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The sea people: Alexander the Great trod in the footsteps of forgotten Greeks
- savant_penguin 5y agoIf you are interested in the collapse of the bronze age with some comments about the sea people https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LRHJlijVU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M4LRHJlijVU Eric clines lectures are really cool
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- miltondts 5y agoAnd one more resource with the history of many civilizations: https://www.youtube.com/c/FallofCivilizationsPodcast https://www.youtube.com/c/FallofCivilizationsPodcast I especially enjoyed https://youtu.be/d2lJUOv0hLA https://youtu.be/d2lJUOv0hLA, as I had no idea the first cities were already so advanced and lasted for so many centuries. EDIT: fixed youtube link.
- oogetyboogety 5y agoThoroughly enjoyed these. There is the tv version (not podcast) with nice video alongside each of the current podcasts. Sometimes they release a podcast and it takes a month or two for the tv one to come out.
- jcomis 5y agoGetting "This video isn't available anymore" on the youtube link
- mcguire 5y agoWhenever someone mentions the age of Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids, it's fun to point out that we have tax records from Sumeria from before either of those.
- reactspa 5y agoI'm watching the second link. Very very well made. It's astonishing to me that there's so much high-quality stock footage of the area that someone can create such a high-quality historical documentary while only calling it a "podcast".
- okareaman 5y agoI've watched all the Fall of Civilizations episodes because they are really well done. An amazing amount of work went into them to good effect. I am not a historian so I can't judge if they are alt-history or not, like the episode "Easter Island - Where Giants Walked" which completely refutes Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel and the theory that the inhabitants destroyed their environment.
- jmacd 5y agoThis podcast/series is so intensely good it is hard to describe to people. Partially because it is devoid of any commercial intent, it's simply raw history presented in an extremely accessible digest.
- vmh1928 5y ago"1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed" by Cline is also good. Focusing on the "sea peoples" is almost a distraction. The real story is about the world of city-states and trading relationships in 2000 B.C. and the sudden collapse, across the Eastern Med, of those same states resulting in several hundred year dark ages.
- pkdpic 5y agoExcellent lecture. The slick TED talk guys at the beginning kind of freaked me out but Eric Cline did not disappoint. This guy is a beast. Wish I had known about him back when I was teaching Art Hist.
- natded 5y ago"The Sea Peoples are a purported seafaring confederation that attacked ancient Egypt and other regions of the East Mediterranean prior to and during the Late Bronze Age collapse (1200–900 BCE).", interesting. I think the author is convinced they were Greeks, then?
- rsj_hn 5y agoYes he makes this case in the blog, supported by some recent discoveries. It also has a good overview of population flows in the region up to that time. Really a great blog with lots of references.
- rendall 5y agoReferences, perhaps, but no footnotes. He makes confident assertions about which current scholarly consensus is far less certain. It would be nice if he highlighted that. For instance, contrast the tone of his blog post with the tone of this article, quoting the researcher whose findings Nimitz references[*]: > "Some interpretations of ancient texts have suggested that the Philistines were one of the groups that comprised the Sea Peoples," study leader Michal Feldman, from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, told Newsweek. > "Our genetic results could fit with this hypothesis since we detect a movement of people that crossed the Mediterranean and reached Ashkelon in the relevant time period—around the 12th century B.C. However, from the genetics we cannot determine whether these ancestors of the Philistines that migrated to Ashkelon were indeed part of the Sea Peoples or not." [emph. mine] I think footnotes, particularly for assertions like this that he believes to be true - or that he chooses to gloss over for the sake of narrative - but that scholars are not so convinced, would lift his writings out of the realm of entertainment. As it is, unfortunately, his writings - as entertaining as they are - could mislead readers like me who prefer accurate uncertainty over inaccurate but consistent and entertaining narrative. [*] https://www.newsweek.com/biblical-philistines-sea-peoples-dna-1447114 https://www.newsweek.com/biblical-philistines-sea-peoples-dn...
- adrian_b 5y agoThe article references some of the evidence that a part of the Sea People were Greeks. The ancient sources list a large number of different tribes which composed the Sea People. Whether all of them were Greeks or some of them had a completely different origin, nobody knows. Of the Greeks we know more, as they had later known descendants, so we have a chance to identify their ancestors, either by DNA tests or by some cultural aspects. Of the many other people that had existed in Southern Europe and who are mentioned in ancient sources, but who were later assimilated by the Greeks or by the Romans, we know much less, so it is difficult to identify any of the Sea People who might have been related to them.
