronze Age ended,

9:18

and and you know, to say they that

9:20

humanity like lost the ability to understand

9:23

written word is perhaps a little cruel

9:25

to humanity, just a

9:27

little exaggerated.

9:29

But yeah, yeah, I'm

9:31

seeing things on YouTube now where you've

9:33

got all these people pontificating

9:36

on the late Bronzeige collapse and everything

9:38

else like that. They're going on and on and on and

9:40

not giving any credit to the actual

9:43

people who have worked on this, so

9:45

that their listeners think that they came

9:47

up with all of it. I'm just like, WHOA.

9:49

First of all, I give credit where credits due,

9:52

And secondly, it's like, I mean,

9:54

in this case, it'll stop mansplaining to

9:57

me, you know, that's what they're doing. So

10:00

anyway, but at least, at least the Late

10:02

Bronze Age is getting out there into the

10:04

broader world well, and.

10:06

It's it's things like this that that make

10:08

you want to do the series

10:10

of episodes that I get to do, you know, when I

10:13

see this kind of nonsense and and the lack

10:15

of sources and you know, all of

10:17

those different things. A couple of years ago, I

10:19

did a similar series on Atlantis because

10:22

people were going off about all the different theories

10:24

on Atlantis, and you know, so I released a

10:26

series of episodes basically breaking

10:29

down all the reasons why Atlantis is literally

10:31

nothing exactly.

10:33

Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, I could. I could

10:35

honestly see somebody

10:38

starting a podcast that would be

10:40

called yes but or

10:44

no not Actually you

10:46

know I'm going from there, Yeah, yes,

10:48

confident but exactly.

10:51

But you're right, Atlantis lends

10:53

itself perfectly to it. Yeah,

10:56

and I talk about that in my archaeology

10:58

course, and there I'm leaning

11:00

towards, well, is it Santorini if

11:02

it's anything, or you

11:04

know, is it really just Plato making it up

11:06

about his ideal state?

11:09

Well, and yeah, I kind of landed on you know,

11:11

it is Plato making everything up, but maybe

11:14

he was inspired by the general shape and history

11:16

of Santorini.

11:17

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah,

11:19

that's what I tend to think,

11:21

and I don't know how this would go in with your

11:24

podcast, but I tell

11:26

my students, I think there is a kernel

11:28

of truth at the basis of

11:30

most of the myths and legends. So you can

11:32

point, you know, to the Trojan War, Yes,

11:35

there is some stuff something happened. You

11:37

can point to the

11:40

legend of Theseus and the Minotaur and look

11:42

at the ruins of Conolso's yes, maybe

11:44

you know, so I think same thing so Atlantis.

11:47

Maybe evocative memories of

11:49

Santorini, but who knows.

11:52

Yeah, yeah, And I think those are important

11:54

because it does give you some kind of basis

11:56

for how these stories come about, and then you can look at,

11:59

you know, but where the accuracies lie and

12:01

where it's mostly just you know, invention.

12:03

Right exactly. Yeah, yeah, I

12:05

like the idea of some things being I think

12:07

the word is the electrical, where you're making

12:10

something up to explain something you can see.

12:13

So yeah, yeah, well, you

12:15

know, in my Bronze Age series, I'm talking

12:17

a lot about you know, the where, the where,

12:20

the oral tradition and the mythology you

12:22

know, ties in, because obviously that's what

12:24

I'm most interested in, and I think it's what's

12:26

going to connect well with my listeners. You know, I

12:28

love the kenosos of it all. You know, you look

12:30

there and you're like, well, I could see how this can look like a labyrinth.

12:33

Like there's a lot of bulls too. They had

12:35

a real thing for bull like canography. Like you

12:37

can see kind of where these things come about. When

12:39

there is you know, five hundred years

12:42

gap in between.

12:44

Right and absolutely and when you get like wall

12:46

paintings in Egypt that show

12:49

people leaping over bulls in front of

12:51

a labyrinth, and then you go, whoa, okay,

12:54

but that dates to seventeen

12:56

hundred BCE. You're like, wait a minute,

12:59

okay, or the Menoans in contact with Egypt

13:01

that that's yes, they are okay,

13:03

and you go from there. And same

13:05

thing with the Trojan War, which I think

13:08

is partner parcel of the whole Late Bronze Age collapse.

13:10

I've got no problem at all

13:12

with something having happened at Troy,

13:16

you know. And you can point to the Hittite records

13:18

where they mentioned not one, not two,

13:20

not three, but four wars that they

13:22

fought in and around Troy. So the

13:24

question for me is not was there

13:26

a Trojan War? The question for me

13:28

is which Trojan war was

13:31

Homer talking about? And how does

13:33

it link to the ones that the Hittites are

13:35

talking about. So I do think

13:37

that there's a lot of interplay between

13:39

history, archaeology, mythology,

13:42

and that's where all of this comes

13:44

in and is so much fun.

13:47

Yeah, well and it is. I mean, that's

13:49

yeah, That's what I love so much about it.

13:51

And what I've been trying to like dig into all of

13:53

my scripts for this series is just where I can

13:55

link in the mythological references,

13:57

the ways that you know, the what what

14:00

the people later were looking

14:02

at and how they were able to tie it to whatever

14:04

cultural memory they had, and then you

14:06

know, transform it into the myths that we have

14:08

today.

14:10

And then you look at things like systems

14:13

collapse, which is probably what the late Bronze

14:15

Age collapse is, and you realize

14:18

that if you're Colin Renfrew working

14:20

in the late seventies and you're defining

14:22

a systems collapse, one is that

14:25

you've got a so called dark age afterward,

14:28

in which people are looking back at the Golden

14:30

Age and reminiscing and you know, hello

14:32

Homer, right and hello,

14:35

he see it. So I'm like, yeah,

14:37

okay, and you know that poor

14:39

hecid. I wish that I were not living

14:41

in an age of iron, and like, yeah,

14:44

you are, deal with it?

14:45

So right, Oh,

14:48

the idea of poor he sid Yeah, okay,

14:52

well, I mean is it the perfect

14:54

way to dive a little deeper into you know, all

14:57

the all the different kind of things that went

14:59

into it. So you know, you mentioned the

15:01

wars of in the Hittite

15:03

record, and like,

15:05

what what are some I'm

15:08

trying to think of a better way of phrasing a

15:10

question, but I'm just so curious in

15:12

you know, all the different I suppose records.

15:15

I'm quite interested in the records that we

15:17

have that give us, you

15:19

know, some sense of what was

15:21

happening, and you know, if it can be tied

15:23

later to myths that come out, I mean, even better.

15:25

But I'm just so curious in what the records

15:27

say because I know, obviously we're dealing with

15:29

so many different different bits and

15:31

pieces when it comes to how we learn

15:34

about this collapse, but in terms of what they

15:36

were writing, like what, you know, what do

15:38

we know?

15:39

Yeah? So that's a very interesting question

15:41

because in addition to all the archaeology

15:44

where we've gone and we've dug up the cities, and

15:46

yes, this one's destroyed. No, this one isn't.

15:49

And this one gets hit by an earthquake,

15:51

this one gets hit by humans. We

15:53

do have a lot of written

15:55

records, as you say, but they

15:58

differ from society to society,

16:01

which is probably not surprising. And

16:03

they differ in the amount of information

16:06

we can get for them and

16:09

in how much we can trust them at face

16:11

value versus exaggeration. So,

16:14

for instance, we don't have nearly as

16:17

much information from the Myceonians

16:20

because they're writing in linear b and

16:23

their clay tablets are concerned with accounting

16:26

from the palaces, so they're you know,

16:28

they're talking about how many chariot wheels you've

16:30

got, how many sheep? They they

16:33

do not, perhaps surprisingly talk

16:35

about and we traded with Egypt,

16:38

and we traded with Cyprus. There's actually

16:40

no real mention of trade

16:43

or anything like that in

16:45

the linear.

16:45

Be Really, I was totally

16:47

wrong about that. Oh that's so interesting. I knew it was

16:50

all palace records, but it's.

16:51

All palace records. What we do have. What

16:53

we do have, though, are like

16:56

the names of items, where the foreign

16:58

name comes with the foreign item,

17:01

some of which might surprise you. I mean, there's

17:04

a name of a spice Cyprus, which

17:06

you know may or may not come from it's

17:09

not spelled quite the same. But the

17:11

word for ivory comes from the hit type,

17:14

the word for gold, the word for kiton.

17:16

I mean, a lot of these things come from the

17:18

Near East. The word for sesame

17:21

sasama, and linear b comes

17:23

directly out of Akkadian and all

17:26

of that. So, and we have the names

17:28

of a couple of people. There's one guy named

17:31

Api Appi Coutio,

17:34

the Egyptian, and he's in charge

17:37

of like eighty sheep picked canalso's like,

17:39

why is a guy named the Egyptian in charge? So

17:41

anyway, so the linear B tablets

17:44

from mainland Greece and Canalsos

17:46

are not as much help as you might expect.

17:49

On the other hand, the hittype records,

17:51

as I mentioned, talk about

17:54

wars, conflicts problems

17:57

with an area in northwestern

17:59

Anatolia modern Turkey,

18:02

in a region called Osawa

18:05

and Osoa seems to be a confederation of

18:07

like twenty two cities and

18:09

states. In fact, the word Aswa

18:13

gave rise to Asia. That's where we get

18:15

the name Asia from. And in

18:17

among the twenty two cities and towns

18:20

is, one called Tarusa

18:22

and another Willusa. Willis

18:25

seems to be the name for Troy for

18:27

the Hittites, and Tarusia

18:30

or Tarusa is apparently

18:33

the area around It's like the troad

18:35

versus Troy. But you

18:38

know, in Greek we've got

18:40

Troy, which is Ilios, of course,

18:43

and there

18:45

would have been a digamma originally, so

18:47

it would have been like a W. It would have been Willios,

18:50

and the W drops out over time. Willios

18:53

in Greek, Willusa in Hitsite.

18:55

Hello, it's Troy. So

18:58

there. And they're talking about, as I say, about

19:00

four conflicts starting

19:03

back in the fifteenth century BC.

19:06

So I'm actually wondering if the Trojan

19:08

War stories that come down

19:10

to us from Homer and the Epic cycle might

19:13

not be telescoping of two

19:15

or three hundred years of on again, off

19:18

again conflict at any

19:20

rate. The Hittite records also

19:23

talk about the fact that there is

19:25

drought and famine towards

19:28

the end of the Late Bronze Age, and

19:30

they talk about campaigns that their kings.

