Bronze Age be like

What weapons did they use in the Bronze Age? Can someone tell me?

Song list:
Age of Empires - Entire Soundtrack OST

Source: The deep dark bussy of Hammurabi

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#history #bronzeage #ancient

[MasterofRoflness]

Assyria is such a big chungus

[chasemcnab]

Lots of people don’t seem to understand how apocalyptic this was for Bronze Age society; it wasn’t just some sea people ruining everything, it was also climate change, crop failure, disease, and a ton of revolts because of the last 3. Sea people attacking might have just been the symptom of this collapse rather than the cause. You can get raided and pillaged and take an L but could these raiders by themselves cause the breakdown of international trade, the collapse of complex highly organized societies and literally reduce the survivors to living in primitive small communities for the next several centuries?

[expandedhistory]

The Bronze Age world in the near East lasted more than 2000 years. That’s a lot longer than our modern world. Imagine this: Cleopatra lived closer to the lunar landings than she did to the building of the Pyramid of Giza.

[MrJones-xldf]

Destroys the bronze age. Refuses to elaborate. Brilliant. Exclusively how I will teach this period in history now.

[drekbleh]

Sea people: "Your cycle continues because we allow it. And now it ends because we demand it"

[francescoboselli]

The fascinating things is that bronze age civilization trade network was far more extended than many people think: it wasn't limited to Easter Mediterranean going from England and Scandinavia, to the middle east

[CodaMission]

The Bronze Age Collapse is one of the most interesting periods in history, and easily my favorite historical topic. Within a single generation, two of the major cultural centers of the Mediterranean, and many of the most important settlements of their time, ceased to exist. At many places on or near the coast, from Greece to Turkey to Israel and Lebanon, ruins show signs of destruction and turmoil. Places where people lived for thousands of years, rebuilding after fires, earthquakes and wars, show a topmost layer of utter destruction to which people never returned.

The prevailing theory is called Systems Collapse. It is believed that the complex networks of trade, government, warfare and culture became too unwieldy to manage effectively, and it was actually the sophistication of these very societies that caused their fall.

You see, when a society grows more complex, so too grow its problems in complexity. But the kicker is that the solutions add complexities of their own. London had a sewage problem, so it made a sewer system. But that sewer system requires upkeep. The workers require adequate pay and incentives, which requires a union, a lobbying group, etc.

Over time, the solutions to problems came to cost too much, and even trying to fix a problem or EVEN removing a solution causing complex problems is too much to bear.

There are signs at this period in time of famine, of disease, and drought. There are signs of violence and civil unrest. The question is mainly "which of these caused the others', but its clear their was a ripple effect. Most likely to our forensic data is that a famine began outside the bronze age Mediterranean and spread across. Famine creates starvation, which brings disease and refugees. Starving refugees make for desperate folk, and if the local leaders cannot provide, they will turn to civil unrest. Desperate enough fishermen turn to piracy, and cultures that may once have been unrelated can be united in their desperate starvation. Its not unreasonable to think they would begin working together to loot large cities en masse.

Mycenae was hit first. The Aegean has always been a haven for pirates, and our best evidence suggests the Sea People started in the west, probably foreigners who mixed in with angry locals. By the time it got to the Hittites, they were clearly worried. The vassal Cyprus kingdom, with its rich copper deposits, shows an uptick in bronze weapon smithing during this generation. But some great disaster struck the island. It was hastily evacuated and caches of weapons were buried at major settlements, likely with plans to return. No one would willingly leave behind the royal fortune's worth of weapons here, but it looks like indeed no one came back for them.
Shortly after this evacuation, the cities were sacked.
Tablet messages from palaces at this time indicates neighboring kingdoms allied with each other. In Ugarit, a ruin on the Syrian coast, a destruction layer holds a broken kiln. amidst signs of fire and pillaging, a message was fired on clay, but never sent. It is a reply to a plea for help by an Anatolian king. "Does not my father [political superior] know that all my men are in Hatti [Anatolian highlands], and all my ships are in Lukka [Lycia]? The country is abandoned to itself. May my father know this: the seven [metaphorical large number] ships of the enemy did great evil here"

So to summarize this letter from the _last king of Ugarit_ (which stopped existing after this letter), there has been some kind of established threat, it clearly worries other leaders since our king here is being asked to provide aid, and in fact, he's exhausted his military options fighting it in TWO different regions. Lycia is in southwest Turkey, and they made it all the way to modern day Syria!

What's more, this is not the last primary source we have on them. In Thebes, on the upper banks of the Egyptian Nile, a mortuary temple called Medinet Habu stands dedicated to Ramesses III and boasts of his great deeds. One side of the temple holds an astoundingly beautiful scene (One I dream to see in person), depicting what has come to be called the Battle of the Delta.

This is not the only Egyptian source on the Sea Peoples, but it is the most comprehensive. Ramesses III's predecessors, Merneptah and Ramesses II, had also encountered the Sea Peoples, as far back as fifty years earlier. The accounts differ somewhat, but overlap in fragments.

