Mark wrote
>If you want an explanation of the Sea Peoples, the first place to look
is >inside the pages of the Iliad. While the events are
>supposed to take place in late Mycenaean times, much of the world view
is that >of the later times of the Dorians and the
>so-called Sea Peoples. You've got a bunch of Achaean pirates laying
seige to >Troy and the regions thereabout, and we are
>pretty sure that some of the Sea Peoples (pirates) were indeed
Achaeans.
There is also the stories in the Oddessy about the Acheans after Troy
being involved in an attack upon Egypt. There were two movements of
Sea Peoples, one during the reign of Pharaoh Merenptah, and another
almost exactly 40 years later during the reign of Rameses III. I would
suspect the post-Illiad raid was the former.
Mark continued
>As for what caused this upheaval, a number of reasons are cited. There
really >was a HUGE earthquake at the end of
>Mycenaean times. A change in the climate has also been suggested, but
I've >never seen any evidence presented to
>support the idea.
I understood the huge Earth quake was associated with the collapse of
Thera c.1450BCE (too early by 250 years). Do you have any evidence on
an Earthquake later, and why would that set off a movement of peoples?
I find the evidence of famine and crop failure fairly convincing. Just
before the collapse of Uagrit, the king of the city was commenting upon
an Anatolian collapse of agriculture. Egypt would have been spared the
problem as it was irrigated by the Nile. This explains why it was the
goal of the great Volkerwunderungen of the Sea Peoples. That they were
not just a few pirates is shown by the fact that they travelled with
their whole family - women children and stock animals as well.
Mark argues
>More likely it's a technological change: the full arrival of the iron
age, >with a corresponding democratization of warfare.
This is unlikely sufficient cause. The Hittites used iron technology
and they were the first to go under, the Egyprians used Bronze until
the Assyrian invasions under Esarhaddon, and they managed to defeat the
Peoples of the Sea.
>This also seems to the time when naval warfare first becomes possible.
Think >of early Iron Age Vikings using hit and run tactics.
Such piracy seems to have been common in the Aegean, at least from the
collapse of the Minoan and later the Mycenaean hegemony. It played a
role in the late Bronze Age collapse, but this case, movements of
fleets were cordinated with a movement of a shore based army as well.
>Another very serious factor, and probably the decisive one, was the
fall of >the Hittite Empire. Some very old trade
>relationships, extending from Sicily and the Gulf of Venice all the
way to the >Caucasus were severely disrupted. The palace
>economies of the Greek mainland and islands were suddenly obsolete;
the goods >they produced had no markets, and with
>no markets, they themselves ceased being markets for others; they
retracted. >In some cases, the royal families would seem
>to have emigrated to greener pastures, or turned pirate themselves.
One needs to be careful here with chronology. There seems to have been
a recovery of sorts after the first Peoples of the Sea raid. Only some
palaces were abandonned, others seem to show increase in size (possibly
refugees swelling their numbers). There is also the evidence that
there is one generation of Achaean's known after those who were
involved at Troy. Orestes and Electra, the son and daughter of
Agammemnon, and Telemachos, the son of Oddysseus are well known. The
gap comes after them with the so called Return of the Heraclidae, and
the "Dorian Invasion".
This ties in well with the Egyptian chronology of a 40 year lull in
hostilities between the recovery of Merenptah and the reign of Rameses
III. There is evidence, for instance that the Shardana and other
peoples of the sea (settled in places like Beth Shean by Merenptah as
frontier guards), deserted to the Peoples of the Sea in the second raid.
Mark suggests
>And, as always, there were the pressures eminating from the Steppe.
About this >time, the Phyrgians make themselves
>known; the Greek records say they came from Thrace and Macedonia.
Perhaps it >was they who pushed the Dorians south
>into Attica and the Peloponnese, and maybe they were being pushed by
Thracians >further to the north and east. In any
>event, some pretty barbaric Indo-Europeans are known to have entered
northwest >Anatolia at this time (the
>proto-Armenians seem to be involved here too).
Yes, the Phrygians may have already entered Anatolia by this date.
There is evidence that they were amongst the allies of Priam at Troy,
and in fact their presence in Anatolia might explain why the Bosphorus
route had been cut by the movement of Phrygians accross the
Dardanelles. In any case the movement of peoples out of the Steppe
seems to have been associated with an economic change from agriculture
to pastoralism, consistent with a climatic change and a collapse in the
food producing capacity of the times. Latest evidence of the sea cores
and ice cores suggest a climatic shift, a cooling and a decrease in
regional precipitation in Mediterranean and Continental Europe at the
end of the Bronze Age.
Mark again
>The Sea People are always considered rather mysterious. In most of the
>details, yes, they are, but we can make a very
>good guess as to who they were and where they came from. Many of them
were >Greeks. Others were non-IE Tyrrhenians
>a branch of whom became the Etruscans). Some Semites were involved too
(via >Lebanon and Syria). This was not one
>concerted invasion, but iron-armed adventurers, freebooters,
Ur-Vikings, >taking advantage of a power-vacuum and making
>the most of a technological revolution. 25 and even 50 oar boats
combined with >iron weapons were quite potent and
>would remain so until Athens and then later, Rome imposed their will
on the >Mediterranean. You need a regular fleet to
>keep piracy under control; even today, without such a fleet, piracy
>flourishes; witness its resurgence in southern China.
There were also Lybians involved from North Africa. After their defeat
by the Egyptians under Merenptah, they turned and seem to have invaded
central Sahara, where they introduced horses and chariot using
technology to interior West Africa.
Mark I feel you are wrong in proposing a disorganised movement.
Egyptian records show they were able to secure a coordinated attack,
similar to that on the Rhine when in Christmas, 406AD, the Germanic
tribes organised a coordinated attack across the frozen Rhine.
Hope this helps
John