19:33

Do we know from archaeology

19:35

that they've actually abandoned their capital

19:37

city of Hatusa just before

19:39

the end, so when part of it's

19:41

burnt, it's already abandoned. So

19:44

we've got some info from the Hittite

19:46

records. The Egyptians,

19:48

of course, are useful, and that's where the Sea

19:51

Peoples come from, because

19:53

twice Pharaoh Marnepta

19:55

in twelve oh seven and Pharaoh

19:58

Ramsy's the third in eleven

20:01

seventy seven BC, And that's where

20:03

the title of my first book in this series

20:06

came from. They talk about

20:08

a coalition attacking

20:11

Egypt twice within you

20:13

know, thirty year period. We call

20:15

them the Sea People, so that's the name that the French

20:18

Egyptologists came up with, but

20:20

the Egyptians actually tell us their names

20:22

the Palsse, the

20:25

Dnian or Danuna, the

20:27

Shardana or Sheridan, the

20:29

Shekelesh, and so we've been

20:31

playing linguistic games with them. Are

20:34

the Shardana or the Shordan from Sardinia

20:36

for example? Are the Shekelesh

20:39

from Sicily? Are

20:41

the Danuna or Dnian? Is

20:43

that Homer? Is that?

20:45

Yeah? I thought right.

20:49

Exactly. And actually

20:51

in the earlier wave

20:53

there's a group called the equesh

20:56

are the equest the Achaeans, and

20:58

so do we have one group from the

21:00

Aegean coming in twelve oh seven, and another

21:03

group coming in eleven seventy

21:05

seven, and the Egyptians, who don't know better,

21:07

call one way the Equestion on the next

21:09

wave then or dany

21:12

So anyway, the only group that we

21:14

think we can actually identify is

21:17

the palesse set. Those are

21:19

the Philistines. And

21:21

in the Hebrew Bible it claims

21:24

the Philistines come from crete, from kaftor

21:26

so, you know, there may be something to that. Now,

21:29

the Egyptians say that they beat these

21:31

sea peoples both times, but

21:34

you know, can you take the Egyptian records

21:36

at face value?

21:37

Are they going to say when they.

21:38

Lost exactly when the

21:41

Egyptians ever say when they lost them?

21:43

Yeah, we got beat really badly,

21:45

Like they're not going to rate that.

21:46

Yeah, even the Battle of Cadessh, which

21:49

was a draw back in about twelve

21:51

seventy four that we know, you

21:54

know, we know it was a stalemate, but the

21:56

Egyptians claim a victory. So

21:58

so do the Hittites for that matter. But never mind.

22:00

So, you know, so one

22:04

place that has provided really interesting

22:06

records is the site of a

22:09

port city on what is now the

22:11

north coast of Syria. And there

22:14

we have archives from three

22:17

or four different private merchants

22:20

who are also working for

22:22

the palace, and they

22:25

talk about life on

22:27

the one hand going on just as

22:29

per normal right up until the end.

22:31

I mean, there's even one guy

22:33

who's sending his ships back and forth to

22:36

Crete. But then all of a

22:38

sudden we get reports

22:40

of enemy ships being seen,

22:44

that enemy troops

22:46

have landed at rasib

22:48

Andhani, which is right there

22:50

on the coast, and that troops

22:53

are advancing towards Ugarit. And

22:56

we know that Ugart

22:58

is destroyed by humans. There

23:00

are arrowheads in the walls, there's

23:03

a meter three feet of destruction,

23:06

and yet we don't know

23:08

who the enemies are because

23:11

they just say the enemy. So

23:16

from Ugart we then get an idea

23:18

of the end. And some of the other

23:20

texts, and these were ones that have only

23:22

just been published. They came out in French

23:25

in twenty sixteen, and

23:27

then an English translation

23:29

published by Yuri Cohen in twenty

23:32

twenty, where the

23:34

texts from Ugart are talking about

23:36

a famine and that

23:38

they're all dying, and that they're writing

23:41

to the pharaoh of Egypt,

23:44

including Marnepta, the same guy

23:46

as the thought to see people's and

23:48

the King of Ugart writes to Menepta saying

23:50

that we're dying here, there's a famine.

23:53

Can you send us anything? And

23:56

interestingly we're missing that letter, but

23:58

we have Marnepta's response, in

24:01

which he quotes the letter. He says,

24:03

you wrote to me saying X, Y and Z and

24:06

so here, I'm happy to help. These

24:08

sends seven thousand dried

24:11

fish, plus beads and

24:13

textiles. And I'm not sure how the

24:15

beads and textiles would help the famine,

24:17

but the dried fish went a long way.

24:19

I'm sure. Yeah. So there

24:22

we would have no reason to

24:24

doubt it. It's not exaggeration,

24:27

it's not a public record, it's

24:29

a private letter between kings

24:32

and so that for me is a very

24:34

useful textual source.

24:37

So, like I say, we've got a number of

24:39

different sources

24:41

from different cities. The question

24:44

is how much can we take at face value and

24:47

how much can we say, Okay, that really

24:49

was the situation, but I

24:52

would love to have more. For instance,

24:54

we don't have anybody writing contemporaneously

24:58

saying help, help, the sky is falling,

25:00

we're collapsing. Oh send help.

25:02

We've got earthquakes, you know, we don't

25:04

have that. We do have people saying we're

25:07

being invaded, send re fores months.

25:09

But you know, was anybody

25:12

aware at that time that

25:14

they were collapsing and wrote

25:16

about it? You know, was there somebody

25:19

who was at Clytemnestra that was

25:22

you know, predicting the future or other

25:24

people like that? Yeah? You was

25:26

there anybody like that? And a Southsayer

25:29

and you know, was she ignored? So we don't

25:31

have that, unfortunately, but we

25:34

do have a lot of information.

25:36

Yeah, it's really interesting that

25:39

that what the textual sources we do have

25:41

don't talk about the natural disasters

25:43

that we know were happening. Like I

25:45

have a real pet obsession with the eruption

25:48

of thera just because I love a good volcanic

25:50

eruption, Like they're just fascinating. And I've went

25:52

to Akritiri a couple of years ago

25:55

and just you know, game changer, and

25:57

it is fascinating that. I mean, I know that it's considerably

26:00

earlier, you know than when things are collapsing,

26:02

but I know, but still that there were earthquakes

26:05

happening so often, and it's interesting that

26:07

they don't ever, you know, write that

26:09

down. Of course, I think probably

26:12

a big problem with this time period and the writings

26:14

is that they were much more practical than they

26:16

were later. You know, there was the writing was much

26:18

more about whether it was going to be useful

26:21

versus like recording things for posterity.

26:24

Right exactly, And they weren't busy

26:27

doing that, that is for sure. But

26:29

we do know that there's a period of about

26:31

fifty years when there's earthquakes back

26:33

then and earthquake storm

26:36

as Amos North from Stanford has called

26:38

them, and they're affecting

26:40

many of the cities at that time, including

26:43

Troy. We know that Troy six is

26:45

destroyed by earthquakes. So

26:47

then there's another earthquake

26:49

at Comel Hatan in Egypt, where i'm an

26:51

Hotep the Third's palace was, and

26:55

at Mycena maybe

26:57

at Turns that's a bit debated now, but yeah,

26:59

we've got all that, and yet earthquakes

27:02

were a big factor and yet nobody's writing

27:04

about them, which okay, you know.

27:06

So it goes yeah, I

27:08

mean, it's it's interesting though, the earth shakes, Like you'd

27:10

think you'd write it down or like say

27:13

it to somebody, but I guess, you know, it's

27:16

not necessary for any kind

27:18

of record keeping maybe, but it's

27:20

yeah, it's interesting. So I

27:23

feel like this is now just me being like a nerd

27:25

for natural disasters, but like I

27:27

feel like, if there's an earthquake at Myceni, they'd probably

27:29

feel it a tarans like it's.

27:31

Not far yes, exactly

27:33

exactly you would think, so you would think so right, right,

27:36

And I realized I mispoke not quite

27:38

Amnesty. Of course it's Cassandra who

27:40

does all the profitsing, right, So you

27:42

know, were there any Cassandra's back

27:44

then, I'm sure there were, but they didn't

27:47

write their words down. So

27:50

and that's where where I mean the archaeology

27:53

comes in because you know, as

27:55

one of the books that I read when I was younger,

27:57

the Mute Stones Speak, you

28:00

know, we've got to get archaeology to tell

28:02

its story. And

28:04

it's wonderful when the written text

28:06

can supplement it, you know, and

28:08

that's something that we especially find in

28:11

the Iron Age when you've gotten the Neo Assyrian

28:13

texts and all of that. But here

28:16

at the end of the Late Bronside where

28:19

I would say, so reliant

28:21

on what the archaeologists are finding and

28:24

how they interpret it. But that's why

28:26

there's so much room for agreement

28:28

and disagreements when you're looking

28:30

at the same data and two

28:33

people can see two different stories there.

28:35

But we definitely have tons

28:38

of evidence for the late Bronzides, some written

28:40

and some not.

28:42

Mm well, and I know, you know, when

28:44

it comes to writing, especially during this period,

28:46

we're really dealing with the elites, right

28:48

that the people who have the ability

28:50

not only to write, but to have it

28:52

preserved. And I

28:54

think that that's something that you know, if

28:56

you're just coming to this as an outsider, like interested

28:59

in the subject, it's harder to remember because

29:01

now anyone can write something down and have it preserved.

29:05

But back then, like you know, there there's

29:07

a lot that has to go into some thing not

29:09

only being recorded but surviving for us

29:11

today. And that does mean that it is really

29:13

the people, the rich people, the elites

29:16

in power that can.

29:17

Do that exactly, and that is

29:19

very much a problem from back then. And that was some

29:21

of the comments that I got on

29:23

the first book, including in some reviews.

29:26

He's telling the story of the one percent,

29:28

what about the ninety nine percent? And

29:30

my response is, yeah, what about him? I'd love

29:32

to be able to talk about him. Show

29:35

me the evidence because and that even

29:38

after the collapse, you know, in

29:40

the aftermath and the Iron Age again,

29:42

and what I say in the sequel

29:44

that's just about to come out after

29:46

eleven seventy seven BC, in

29:49

the front of the book and the preface and

29:51

the prologue, I explicitly say,

29:53

I can only report what I know.

29:56

I can only report what we found in archaeology

29:58

or from the written text. And in the

30:00

case and I give the example of the Neo

30:02

Assyrians. They're talking about

30:05

the king and the administration, they're talking

30:07

about the one percent. I said, so I

30:09

can't really tell you what it was like

30:11

for a peasant out in the hinterlands

30:14

unless somebody has gone and excavated

30:16

it. So I say, unfortunately,

30:18

this is the story of the elite, and

30:21

I just can't tell you the story of

30:23

the unnamed millions

30:25

out there, much as I would want to do

30:27

that. So we are our

30:29

hands are tied by the evidence

30:31

that's been left to us, that's for sure. And

30:35

the least we can do is

30:37

acknowledge that and say, you

30:39

know, there's a lot that remains untold.