The temple at Medinet Habu is a propaganda piece, declaring that while other nations were laid low at a time of upheaval, when the great rival, the Hittite Empire, had fallen to a foreign menace and the Canaanite kings were uncrowned, Ramesses challenged their great assault. Twice before, under the reign of his father and brother, these invaders from the water struck at this empire, and drew blood. Then, in his reign, Egypt stood alone and won.

"As for those who reached my frontier, their seed is not, their heart and their soul are finished forever and ever. As for those who came forward together on the seas, the full flame was in front of them at the Nile mouths, while a stockade of lances surrounded them on the shore, prostrated on the beach, slain, and made into heaps from head to tail."

But as _fucking metal_ as this is, it isn't true. Sure, Egypt "beat" them, but only just. The power of the Pharaohs was permanently weakened, and Egypt was hobbled for years. What's more, the inscriptions casually gloss over what we have pieced together, which is that this was hardly a military operation. The mural shows a great number of civilians, property and livestock brought by the Sea Peoples. These "savage raiders" seem to have brought their families.
This wasn't a raid, it was an _armed refugee crisis._ A mass of peoples from various nations took to the sea as desperate pirates looking for a new home, and judging from the amount of statues and ruler artwork they defaced in cities they left, it appears they were pissed at the current elite in the Mediterranean. This wasn't "barbarians at the gates". It was "the nobles have failed us, take all their shit".
As for the "defeated" Sea Peoples? Well, it appears the survivors were resettled by Egypt. Hobbled by conflict and the worst era of civil unrest that should ever cause societal upheaval, the Egyptians turned to the very mass of foreign refugees that attacked them. The Sea Peoples were largely incorporated or resettled in Canaan.

[lordnoobus]

Bronze Age """skillful""" diplomacy involves begging the Pharaoh of Egypt to send one of his daughters (or at least taking some random Egyptian woman and calling her the Pharaoh's daughter) to your country so you can marry her and also asking him for more gold (a king of Babylon actually did this)

[compatriot]

It's all fun and games until your entire civilization collapses because of sea men

[expandedhistory]

*Now the Phoenicians can get down to business!*

[NicQuattromani]

"Refuses to elaborate" freakin' killed me.

[farmerboy]

"Refuses to elaborate, leaves" is the best meme to apply to the bronze age collapse I've ever heard, 10 bronze ingots out of 10

[lsixty]

“Oh no the Phillistine Giant has Iron weapons…. We see screwed!!!”
Some Shepard boy- “Where’s the nearest pile of small stones?”

[Crusader-ctqv]

Not to mention the citzens of civilization s who often detested civilization and actually somewhat welcomed sea peoples subduing and destroying the native elite.

[unknownvariable]

The Bronze Age is such a fascinating period, especially the fall.

The whole age is like our modern Industrial Revolution history in miniature.

A collecting of rapidly advancing city-states blossoming into warring empires that all coalesce into a “globalized” collective peace. The height of the Bronze Age is disturbingly similar to right now in 2022 and our state of the world.

[angusyang]

Byzantine history be like:
- Arabs attack from the East
- Emperor moves forces to the east to attack the Arabs
- Bulgarians attack from the West
- Emperor moves forces to the west attack the Bulgarians
- Arabs attack from the East
- Emperor sends best general to attack the Arabs
- Best general defeats the Arabs
- Proclaims himself emperor
- Marches on Constantinople
- Deposes and blinds the former emperor
- Arabs attack from the East
- Repeat

(Arabs can be interchangable with Turks or Persians)
(Bulgarians can be interchangable with Crusaders or Hungarians)

[bitcoinzoomer]

Stone age be like

>Tribe moves north following the mammoths
>Tribe learns that seed + dirt + water = food
>Agriculturalrevolution.jpeg
>Settlers begin farming in some river basin
>New hill tribe moves to inhabit the highlands nearby
>Hill peoples survive on a diet of nothing but random berries, mammoth meat, and funny mushrooms
>Settled farmers drive away nature
>Hill tribes get hungy
>Hill tribe's mushroom smoking druid says the farmers anger the spirits of nature
>Hill tribes massacre the farmers using nothing but rocks and sharpened sticks
>Settlements abandoned because the hill people didn't figure out how to farm
>New farmer tribes settle the land around the ruins
>Hill tribe tries to conquer them again
>Settlers discover the high technology of slings and rock throwing
>Settlers defend themselves successfully
>Hill people get enslaved or killed
>A monolithic stone monument to the obese female fertility goddess is erected using captured slaves
>Random horse riding tribe shows up out of nowhere
>Genocides farmers and steals slaves
>Doesn't elaborate
>Leaves
>Repeat

[wulerhaufung]

Fun fact: Chinese Bronze Age saw little use of actual bronze weapons in battles and executions. Only nobles and the brass got to own them, most of which ceremonially. Wars were fought with stones and sticks, and for execution, captives were knocked out before having their head slowly sliced off.

[AsiniusNaso]

When civilization gets dunked on so hard literacy vanishes for one hundred years

[TheSecondVersion]

"Long ago, the Bronze Age nations lived together in... "harmony(?)" But everything changed when the Sea Peoples attacked."

[After Bronze Age Collapse]

Ancient Egypt: *"I never yielded! And as you can see, I am NOT DEAD!"*