31:11

When I imagine the archaeological record does

31:14

give us certainly more when it

31:16

comes to you know, some level of normalcy

31:18

like obviously not deep out in the country unless you suddenly

31:20

figure out how where to excavate and can manage

31:23

it. But in terms of you know, even the

31:25

palatial structures and stuff, the archaeology

31:27

would would, I imagine give us some idea of

31:29

what a slightly more normal person lived.

31:31

Like, assuming somebody

31:34

has found a site and excavated

31:36

it. Absolutely right, But even

31:39

there it's it's worth

31:41

the mercy of our technology to a certain degree.

31:43

I mean, it used to be thought

31:45

that in the aftermath of

31:47

the Brownze age on the Greek mainland

31:49

that between seventy

31:51

and ninety percent of the people had died

31:54

or had migrated. We've now

31:56

lowered that a

31:59

maximum sixty percent diet or

32:01

migrated, maybe more like forty percent.

32:04

Sarah Murray and Ian Morris

32:06

have suggested the popular las plummeted

32:09

from six hundred thousand down to

32:11

about three hundred and thirty thousand people

32:13

on the Greek mainland. But

32:16

part of that, part of the reason why we've

32:18

ratcheted it back and said, oh,

32:20

it wasn't ninety percent the diet, it's only

32:23

forty percent, is because now

32:25

we're finding more iron age sits

32:27

that we hadn't been able to find before,

32:30

and so with every new site you're like, Okay,

32:32

more people survived or whatever. So again

32:36

I keep in mind that when we're

32:38

calling something like

32:41

the aftermath of the collapse a dark gauge,

32:44

it's frequently a reference to the fact that

32:46

we don't know what happened. It's dark

32:48

to us, which is why

32:51

you've got so many scholarly

32:53

articles where the title is

32:55

new light on the dark Gauge.

32:58

You know, new light. It's like, eventually there's

33:00

enough light. It's not a dark age anymore. And

33:02

in fact, I don't think that

33:05

the Iron Age is a dark age,

33:07

and that's what a lot of Skylar are

33:09

arguing now. The problem is

33:11

that the general public doesn't know that yet.

33:14

So you still see the centuries

33:17

after the Late Run's Age collapse late

33:20

twelfth, eleventh, tenth, ninth, even down

33:22

into the eighth still called the

33:24

world's first dark age. I mean, even

33:26

the pr for eleven

33:29

seventy seven talked about

33:31

the aftermath being the world's first dark

33:33

age. So in the sequel at

33:35

the end, I make the

33:38

argument and I agree with my

33:40

colleagues that say stop calling

33:42

this a dark age, just like the Middle ages.

33:45

They don't want theirs called the dark Age anymore,

33:47

same with us. So I'm

33:50

in the camp that says, can we just call it

33:53

the Iron Age, which is accurate,

33:56

doesn't cause you know, cast any aspersions.

33:59

But so anyway,

34:02

so it's part of how

34:04

much we know, and that's where

34:06

the technology that our including

34:10

remote sensing and that are surveying techniques

34:12

and all that is, if

34:16

you'll excuse me, shedding more light

34:18

on this period.

34:22

No, I think it's really important to emphasize that, Like it's

34:24

something that I've been aware of in writing this of

34:26

you know, both noting that it used to be called

34:29

or and it's still sometimes called a dark age,

34:31

but all the reasons why that's not really applicable

34:33

and just is misleading because I think that

34:36

people do really consider a dark age

34:38

more to be about like, you know, what

34:40

is happening versus this idea of a lack

34:42

of sources. And that's really applicable

34:44

to the Middle Ages too, where you know, people

34:46

considered it a dark age is in terms of like you know, human

34:48

intellect and stuff, and that's just it's very unfortunate

34:51

for the people that we're living then. And I think about

34:53

that with the Iron Age a lot, because I

34:56

mean the Iron Age is when we get the development of everything

34:59

that I certainly obsess over when it comes to

35:01

ancient Greece, Like they weren't doing nothing. They

35:03

weren't some suddenly dumbed down

35:05

group of people, Like just a

35:07

lot of things change and they stopped, you know, recording

35:10

things in the same way, and so we don't know. But

35:12

that doesn't mean it wasn't happening exactly.

35:15

It doesn't mean it wasn't happening, and it doesn't mean

35:17

they weren't trying their best. And

35:21

even a dark day, it's not you know, the total

35:23

collapse in degeneration with wild

35:25

dogs howling, and you know people

35:29

and I do talk about this at the towards

35:31

the end of the sequel, but yeah,

35:33

you know, we're going to get the standardization

35:36

of the alphabet courtesy of

35:38

the Phoenicians, who then bring it over to Greece

35:40

and to Italy for that matter, and

35:43

so our people in Greece are going to be able

35:45

to start writing, certainly

35:47

by the eighth century, and maybe

35:49

even earlier. There's some new research

35:51

that is debating whether

35:54

the alphabet made it over as early

35:56

as the eleventh century. Which I'm

35:59

in total favor of because that's when

36:02

it gets standardized over in the Near East.

36:05

Why would Greece be three hundred years

36:07

behind. Bring it on over and

36:10

you know, we've got I think at some

36:12

point there's thirty three different variations

36:15

of the early alphabet, so they're experimenting.

36:18

So yeah, this is a time of innovation.

36:21

It's the time of invention. And

36:23

not only do you get

36:26

the standardization of the alphabet, you also get

36:29

iron and it gives the name to this.

36:31

You get the invention of

36:34

iron, which is probably courtesy

36:36

of the Cypriots, it's looking like right

36:38

now, and they're making bimetallic

36:42

knives and weapons where the blade

36:44

is made of iron and the hilt, you

36:46

know, inlaid with bone or wood or

36:49

ivory, but fastened on with rivets

36:51

made of bronze. So you get both bronze

36:54

and iron. And it looks like the Cypriots

36:57

are kind of making

36:59

the transformation from

37:04

the segue, if you will, from the Bronze age

37:06

to the Iron age, and that on Cyprus

37:08

they've been working with copper all this time

37:10

and now they move into iron,

37:13

and along along with

37:16

the exportation of

37:18

these objects, both degrees and the Southern

37:20

Levan. It looks like they're also exporting

37:23

the know how, the technology,

37:25

and then of course you've got iron ore in every

37:27

country and so everybody's then able

37:29

to make it. So this is a

37:32

period of invention,

37:35

innovation, transformation. And

37:37

one thing that I take a look at in

37:40

this sequel, I

37:42

borrow the adaptive cycle,

37:44

which is something that you frequently see in environmental

37:48

studies, biology and such. But the

37:51

basic ideas you know, empires rise and

37:53

fall, right, that's the adaptive cycle.

37:55

You get a release phase and then you

37:57

get an innovation phase and then everything

37:59

comes back. I think that's what we're

38:01

looking at here. The Bronze

38:04

Age collapse is the release phase,

38:06

the omega phase in adaptive

38:09

cycle, and then the Iron Age

38:12

not a dark age, but it's the alpha

38:14

phase, which is defined

38:17

as a period of invention

38:19

and innovation trying to grapple

38:21

with what's just happened. And I

38:24

think that's a perfect analogy

38:26

right here. So it's almost

38:28

the opposite of a dark

38:30

age. And in fact, some

38:33

scholars like John Poppadopolis

38:35

and Sarah Morris at UCLA have

38:38

argued that this is not a dark

38:40

age, it's far from it, and

38:42

so have some of the people that are studying

38:45

the Near East. So I'm just literally

38:48

jumping in the bandwagon and

38:51

agreeing with you that this is

38:53

a time of invention and innovation.

38:55

It's actually a very exciting

38:58

time. I mean, I'm a Bronze

39:00

Age person, that's where my heart lies. But

39:03

I have to admit that the Iron Age is pretty

39:05

darn interesting, So I'll give

39:07

them that.

39:09

Well, I'm really big on the classical and archaic,

39:11

so we can kind of find the middle ground there

39:13

in the Iron But I mean, it's

39:15

so interesting to me that it's ever been called the Dark Age

39:17

because regardless of what we did or did not know,

39:19

like what we've known for a long time is that it did

39:22

give rise to the oral tradition that would become

39:24

like the Homeric epics. Like the

39:27

idea of referring to the time when those

39:29

were being created, you know, as

39:31

a dark age is so ironic given

39:33

that you know, so much of quote unquote

39:36

Western civilization has been attributed to

39:38

the Greeks, like during and from that,

39:40

I was like, why, like, there's just so much kind

39:42

of happening there that seems contradictory.

39:44

Yeah. Absolutely, But if you think

39:47

back too, the Greeks

39:50

themselves never

39:52

talked about a dark age. No,

39:55

that's as James Whitley

39:57

once said, the dark Age of Greece is our own

39:59

conception. And you know, and

40:02

that's where again John Popadopoulos said, the

40:04

Greeks didn't know of a dark age. Why

40:06

not trust their better judgments? And I'm like,

40:08

yeah, why not trust their better

40:10

judgment? Right? So yeah,

40:12

I would absolutely agree. Any

40:14

age that's got everyone

40:17

from Homer to Hecia Disapho went

40:19

onward, is not,

40:21

in my mind a dark

40:23

age.

40:24

Yeah. Yeah, they're giving us amazing stuff

40:26

that we all still love. So yeah,

40:29

Now the alphabet that

40:32

you mentioned, you know, the sort of new research coming

40:34

through about when it was, you

40:36

know, happening in Greece, was

40:38

that the some of the stuff that's been published recently

40:40

about on Andros. There

40:43

was something that recently came out about that.

40:45

Yeah. I don't know if it is or not. I'd

40:47

have to look, but I'm thinking of

40:50

the research that Wilhelmina

40:52

Wall has been publishing out of I

40:54

think I think she's at Leiden but doing

40:57

really interesting work on the origins

40:59

of the alphabet. But yeah, this is new

41:05

stuff rally, and

41:08

there's a couple of Greek archaeologists

41:10

working on this as well. So

41:13

I don't know what the pushback is going to be

41:15

from the actual philologist

41:18

or linguists or anything like that. But from

41:21

an archaeological point of view, looking

41:23

at the earliest Phoenician

41:26

alphabet and the earliest inscriptions

41:30

in Greece, I

41:33

think we can push it back further. But Brio

41:37

Yanni's has been talking about this anyway,

41:41

the field is definitely alive and well, and

41:43

I think it may shake up

41:46

some of the tried

41:48

and true things that we've been teaching for years.

41:51

So I mean, there are other things that we're

41:53

going to shake up. I mean, I start my book by

41:56

dismissing the Dorian invasion.

41:59

Lovely, I'd love to hear more about that.

42:01

Well, there's nothing here. It didn't happen, Okay,

42:04

No, just no. Exactly

42:07

all the maps that have the Dorian coming down,

42:09

I'm like, no, exactly. So I

42:11

actually start the book with that. I

42:15

end the book pleading for no dark ages.

42:17

It's an iron age. I begin the book

42:19

with the Dorians. In fact, I start

42:21

out with the Dorians

42:24

came down from the north,

42:26

brandishing their weapons of iron. They

42:28

overran Greece and took

42:30

over and

42:32

d and then I pause

42:35

figurative literally, and then say,

42:38

but it probably never happened, And

42:41

what that's a good way to start to open

42:44

the book, right right, So, yeah,

42:46

but it probably never happened. The problem is that

42:48

you see it all over the internet. You

42:51

see it in online encyclopedias,

42:53

and I actually call out one or two

42:55

by name in the book with

42:58

the link, so, which means I'm

43:00

pretty sure within three weeks of the book

43:02

appearing in mid April that the

43:04

online encyclopedias will have changed

43:07

their entry and either the link

43:09

will be dead or they will have changed

43:11

it to not say what I've got. So I've

43:14

got screenshots, I've got the receipts.

43:17

So but yeah, they still talk about

43:19

the Dorians coming sweeping down from the

43:21

north at about twelve hundred PC and

43:23

ending my Synian civilization. And I'm

43:25

like no, And

43:28

I reached back and quote scholars

43:30

all the way back to like Rheese Carpenter in the

43:32

sixties saying things

43:34

like the Dorian invasion is a mirage,

43:37

that it's an invasion without invaders,

43:40

that everything they're supposed to bring with

43:42

them is already there and

43:44

can be attributed to them. So you

43:47

know, I think it's like herotidaus

43:49

enthusidities. We're trying to, in

43:52

a way make this up so they could explain the

43:54

dialects of Greece, you know, Ionic

43:56

versus Dorac versus whatever. But archaeologically

44:00

speaking, there's no evidence for it. Now, of

44:02

course, we do have the problem

44:04

with evidence of absence or absence

44:06

of evidence is not and all that right,

44:09

absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

44:12

We can't find the Dorian invasion. One

44:14

could argue that doesn't mean it didn't

44:16

exist. I do think it didn't exist.

44:19

What we've got instead, how about

44:21

if it's not an invasion, but it's a

44:24

migration. We do have people

44:26

moving back and forth at that time, not a

44:28

problem, but there is a world

44:30

of difference between a migration and

44:33

an invasion, two very different

44:35

things. So I

44:38

start out the book saying, if

44:40

we're wrong about the Dorian invasion,

44:43

and we have to change our textbooks because

44:46

they're in the textbooks. I mean the

44:48

textbook that I was using for my Ancient Mediterranean

44:51

Civilization's class. It's got a page

44:53

and a half two pages on the Dorian Invasion.

44:56

And I would tell my freshmen. Because it's a

44:58

freshman class. I would say, you know, rip

45:00

those pages out of the textbook because that's wrong,

45:03

right, or if we're going to discuss it, let's

45:05

discuss it. But so

45:07

it's still around, and we just have to we

45:10

have to let the general public know that that

45:12

stuff is not right. So you know, there's

45:14

another episode for you, Yes but you

45:17

know, or or no, not so much.

45:19

The Dorian Invasion. Did it happen? No?

45:22

Right, But again, this is

45:24

not news to scholars, but

45:26

it is news to the general public. And

45:29

everywhere I look on the internet, they're like, oh,

45:32

and I'm I'm fully expecting

45:34

that after the sequel comes out, we'll

45:36

see a whole other sloop of

45:39

podcasts of people man explaining why

45:41

the Dorian Invasion either happened or didn't

45:44

happen and taking

45:46

credit for everything that you know that we've

45:48

done. But anyway, there's lots

45:50

of I guess one could say, miss

45:52

and legends about this period,

45:56

some of which are accurate and some of which

45:59

just aren't, and we got to figure out

46:01

which is which.

46:02

M M. It's funny I'm

46:04

trying to think of, you know, because I really don't touch

46:06

on history too much. As outside of like, you

46:09

know, the kind of classical period history or surrounding

46:11

the playwrights, because I love them and

46:13

they talk about myths. But you know, so I've

46:15

touched into history a couple of times

46:17

on the show, you know, in my own research,

46:20

and one of them was last year I did a

46:22

series on Sparta and it was

46:24

broadly about the Sparta sort of

46:26

the Spartan mirage, you know, the myths

46:29

that Sparta created for themselves, right, And

46:31

I think that's the only time I've ever touched on the Dorian

46:34

invasion. And I'm trying to remember what I said, but I

46:37

from what I remember of looking into it, it felt

46:39

to me more like a Spartan myth than it did

46:42

history. And so I'm hoping that that's kind

46:44

of where I landed at the time, because that's what it felt

46:46

like. It's just like another of the things

46:49

that the Spartans kind of, you know, mythologized

46:51

about themselves, and that kind of took it, sort

46:53

of caught hold and lasted.

46:55

Yeah, I would agree. I would absolutely agree

46:57

that it was part of the Spartan mirage,

47:00

all the stuff that Paul Cartlidge and other people

47:02

talk about, and yeah, the Dorians

47:04

are part and parcel of that. They were very

47:06

important for those Spartans. So

47:09

yeah, I absolutely agree. And in

47:11

my History of Ancient Greece course

47:13

when I teach it, I say the exact same

47:15

thing. I touch on it as well.

47:18

Yeah, I feel like I thought it wasn't. Well,

47:21

clearly I didn't. I don't know. Now I'm fascinated, but

47:24

yeah, I mean it always seemed unlikely to

47:26

me, like why it just yeah,

47:28

it feels like an unlikely explanation

47:31

for what happened, And.

47:33

Well, the thing is unlikely or

47:36

not. I mean, the Dorian invasion, it

47:39

could happen. It's very much like the

47:41

Sea People's. I mean, in the original eleven

47:44

seventy seven book, I start with the

47:46

Sea People's and so now in the sequel I thought,

47:49

okay, let me start with the Dorians, and

47:51

so we have the same sort of questions like if

47:54

the Sea peoples actually did invade

47:56

like the Egyptians, then why

47:58

couldn't the Dorians have invaded also?

48:02

Right? And one could ask

48:04

that the part of the problem

48:06

is that for the Dorians, as I said,

48:08

there's no archaeological evidence. For

48:10

the Sea People's, there's no archaeological

48:13

evidence either, you know, we can't

48:15

find them anywhere. We do have textual

48:17

evidence, right, the shard And that's

48:19

part of the problem. The Shardana or

48:21

the Shurdan. They're mercenaries.

48:24

We see them fighting in the Near

48:26

East, both for Egypt and against

48:28

Egypt from like the fourteenth

48:30

century on. They're known quantities.

48:34

And yet point me to a

48:36

site anywhere that

48:39

you can say, this is where the Shardana come

48:41

from, right in Sardinia or wherever

48:44

there isn't one yet, right,

48:46

And even Ugart

48:48

where they talk about the enemy ships showing up,

48:51

they don't say the Shardana. There is one

48:53

text that mentions a Shardana.

48:56

So we've got the same

48:58

sort of thing for the

49:00

sea people's and for the Dorians. And

49:03

so I guess one could ask, and I'm just

49:05

talking off the top of my head here, but why

49:08

do we accept the sea peoples and

49:11

not the Dorians. Well, the

49:13

sea peoples, I now think are

49:16

as I mentioned, are part of the equation

49:19

in terms of being victims as

49:21

opposed to oppressors. They are migrating

49:24

because of a drought, and

49:27

I would have no problem with the Dorians doing

49:30

that as well. I have no problem

49:32

with the Dorians migrating at

49:35

the end of the Late Bronze Age. I

49:38

just don't want the Dorians invading.

49:41

And similarly, I'm not so sure

49:43

the Sea People's invaded per

49:45

se. I think they are migrating, and

49:47

we've got evidence, especially in the

49:50

Southern Levant now, for

49:52

the Philistines, who are part of the Sea Peoples,

49:55

as having been a much more peaceful

49:57

assimilation into

49:59

the region than one would expect.

50:02

So maybe that's the answer. And

50:05

I guess what I'm doing in both books

50:07

is arguing for a migration rather

50:10

than an invasion, for both to see people's

50:13

and the Dorians. And I think that

50:15

explains the evidence we've got. It

50:17

explains some of the tics that we've got,

50:20

and it doesn't do away with them completely.

50:23

It just massages it slightly

50:26

to fit the evidence that we've got. So,

50:28

you know, you want to call it a Dorian migration,

50:31

I'm cool. Call it a Dorian

50:33

invasion. I'm not so sure about that. But

50:35

you know, again, but this is nuances,

50:38

this is semantics, and

50:41

you know, somebody out in the general

50:43

populace is going to say invasion,

50:46

migration, whatever. I'm like, no,

50:48

not whatever, let's talk

50:51

about it.

50:51

Mm hmmm. Well, and that's I'm

50:54

so glad that you brought it up that way because I

50:56

think, I mean, one of the things that we've been

50:58

really trying to drill in in this whole series

51:01

is the way that the ancient Mediterranean

51:03

was broadly about migration, like

51:06

the way that you know, it wasn't about

51:08

you know, this group of people lived in

51:10

this land and only in this land,

51:13

and they are the indigenous peoples, and

51:15

and you know, across Mediterranean it was a

51:17

very shared space. There was a lot

51:19

of going back and forth, a lot of migration, especially

51:22

if we're dealing with drought and other

51:24

like climate change things that would force people

51:27

to migrate. And I

51:29

think that especially because of

51:31

the myth of Western civilization, you

51:33

know, we have this idea that like ancient

51:35

Greece existed in a little bubble,

51:38

a little vacuum of like just

51:40

them, and they were very Greek and

51:42

they started everything. And it's like even the

51:44

ancient Greeks are like, well, the Phoenicians

51:46

gave us the alphabet, and you know,

51:48

Aphrodite probably came from Cyprus,

51:51

and you know, like they give us so much

51:53

evidence for migration, both

51:56

of culture and language and

51:58

people. But I think it really

52:00

is important to remind everyone that

52:02

this wasn't like set you

52:04

know it, Migration happened a lot

52:07

and a lot of people, a lot of different

52:09

people from different places lived together

52:12

in the same place, quite peacefully

52:15

and quite happily. And it wasn't

52:17

always about an invading force

52:19

like I think we think about it because of later

52:21

colonialism. We imagine

52:23

that if there is a large group

52:25

of people, it is always going to be an invading

52:27

force. And I think that that's a really important

52:30

myth to break, and you know, and

52:32

really just point

52:34

out all the evidence that suggest that that's not really

52:37

what was happening.

52:37

Broadly, I agree. And if you

52:40

look, if you look closely

52:42

at the sea people's inscriptions in

52:44

Egypt, the one I'm thinking

52:46

of Ramses the third and his

52:48

inscription on his wallet med at Habu.

52:51

In addition to a scene of the

52:53

naval battle between the Egyptians

52:55

and the Sea peoples, he's got right next

52:57

to it a scene of the sea people's literally

53:01

migrating. You see the women

53:03

and the children sitting on an

53:05

ox cart, you know, with their Samsonite

53:07

luggage in the cart with them. You

53:10

know, it's a migration. It's not a

53:12

bunch of men popped up on testosterone

53:15

just rating. It's an entire

53:17

family migrating, and we see

53:20

the picture. So I actually

53:22

said in the original

53:24

book that I thought that the

53:27

analogy for the Sea People's would

53:29

be the dust Bowl

53:32

in the nineteen thirties in the

53:34

United States, where the people moved

53:36

from Oklahoma to California.

53:40

More recently, I would say the

53:43

people fleeing the Civil War in Syria

53:46

would be the equivalent of

53:48

Sea People's. You know, they're just looking for a

53:51

better home where there, you know, not in the middle

53:53

of a war zone. People

53:56

migrating trying to get to Europe, for example.

53:59

These are all, I would say, examples

54:03

where I wouldn't call that an

54:05

invasion per se, I would

54:07

call it a migraine. And I think it's

54:09

the same at the end of

54:11

the Late Bronze Age, in the beginning of the Iron Age,

54:14

we definitely have evidence

54:16

for lots of migration, not

54:18

just in Greece, but elsewhere as

54:20

well. There

54:23

may be that may be were the kingdoms

54:25

of like Moab and Ammon

54:28

and even Etom. Even people they're

54:31

either migrating or they're nomadic at

54:34

the time. At the end of the Late Bronze Age, And

54:37

of course I think it was Herodotus

54:40

that talks about the Etruscans

54:42

migrating from Anatolia because

54:45

of a drought in about twelve hundred BCS.

54:47

So you know, there you go, there's

54:50

your Herodotus talking about a

54:52

drought and a migration at the end

54:54

of the Late Bronze Age. Whether it's accurate

54:56

or not, you know, who knows, but.

54:58

Sure, but when they're writing it into their

55:01

myths or their you know, history or what

55:03

Herodotas wanted to be history like, it

55:05

still is coming from somewhere. It's

55:08

just recently read yesterday somebody. It

55:11

was a whole thing on Twitter, but essentially

55:13

it was like this the

55:16

notion that Rome was like not a city

55:18

of immigrants, which is so

55:20

absurd, and Rome obviously

55:23

like, yes, you know, I won't pretend

55:25

that the aia it is not Augustine propaganda,

55:27

but the idea of Romans

55:30

coming from from Troy

55:32

like had to have come from somewhere, even if

55:34

they just imagined themselves as

55:36

a city of immigrants. That's an incredibly important,

55:39

like cultural tradition that they

55:42

established for themselves. And

55:44

I think that it it's

55:46

really important to point this stuff out because today, our

55:48

modern ideas are so based in like

55:51

fear mongering and all these different things about migrants,

55:53

and you know, it's like it's just horrible stuff. And

55:55

I think that often especially like

55:58

you know, just what I call history bros. But

56:00

I appreciate that you call them man's plains

56:02

some please, like you know that the YouTuber guys,

56:05

and it, like, I think that that mentality

56:07

comes into those that kind of telling

56:09

of this idea of invasions instead

56:11

of migrations, and it just kind

56:13

of perpetuates these problems that we have in the

56:15

modern world and which have like you know, really

56:19

really important modern issues

56:21

attached to them, but then are being put on the ancient

56:23

world. And when we put that kind of stuff

56:25

on the ancient world, it almost gives legitimacy

56:28

to the to the actions of today, right,

56:30

this suggestion that, oh, well, it was an invasion and

56:32

it was bad and they fought back or whatever it

56:34

is, you know, but yeah, whereas

56:37

a lot of it was migration. Not to say that they weren't having wars

56:39

obviously, but like it's important to point out

56:41

what things are migrations versus invasions.

56:44

Absolutely, and I think that's where a

56:46

lot of the what did you just call them

56:48

the history bros. Yeah,

56:52

they they lose

56:54

the or they never knew the nuances

56:57

and what's

56:59

the saying the devils and the details. So

57:01

the nuances matter at this absolutely

57:04

yeah, absolutely so, especially

57:07

if you're ing and trying to

57:09

compare the modern world to the ancient world.

57:12

You know, you need you need to have the facts

57:14

straight. And a lot of

57:16

the people on YouTube, let's just

57:18

say, do not have their facts

57:20

completely in order.

57:22

No, yeah, it's not the best. I mean

57:24

not to say that there aren't some good some good work being

57:26

put out there, but unfortunately the loudest

57:29

ones tend to be the ones that are the most wrong.

57:31

Right, Yes, there are some very good ones.

57:33

I should not wump everybody together, but

57:36

yeah, there are others where you

57:38

would definitely want a yes, but or

57:41

no not so much.

57:42

Well, sensationalizing gets your views unfortunately,

57:45

Right, It's like all the documentaries

57:47

that we see that have utter nonsense

57:50

infused in them because sensational is

57:52

exciting.

57:53

So it is, uh, it is.

57:55

I would love to hear more about,

57:58

you know, what's happening at this period

58:00

beyond Greece, because obviously I focus

58:02

mostly on Greece, but I want you know, we've

58:04

talked a little about the Hittites and the Egyptians, which

58:07

is wonderful, but I know a lot was happening more

58:09

further inland, wasn't it, like even into Mesopotamian

58:12

stuff. Were they having like a similar kind of collapse

58:14

or their own version?

58:16

Yes and no. And this is where this

58:19

is, first of all, where it gets very interesting, but

58:22

also where the

58:25

sequel becomes even more important.

58:27

So on the face of

58:29

it, at the end of the Late Bronze Age,

58:33

you know, everyone goes down. Actually

58:35

what happens is it's the network

58:38

that goes down, the globalized

58:40

Mediterranean network, as

58:42

Susan Sherritt and others have called it,

58:45

the ones that are linking everybody

58:47

where nobody is more than three hops

58:49

away from anybody else, so that

58:52

it's a small world network. That

58:54

network collapses at the end of the

58:56

Late Bronze it's the links are cut.

58:59

The actual societies

59:02

are each affected in different ways,

59:05

and that's what I'm exploring

59:07

in the sequel. Wonderful,

59:39

but that's where it comes in because at

59:42

the end of the Late Bronze Age, on the surface

59:44

of it, it looks like the Assyrians and

59:46

the Babylonians do better

59:49

than many of the other people. And

59:51

indeed they're all the way in

59:53

inland Mesopotamia, as you said, the tigers

59:57

and Euphrates rivers. They

59:59

are too far inland to be hit

1:00:02

by the sea peoples. They at

1:00:05

first, at least don't seem to have been hit

1:00:07

by the drought and the famine, maybe

1:00:09

because they're on tigers and Euphrates

1:00:12

and in other words, they seem to have survived

1:00:15

better well. As it turns

1:00:17

out, and I go into in the sequel,

1:00:19

the answer is yes and no. They

1:00:22

do survive longer, at

1:00:26

least at first without

1:00:28

the drought and without the famine. They're not

1:00:30

impacted immediately. They're

1:00:32

not impacted necessarily at

1:00:35

eleven seventy seven like the others,

1:00:38

nor do they have to fight or anything like

1:00:40

that. But they

1:00:42

do keep records. And this is what's nice,

1:00:44

is that they don't collapse. It's not how

1:00:46

systems collapse. They still have the king,

1:00:48

they still have the administration, they still

1:00:51

have the economy, they still have the standing

1:00:53

army, they still know how to write right.

1:00:56

They haven't lost civilization

1:00:58

per se. They're definitely not in

1:01:00

a dark age, but we

1:01:04

are missing royal records

1:01:06

for about seventy five years.

1:01:08

At that period, there just aren't any

1:01:11

right, they're still around, but we don't

1:01:13

have records. We don't know why are they writing

1:01:16

on some other material or

1:01:18

whatever. And then when we do start

1:01:20

getting records again about seventy five

1:01:23

years into it, down

1:01:25

at about say eleven hundred BC, they

1:01:28

start saying, we now have

1:01:30

a drought, we now have famine,

1:01:33

we are now resorting to cannibalism.

1:01:36

So they do get hit,

1:01:39

but it's like almost one hundred years

1:01:41

later than anybody else. But

1:01:43

what happens is they also rebound

1:01:46

because they never lose everything entirely.

1:01:49

And so by the ninth century, the

1:01:52

Neo Assyrians are not only back up and running,

1:01:54

but they're busy conquering all

1:01:56

of the ancient earies. In fact,

1:01:59

one thing of has changed. Back in

1:02:01

the Bronze Age, like the Assyrians and the Babylonians,

1:02:04

they were good commercial

1:02:07

partners, were trading

1:02:09

with everybody else. Right, we even

1:02:11

have Minoan sandals

1:02:13

that are sent over to Hamarabi of

1:02:16

Babylon in the eighteenth century.

1:02:18

That's adorable. I don't know why it's so cute.

1:02:21

It is cute, but it's even better because he didn't

1:02:23

like him, and he returned them, and

1:02:26

it tells us that in the records, and

1:02:29

I've always wondered, oh, why did he

1:02:31

return them? Are they too

1:02:33

small? You know, to last millennium?

1:02:35

But anyway, so the Assyrians and the

1:02:37

Babylonians in the Brownze Age were good, dependable

1:02:41

trading partners. Now

1:02:44

in the aftermath of the collapse, the

1:02:46

people that the Assyrians and Babylonians

1:02:48

were trading with, many of them had collapsed.

1:02:51

The Assyrians go down, the Mycenaeans

1:02:53

go down. What the Neo Assyrians

1:02:56

do when they come back up in the ninth

1:02:58

century is they start attacking and

1:03:02

taking the stuff. Whereas before

1:03:04

they've been like, look, I'll give you this for this and this

1:03:06

for this, now they're like, give me what

1:03:08

you got, right, give me what you got, and

1:03:11

they are either demanding

1:03:13

in tribute or actually capturing

1:03:16

everything. So that changes

1:03:18

in the Iron Age is the nature

1:03:21

of the relationships with the

1:03:23

Assyrians and Babylonians. So you

1:03:25

know, it's changed a little bit. And

1:03:28

what's happening in the Iron Age is quite

1:03:30

different in some ways from the Bronze Age.

1:03:33

But I would say that's

1:03:35

where the combination of doing the research

1:03:37

for the first book eleven seventy

1:03:39

seven BC. Added to

1:03:42

the research for the second book,

1:03:44

The After eleven seventy seven

1:03:46

BC has given me

1:03:49

and hopefully the readers, a more

1:03:51

nuanced look at what happened

1:03:54

before, during, and after

1:03:56

the collapse, so not just

1:03:58

in terms of resilience and everything, but

1:04:01

in how the different relationships

1:04:03

were affected. So one

1:04:06

of the things that I say in the sequel is the

1:04:09

collapse of the Late Bronze Age is messy.

1:04:12

The aftermath is even more

1:04:14

messy.

1:04:15

Mm hmmm. I mean makes sense when

1:04:18

something that big goes down, Yeah,

1:04:20

it's gonna leave a mess behind.

1:04:22

This is true, and that's interesting. But you

1:04:24

know, again from the archaeology and the textual

1:04:26

records, we only have bits and pieces.

1:04:28

So I compare it to a kaleidoscope

1:04:31

where you're looking through and you've got all these pieces

1:04:33

and sometimes they can form a picture

1:04:36

and other times they're just you know, disjointed

1:04:39

fragments, and we've got to put

1:04:41

them all together.

1:04:43

Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. I

1:04:46

it kind of you can kind of see how

1:04:49

uh culture would

1:04:51

would kind of get to that point if they're having their their

1:04:54

you know, drought and famine, late and

1:04:56

they've seen that everyone else has kind of fallen around

1:04:58

them, Like I can I can see how

1:05:00

a mentality would develop of like, well, if we can't

1:05:02

do the trading, like, but we're also the ones

1:05:04

who kind of, you know, stayed

1:05:07

the strongest as everyone crumbled.

1:05:09

Like the the immediate reaction that kind of

1:05:11

time period is to be like, well, I guess we'll take what we used

1:05:14

to trade.

1:05:14

For, right, Absolutely, we've still got

1:05:16

our standing army. You don't. We're just

1:05:18

going to come and take your stuff, right

1:05:20

yeah, yeah.

1:05:21

Yeah, And like you know,

1:05:24

they used to have diplomacy, but it wasn't possible

1:05:26

anymore. And it's so interesting.

1:05:28

Yeah, well, and it's interesting

1:05:31

how much you know, being inland can

1:05:33

help. But it makes sense, you know, like even

1:05:35

in just in terms of like the natural

1:05:38

the earth factors. You know, it

1:05:40

is such a different place compared to like

1:05:42

when you're right on the coast of the Mediterranean.

1:05:44

And exactly, but look, you know

1:05:46

the Phoenicians who were on the coast,

1:05:49

Look, they were able to take advantage

1:05:52

and in contrast to the Neo Assyrians,

1:05:54

the Phoenicians are busy trading

1:05:57

with everybody. You don't see, you

1:05:59

know, the Phoenicians conquering, you

1:06:02

know.

1:06:02

Okay, so after so they're still doing that.

1:06:04

Yeah, I mean, you do eventually get

1:06:07

the Phoenician colonists, just

1:06:09

like you get Greek colonization, and so you

1:06:11

get you know, the Phoenicians on Cyprus,

1:06:14

you get the Phoenicians founding Carthage

1:06:17

on all of that, and there

1:06:19

would be obviously some military

1:06:21

to go with that, but some of

1:06:24

the earliest evidence we have them is

1:06:26

I would say, more peaceful maritime

1:06:29

ventures in which they're going

1:06:31

out and trading for what they need and

1:06:34

including as far west as Spain.

1:06:36

So but you know, then eventually

1:06:39

you can't blame them just I mean, I don't know, maybe

1:06:42

you could blame them just like Greece, you

1:06:44

know, and the Archaic period and the colonizing

1:06:47

Curied, they start sending out,

1:06:49

well, in the Greeks case, start sending out their excess

1:06:51

population, and so

1:06:54

we get the Phoenicians expanding

1:06:56

that way too. But again at

1:06:59

first, it's I like to imagine

1:07:01

it much more peaceful. We got

1:07:03

this, you got that, we need it, let's

1:07:06

go as opposed to the Assyrians with you

1:07:08

got that, we want to give it to us.

1:07:12

But again, one thing I would

1:07:15

hasten to add is

1:07:18

that we're coming at this from

1:07:20

the Neo Assyrian written records

1:07:23

for the most part, and I

1:07:26

do not know that we

1:07:28

can take them all, or

1:07:31

most or any at face value,

1:07:34

because again, the Neo Assyrians are very much

1:07:36

like the Egyptians. Neo Assyrians

1:07:39

never lose a battle. They always

1:07:41

win, they always conquer, they always

1:07:44

take loot, you know, and really,

1:07:46

actually.

1:07:47

Yeah, is it likely, just you

1:07:49

know, statistically exactly

1:07:51

so.

1:07:52

And there is some intimation that in

1:07:54

some of the battles, like when the Assyrians

1:07:56

and the Babylonians are fighting, that

1:07:58

the Assyrians may have lost a couple

1:08:01

of times. But again, this

1:08:03

is where we have to be careful of

1:08:06

taking inscriptions

1:08:09

at face value, especially when

1:08:12

they're obviously being used as propaganda,

1:08:14

when they're put up on blocks

1:08:17

in the king's palace for people

1:08:19

to see where he's definitely boasting.

1:08:23

I mean, there's one one of my favorite inscriptions.

1:08:25

He calls himself a stormtrooper,

1:08:28

and I'm thinking, oh, you're in Star

1:08:30

Wars. Huh, you're a stormtrooper.

1:08:32

Okay, that's pretty cool, right, Yeah.

1:08:35

What would the word be like, what

1:08:38

would be like a more literal definition than we could

1:08:40

call it a storm trooper.

1:08:41

This good question. I have to go back and look

1:08:43

at the actual Lakadian and see. But

1:08:45

he does call himself

1:08:48

a stormtrooper and compares his

1:08:50

opponents to little little

1:08:52

desert rodents

1:08:55

hopping away as he comes

1:08:58

after them. So yeah, okay,

1:09:00

fine.

1:09:01

So yeah, well maybe maybe

1:09:03

don't take that fully as truth, you.

1:09:05

Know, exactly. So this is

1:09:07

part of the problem. And this is again

1:09:09

what I say towards the beginning of the book is

1:09:11

not only do I only have the

1:09:14

information from the top one percent and

1:09:16

don't really know how the bottom

1:09:18

is doing, except in some cases

1:09:20

where they give us like annual crop yields,

1:09:23

which was sometimes on the records. But

1:09:26

I also can't say for sure that we

1:09:28

can take this at

1:09:30

one hundred percent believability.

1:09:33

You know, are they gaslighting us?

1:09:36

Are they exaggerating? You know, did

1:09:38

you really kill that many you know, wild

1:09:40

bulls? Right? And so on? Yeah?

1:09:43

Yeah, oh, I mean it's yeah,

1:09:46

it's so interesting, especially the textual record stuff

1:09:48

like I think about that, you know, when it comes to a

1:09:50

just even mythology, right like it it's

1:09:53

yeah, we still only even when it

1:09:55

comes to mythology, we still only have the stuff

1:09:57

that not only they back

1:10:00

then deemed you know, worthy of being

1:10:02

written down. But then whoever you

1:10:04

know, in the last thousand years or the

1:10:06

thousand years that followed, decided to

1:10:08

keep it like and record it again and

1:10:10

long enough for us to have it like. There's so much

1:10:13

missing, and I think it's Yeah, it's

1:10:15

important to remember, you know, the nuance

1:10:17

of what we do have and also what's possible

1:10:20

that we don't have.

1:10:21

Right right, exactly too

1:10:24

much information. It's a plethora. It's

1:10:26

as smart as board.

1:10:29

I feel like, Okay, I'm going to look at a couple of I have

1:10:32

some questions from Mikayla just as we get

1:10:34

closer to the time. I'm

1:10:37

sure we've kind of touched on a number

1:10:39

of these things. But are there any you know,

1:10:41

really big misconceptions about the Bronze

1:10:43

Agent It's collapse that you feel like are

1:10:46

very relevant and we haven't talked about already.

1:10:49

Yes, So the biggest misconception

1:10:51

about the collapse that we haven't talked about,

1:10:54

but that you

1:10:56

touched upon, not

1:10:58

in relation to this, but you

1:11:01

like volcanoes, You like the

1:11:03

eruption of Santorini. Yeah,

1:11:05

and who doesn't like a good eruption? Right

1:11:09

right? The biggest misconception is

1:11:11

that the eruption of Santorini contributed

1:11:13

to the Late Bronze Age collapse. I

1:11:16

see that everywhere. I still see it everywhere,

1:11:19

even though we've managed to

1:11:22

hammer home to some degree

1:11:24

the idea that the

1:11:26

eruption of Santorini was back in the

1:11:28

sixteenth century, maybe

1:11:30

the fifteenth at the latest, but somewhere

1:11:33

between sixteen twenty eight and fifteen

1:11:35

fifty, and the collapse is at

1:11:37

twelve hundred, so that's, you know, three hundred

1:11:39

and fifty, four hundred years. Santorini

1:11:42

had nothing to do with the Late Bronzis

1:11:45

for last I know, I know, but I'm

1:11:47

still seeing the

1:11:50

history bros. I like that. I'm going to start using

1:11:52

that. I'm

1:11:55

still seeing them on the internet going yeah,

1:11:57

yeah, yeah, okay, fine, but it

1:11:59

did impact create and I'm

1:12:01

like yeah, and the Minoans bounced back,

1:12:04

and they're like, but it could have had

1:12:06

a century's long ripple effect. I'm

1:12:08

like, could h didn't

1:12:12

know, And then others saying, well,

1:12:14

maybe it exploded again, and I'm

1:12:16

like, well, one scholar has

1:12:18

suggested there might have been renewed activity

1:12:21

in about twelve hundred, but no,

1:12:24

that's for me. That's the biggest misconception.

1:12:27

Yeah, And when people are watching

1:12:29

some of my lectures from back in twenty

1:12:31

sixteen, the comments

1:12:33

are like, you didn't even mention Santorini.

1:12:36

And then I'm like, watch the Q and

1:12:38

A because I dismissed it there.

1:12:41

But yeah, so that's yeah,

1:12:43

so I said, that's the biggest misconception Santorini

1:12:46

and the eruption has nothing

1:12:48

to do with the late ron Sage collapse.

1:12:51

Fair, fair, all right, I'll take it.

1:12:55

And then sorry, now

1:12:57

I'm looking at my questions. The Usually I just go with whatever

1:13:00

I'm thinking about. Do

1:13:03

you think that there's anything in this

1:13:05

period that is not getting you know,

1:13:08

the tension that it deserves.

1:13:11

I think things aren't getting

1:13:13

the attention. Well yeah,

1:13:19

I would say

1:13:21

yeah, But no, I'm thinking of how to

1:13:23

phrase this because, on

1:13:26

the one hand, most

1:13:28

of the things that contributed to their

1:13:31

collapse I see around

1:13:33

today. You

1:13:35

know you can check the boxes off. Yes,

1:13:37

climate change yes, yes, famine yes,

1:13:39

earthquake yes, disease yes, invaders

1:13:42

yes, migrants. You know, we've got everything

1:13:44

that they had back then, plus we've

1:13:46

got you know, nuclear weapons, so.

1:13:49

And human made climate change and.

1:13:51

Human made climate change and Hello,

1:13:54

they collapsed. You know, the Late

1:13:56

Bronze Ages came to an end. There's no question

1:13:59

about that. Why you think

1:14:01

we're not going to come to an end? I don't know. That's

1:14:03

eubristic. Every civilization

1:14:07

has either completely collapsed or had

1:14:09

to transform so that it was basically

1:14:11

not recognizable. Again, Why

1:14:14

you think that's not going to happen to us? I have no

1:14:16

idea, So I think it's going

1:14:18

to happen. I

1:14:20

agree. I think it's not a matter of if

1:14:22

it's it's when. When is it going to happen? You

1:14:24

know?

1:14:25

Yeah? How fast are we going to let it happen by letting

1:14:28

made climate change continue? On?

1:14:30

Yeah? Yeah, climate And think back

1:14:32

to two thousand and eight with the financial crisis

1:14:34

on Wall Street. I mean we came really close

1:14:36

to having a globalized meltdown right there.

1:14:39

But especially with the pandemic, I

1:14:42

would say, And

1:14:44

with climate change, that's my other

1:14:47

worry. That's where I

1:14:50

don't think we're doing ourselves any favors.

1:14:53

No, Yeah, I mean definitely.

1:14:56

The scientific evidence is showing that

1:14:58

there was climate change back in the Late Bronze

1:15:00

Age. Scientific evidence is

1:15:02

also showing there is climate change. Now,

1:15:06

why stick your head in the sand and

1:15:08

pretend it's not happening. And

1:15:10

this is one of the common sense things they come

1:15:13

up with at the end of the sequel is, look,

1:15:16

prepare for extreme weather

1:15:18

events. Just go ahead

1:15:20

and do it. We're seeing it all the time

1:15:22

anyway. If you prepare

1:15:24

for it and an extreme weather event

1:15:27

does not occur, fine,

1:15:29

not a big deal. If you prepare

1:15:32

for it and it does occur, good,

1:15:35

Now you're in a good position. So

1:15:38

this was something I was interviewed

1:15:40

by Adam Frank on

1:15:43

NPR after the first volume

1:15:46

came out, and I was

1:15:48

happily blithering

1:15:50

and blathering on about,

1:15:53

well, you know, the Hittites didn't

1:15:55

know what was happening to them. They

1:15:57

had climate change, and know it wasn't

1:15:59

caused by Hittite SUVs. It

1:16:02

was Mother Nature polymp

1:16:04

petroleum from the earth exactly.

1:16:07

But I said, we're much more advanced

1:16:11

technologically and everything else, and

1:16:13

we know all about climate change.

1:16:15

We know it's causing the dry outs and all that.

1:16:18

And Adam Frank just said

1:16:20

to me, yes, but are we advanced

1:16:23

enough to do anything with

1:16:25

our knowledge? And that I

1:16:28

had no answer to. So

1:16:30

that is something I would point to

1:16:32

again. I don't think enough is

1:16:34

being done. I think we're giving too

1:16:37

much airtime to the naysayers.

1:16:40

There's definitely a climate change, Come on,

1:16:42

people, right, so what are we going to do

1:16:44

about it? Let's do something and

1:16:47

if we're ready, we're ready, and if we need

1:16:49

it, it's there, and if not, it's not. And

1:16:52

you know, again, hello late bronze

1:16:54

age collapse. Look what happened to them?

1:16:57

You know? And hard on the heels

1:16:59

of that is okay? What about

1:17:01

after collapse? What about resilience?

1:17:04

What about transformation? Don't you understand?

1:17:06

What about coping versus adapt

1:17:08

There's so many lessons from

1:17:11

the ancient world if we're just

1:17:13

willing to listen.

1:17:15

Yeah, I'm so

1:17:17

thrilled. I'm so thrilled that

1:17:19

this is you know, what you wanted

1:17:21

to mention, And it is almost

1:17:23

identical in a brilliant way to my

1:17:26

conversation with Flint that will have aired

1:17:28

just a few days before this. And

1:17:30

honestly, like, the way

1:17:34

we as humanity are not doing enough about climate

1:17:36

change is my pet obsession in my daily

1:17:38

life. Like it's literally I'm

1:17:41

sure some of my friends would argue I talk about

1:17:43

it too often, Like it I am completely

1:17:46

obsessed with how capitalism is the

1:17:49

main reason why we just are not actively

1:17:51

saving ourselves because the money is in is

1:17:53

in the stuff that's destroying us. And I

1:17:56

didn't know that that's what this Bronze Age series

1:17:58

was going to become because I just had

1:18:00

not learned enough about the climate change aspect

1:18:03

of the collapse. So I'm just so thrilled that like

1:18:05

that, not only that it is this major

1:18:07

talking point when it comes to this, but that so many

1:18:09

people working on this and working in this field

1:18:12

are connecting it to what's happening now in

1:18:14

the way that you are, And it

1:18:16

just it fills me with like just a little bit more

1:18:19

hope than I had before. Not

1:18:21

enough, not enough hope, but.

1:18:23

Like some some hope.

1:18:25

Ye little hope is better than none.

1:18:28

Exactly exactly. And I

1:18:30

mean this is something I've made into like a

1:18:32

talking point on the show before My show is like, you

1:18:35

know, more political than a mythology show

1:18:37

probably needs to be. But it's just who I am as a person,

1:18:40

and so it's it's like a fairly regular

1:18:42

thing that I talk about, especially you know, in

1:18:44

connection with the elites. So

1:18:46

it's been quite fun to be able to be like, oh, well,

1:18:48

I'm going to just also be able to talk about climate

1:18:51

change in a collapse of the elites when it comes to

1:18:54

the ancient world.

1:18:54

So well, it also shows

1:18:57

how relevant all of this

1:18:59

is, that this isn't just ancient

1:19:02

history, it's not just ancient

1:19:04

mythology. It is relevant

1:19:06

to us today, and you part

1:19:09

that's part of the enduring legacy

1:19:11

of myths and legends and all of that is

1:19:14

there continuing relevance. But

1:19:16

in this particular case, it's relevant

1:19:18

to whether or not we survive

1:19:20

as a species, which I think

1:19:22

is just a little bit

1:19:24

important.

1:19:26

It's a tiny bit important. Yeah, you know,

1:19:29

we might care. Yeah, right.

1:19:32

Well, to kind of close on a slightly

1:19:34

more upbeat question, is

1:19:37

there anything or any particular you know,

1:19:39

research field of study when it comes to this

1:19:41

topic that you think is quite exciting,

1:19:44

like new new research that's being

1:19:46

done or coming out. I know you touched upon some you

1:19:48

know, adjustments to when we think the alphabet, which

1:19:50

is very exciting. But you know, is there anything else that's

1:19:52

kind of thrilling?

1:19:54

Yeah, there's actually a lot.

1:19:56

But one thing that I would

1:19:59

the one thing I would point to is the

1:20:01

work with ancient DNA that

1:20:05

is so so important,

1:20:07

so interesting and so fraught

1:20:10

with potential problems. So

1:20:12

you know, just to get the ancient DNA

1:20:15

out of the ancient skeletons can be

1:20:17

difficult, but then interpreting

1:20:19

it also. So on

1:20:22

the one hand, we have great new stuff, like

1:20:25

there were four Philistine

1:20:28

infants that were excavated at ascalon

1:20:31

underneath the floors of the houses, and

1:20:34

those infants are probably

1:20:36

the grandkids of

1:20:38

the Sea peoples who settled down in

1:20:41

Canaan, because the genetics

1:20:43

show and I know genes don't

1:20:46

work quite this way, but the little

1:20:48

kids are like forty

1:20:50

percent local Canaanite and

1:20:52

sixty percent from elsewhere,

1:20:56

and the computer models

1:20:59

indicate that the elsewhere is most

1:21:01

likely to be either crete

1:21:04

or Spain or Sicily, and

1:21:08

that's exactly where we thought the Philistines were

1:21:10

coming from. Anyway, you know,

1:21:12

the kids have been identified and the houses

1:21:14

as Philistine because of the pottery and

1:21:17

everything else. But there the DNA

1:21:20

matches. Of course, the problem is four

1:21:22

kids is too small a sample, but

1:21:24

still, you know, it fit what we were already

1:21:27

thinking, so that is interesting.

1:21:29

The problem is when modern

1:21:32

pundits and such get hold of the data

1:21:36

and start saying things

1:21:38

like, let's look at the DNA of Minoan's and

1:21:40

Mycenians and relate it to people

1:21:43

in Greece today and start making

1:21:45

comparison. You know, so and so has always been

1:21:47

here, so and so migrated in. This

1:21:50

is where we have to be careful of a

1:21:53

the proper interpretation of

1:21:55

the actual results and then be

1:21:58

how you use it and

1:22:01

maybe making it relevant or not, because

1:22:04

you.

1:22:04

Can blame the modern dangers of that exactly.

1:22:08

That's dangerous, right, And the

1:22:10

scientists are already pointing this out

1:22:13

that you've got oftentimes

1:22:17

a huge difference between the

1:22:19

actual scientific report

1:22:21

that might come out in Nature

1:22:23

or Science or something, and then

1:22:26

the media's interpretation

1:22:28

of it, where the article

1:22:30

and the headline are almost clickbait,

1:22:33

like you you know, implied earlier.

1:22:36

And I do that all the time, where I

1:22:38

see something on the Internet or somebody sends it

1:22:41

to me and I'm like, oh, that's sensational

1:22:44

interesting. But to their

1:22:46

credit, even those articles usually

1:22:48

have a hyperlink buried

1:22:50

somewhere in the article, right, you

1:22:53

have to look for the blue word and you

1:22:55

click on it. It takes you to the original

1:22:58

publication in the scientific

1:23:00

peer reviewed journal and you

1:23:02

read that you're like, oh, that's

1:23:05

what they were saying, Yeah, that

1:23:07

doesn't really matter with what the media

1:23:09

reported, so and

1:23:11

again that's what we can learn.

1:23:13

But the general public, they

1:23:16

don't go and see the original. They

1:23:18

just see the media report. And you

1:23:21

know, and even if we later this happens

1:23:23

all the time, if we later come

1:23:25

out and say yes, but we

1:23:28

never get the bandwidth for our rebuttal

1:23:30

that the original story had, right,

1:23:33

same thing, William Lantis, you.

1:23:34

Know, yeah, yeah, oh, definitely,

1:23:36

Yeah. You never get to reach the same people or

1:23:39

as many people. Yeah. Well,

1:23:41

and I just think of the ways that

1:23:43

that kind of thing can be used to.

1:23:44

Justify absolutely

1:23:46

absolutely and yet and yet

1:23:49

this worked with ancient DNA and

1:23:51

the other what people are calling

1:23:53

the exact life sciences.

1:23:56

This, as some of my colleagues have

1:23:58

called it, this is the third wave

1:24:01

in our chaeology where we're using

1:24:03

all the new scientific stuff. And

1:24:06

so I think the next couple

1:24:08

of decades, the next generation in

1:24:11

our chaeology is going to be very exciting,

1:24:13

and topics like the Bronze Age collapse

1:24:15

and the aftermath are going to go

1:24:18

along with that, and that we're going

1:24:20

to have a lot more data coming

1:24:22

in the future such

1:24:25

that I don't know, I was thinking the other

1:24:27

night, if the next generation is going to look

1:24:29

back on what we're doing now and

1:24:31

go, yeah, they were right about

1:24:33

this, they were wrong about that. You know, always

1:24:36

we can look back at our predecessors and go,

1:24:38

yeah, right, right, wrong wrong wrong

1:24:40

right wrong right, No door innovasion, Migraine,

1:24:44

Yeah, exactly right. No dark ages,

1:24:46

no darkcases, an iron age. So I wonder

1:24:49

what you know our students or

1:24:51

the students of our students,

1:24:54

or the students of our students of our students,

1:24:56

are going to say about our work at some point.

1:24:58

But yeah, provided we solve climate

1:25:00

change.

1:25:02

Provided we solve climate change, there

1:25:04

is that.

1:25:04

Yeah, there

1:25:07

have to be students of.

1:25:09

Students, one hopes.

1:25:10

Oh dear, that's how I make

1:25:13

my apparently lighthearted end question back.

1:25:15

Into I was going to say, and that's sending on an

1:25:17

upbeat note.

1:25:18

Yep, that's what I do. That's what I do here. Thank

1:25:23

you so much for doing this. This was absolutely

1:25:25

fascinating. I learned so much. I'm so excited.

1:25:27

I'm a little annoyed that I can't talk about thera, but

1:25:30

that's okay, that's my fault.

1:25:32

We can do we can do therast

1:25:34

some other time. So perfect, Yes,

1:25:37

yes.

1:25:39

Well, just before we close up, do you want

1:25:41

to tell my listeners. I mean, you've mentioned your

1:25:43

books a couple of times, but I think this episode

1:25:45

will be coming out on April thirtieth, so I think

1:25:47

the sequel will be out, So if you want

1:25:50

to tell my listeners, just like, reiterate those titles

1:25:52

and where they can buy them, which I imagine is everywhere.

1:25:54

Yes, certainly. So. The sequel

1:25:58

that is coming out on April sixteenth

1:26:01

is called After eleven seventy seven

1:26:03

BC, The Survival of

1:26:06

Civilizations, and

1:26:08

yes, that'll be available from

1:26:11

Amazon direct, from Princeton

1:26:13

University Press, or your local booksellers

1:26:16

if you would like to support them. That

1:26:19

will actually be coming out on

1:26:21

the very same day as

1:26:23

another publication. The

1:26:26

original book was eleven

1:26:28

seventy seven BC, the

1:26:31

year civilization collapsed, and

1:26:33

that came out from Princeton in twenty fourteen.

1:26:36

With the revised edition which is

1:26:38

what people should read, that came out in twenty

1:26:40

twenty one. Now, the

1:26:42

other publication that's coming out on the same

1:26:45

day as my sequel is the graphic

1:26:48

version of the original,

1:26:50

which is Brilliance. It's

1:26:53

drawn by Glennis Fox, who's an archaeologist

1:26:56

and cartoonist, and she has essentially

1:26:59

translated the original

1:27:01

into another language, the language of

1:27:04

cartoon and graphic version.

1:27:07

The drawings areutiful. It's

1:27:09

huge. I mean it is thick, heavy,

1:27:12

glossy paper, beautiful drawings.

1:27:15

And what she has done is translated

1:27:17

my text into the story

1:27:21

told through the eyes of two

1:27:23

young kids from that time period.

1:27:27

We've got Hell short

1:27:29

for Palesset, a young boy

1:27:32

about twelve years old, and

1:27:34

his friend Sisha, again

1:27:37

about twelve years old. She's Egyptian

1:27:40

and she is a scribe. She knows

1:27:42

how to read and write. And the two of

1:27:44

them are running around the Aegena

1:27:46

and Mediterranean trying

1:27:48

to figure out why everything is collapsing

1:27:51

and what has happened, and whether

1:27:54

Grandpa Pel's

1:27:56

grandpa who

1:27:58

was a sea person, what he actually

1:28:00

did in the battles, And so

1:28:02

you see it through the eyes of the kids,

1:28:05

but you also have both me

1:28:07

and Glynnis parachuting

1:28:09

in from time to time up in the corner

1:28:12

of the panel, telling the reader

1:28:15

things that the two kids could not possibly

1:28:18

have known. Right, Yeah, you know, it's like,

1:28:20

oh, well, when Schleiman came here, he did

1:28:22

this, and so so it's

1:28:24

basically four new characters introduced.

1:28:26

It is so compelling, it's so

1:28:29

wonderful. I'm so excited about

1:28:31

it, and I'm hoping we get a whole new

1:28:33

readership everybody from age seven

1:28:35

to seventy, you know, especially

1:28:38

like if you don't like to read, but you like comic

1:28:40

books, this is this is it for you.

1:28:43

And if you're too younger, you have only just

1:28:45

started reading, you can you know,

1:28:47

there's the pretty pictures and anyway,

1:28:49

and you can play Where's Waldo with you know,

1:28:52

with me and with Glennis anyway.

1:28:54

So those two, both the sequel

1:28:57

and the graphic version of the original,

1:28:59

will come out mid April, and

1:29:01

I'm very excited about both

1:29:03

of them. So thanks for the opportunity

1:29:05

to mention them.

1:29:07

Oh, I'm thrilled. I've seen photos

1:29:09

you've posted in the cover of the graphic and

1:29:11

it looked like gorgeous, So I'm thrilled

1:29:13

to know what's inside. And I mean, it sounds like it'll

1:29:15

be really beneficial broadly, but I know there's also a

1:29:17

lot of people who just learn visually, you know,

1:29:19

and I think that that's so beneficial for so

1:29:22

many people. That's great and also just fun. That's

1:29:24

a fun little graphic novel version.

1:29:26

It is, and she really, yeah, it's interesting.

1:29:29

In order to put it in the graphic version, she distilled

1:29:32

it, so you know, it's got the

1:29:34

most essential twenty five percent

1:29:37

of the original text, you know that kind of thing.

1:29:39

So, yeah, the process was fascinating.

1:29:42

She and I did a webinar

1:29:45

the other day and in which she walked

1:29:48

the viewers through her process

1:29:50

of drawing. Oh my god,

1:29:53

the work that it went, that went into

1:29:56

it is amazing.

1:29:58

Yeah, so I can only imagine.

1:30:00

Yeah, yeah, oh that's wonderful,

1:30:02

wonderful. Well, I will link to everything in the episode's

1:30:04

descriptions so people can find it. And

1:30:06

that's great. And is there any last f you

1:30:08

want to share with my listeners before I let you go?

1:30:11

No, I just I thank you. And

1:30:13

you know, contrary what I might

1:30:16

have sounded like, I am optimistic about

1:30:18

our future. But we'll

1:30:21

see. It's up to us, isn't it.

1:30:23

Yeah? Yeah, oh, well, thank you so

1:30:25

much. This was such a thrill, my pleasure.

1:30:27

Thank you. It's been an honor and a pleasure.

1:30:45

Uh, Nerds, thank you so much

1:30:47

for listening to this entire series. Holy

1:30:49

crap, it was. It was quite a thing

1:30:51

to create. Probably are this

1:30:54

was probably our biggest, maybe

1:30:56

in line with Sparta, but man, the Bronze

1:30:58

Age is wild because because

1:31:01

it's the Bronze Age, because it's so much

1:31:03

older than all the other stuff that we work with,

1:31:05

because it is so heavy in archaeological

1:31:08

evidence and so lacking in text.

1:31:11

It's just such a departure, but one that is utterly

1:31:13

fascinating. I mean, I just

1:31:16

I've learned so much. I hope you have too.

1:31:18

These have been such joyful and fascinating

1:31:21

conversations. I'm just so thrilled

1:31:23

to have brought them all to you. You can find in

1:31:25

the episode's description links to the

1:31:27

books and things that were mentioned by Eric

1:31:29

Klein, and I hope you, you know,

1:31:32

check out more on the Bronze Age, or maybe

1:31:34

just you know, the next time you

1:31:36

hear a history bro trying to tell you

1:31:38

about the Dark Ages and how everyone

1:31:41

suddenly became incapable

1:31:43

of intelligence until Homer

1:31:45

sprung out, now you'll know. Now

1:31:48

you'll know why that's all nonsense.

1:31:50

I mean, it was pretty obviously nonsense because

1:31:52

that's just not how humanity works. But now

1:31:55

you have the receipts, let's

1:31:58

talk about. Mis Baby is written and produced by

1:32:00

me Live Albert Michayla Smith is the Hermes

1:32:02

to My Olympians, my assistant producer, and

1:32:04

honestly, I mean she's the person

1:32:07

behind this Bronze age series of episodes.

1:32:09

Couldn't it wouldn't possibly have existed

1:32:12

without her. She might be existing in

1:32:14

the background of this, but I

1:32:16

want to make clear who It's a

1:32:18

lot of Michaela's doing, and Laura Smith

1:32:20

is the incredible audio engineer and production assistant

1:32:23

who works on all of these conversation episodes

1:32:26

doing technological things that I never learned

1:32:28

how to do. Thank you, Laura. Laura's

1:32:30

also working to make my website helpful,

1:32:33

so stay tuned for more on that. The

1:32:36

podcast is part of the iHeartMedia Network.

1:32:38

Listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever

1:32:41

you get your podcasts, and help me

1:32:43

continue bringing you all of this incredible

1:32:45

mythological and historical stuff by

1:32:47

becoming a patron, where you will get access

1:32:50

to loads of past bonus episodes

1:32:52

Patreon dot com, slash myths Baby, or the

1:32:54

link is in the episodes description.

1:32:57

Thank you all. Oh my god, I can't believe this

1:32:59

series is over. It's absolutely

1:33:01

It's been a wild ride. I

1:33:04

just love the ancient world so

1:33:06

much and I really love the you

1:33:08

do too. I am live

1:33:11

and I love this shit I just said