- throw0101a 5y agoReading a book of that title on the Polynesians: * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40536236-sea-people https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40536236-sea-people * https://www.npr.org/2019/03/13/702505578/sea-people-examines-the-origins-and-history-of-polynesia https://www.npr.org/2019/03/13/702505578/sea-people-examines...
- pfdietz 5y ago> After the terrible droughts that caused the Bronze Age Collapse This is still a matter of considerable debate. An alternate explanation for the LBA collapse was offered by Drews: a shift in military tactics from chariots with composite bows to armored infantry armed with Naue Type II swords (as well as javelins).
- colechristensen 5y agoLike any complex system failure the best theories in my opinion for the causes of collapse aren’t “this one thing did it” but several unrelated causes happening at once. Weather, warfare, a somewhat fragile interdependent system of trade, the somewhere between migrant, pirate, and raider sea peoples, and plain old state failure happening together.
- pfdietz 5y agoWhy should that be the best explanation? Surely many factors affected the collapse, but that doesn't mean many factors caused the collapse. The systems collapse theory strikes me as a theory that's been elaborated to the point of untestability, and a violation of Ockham's Razor.
- colechristensen 5y agoBecause when you study complex systems and how they fail from famous examples (Chernobyl, Challenger, Air France Flight 447, etc. etc.) to (for me) personal experience addressing software systems downtimes... what you find is single causes are quite rare. What you do usually find is a dozen independent things, all of which need to be fixed, any of which if it were fixed would have prevented the failure. Attributing "cause" to any of them is an exercise in preference of importance. Do you pick the last one that happened? Do you decide which one had the biggest impact? Do you pick the one that was the easiest/hardest to find? It's a silly exercise to pick one. You will find that the failure was caused by a concert of things working together, the only reason to pick one is a personal preference for there to be one thing to pick. A common pattern is the "straw that broke the camel's back" in a relatively small aberration or mistake which pushes a system from a working state into a phase change to a non-working one revealing all sorts of structural deficiencies. Do you say that last straw was the "cause"? Only if you're particularly short sighted. I've experienced this personally many times. No we didn't have 3 days of downtime because there was a 5% performance regression in the last release, we had 3 days of downtime because systems A through G were constantly on the edge of collapse and nobody noticed until all hell broke loose.
- dr_dshiv 5y agoI am so curious about the use of mushrooms and alcohol in ancient times. The historical record contains almost no evidence for psychoactive mushroom use, despite rather widespread availability. In the absence of evidence (and the assumption that people generally like drugs), I speculate that a cultural taboo arose after the brewers (agriculturalists) beat the trippers (nomads). And yet, “Mycenaean” translates roughly to the mushroom people…
- mr_toad 5y ago> widespread availability Was it really widespread? Compared to fields of grain?
- lr4444lr 5y agoI think it's still fairly mainstream in Vedic scholarship that "soma" mentioned in ancient India was a psychoactive mushroom, even though which one is still contentious.
- baybal2 5y agoSome is not a mushroom, but an ephedra tea. Works like a very strong coffee. Can't believe you can get 10 years for it in some countries.
- buildsjets 5y agoSo, your claim is that the modern substance called soma is the same thing as the ancient substance called soma. Do you have any evidence that supports this claim?
- thechao 5y ago> And yet, “Mycenaean” translates roughly to the mushroom people… This has got to be my top-contender for wackiest HN comment if the week. Please: could you show any sources for this assertion? Start with the sctual Greek; because, the actual Greek words are about as related as "moose" and "mouse".
- goatherders 5y ago"After six months of exhaustive siegecraft, Alexander was able to breach the walls of Tyre and storm the fortress island. 6,000 defenders were killed in the storm, 2,000 locals were crucified afterwards, and what was left of the population was sold into slavery." Well then.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bpodgursky 5y agoIt was an effective way to make sure the next city surrendered quickly didn't bog you down with a six month siege.
- alexanderthe- 5y agoThis tale of this siege encapsulates the unwavering determination of Alexander to overcome and conquer. Anyone interested should read the accounts in Arrian and Quintus Curtius Rufus' biographies.
- Aidevah 5y agoIt's particularly striking how much skin in the game generals like Alexander had, fighting on the front lines. From Thucydides and Xenophon gives the impression that the casualties for pitched hoplite battles weren't particularly large as a proportion of the army, but it's surprising how often the general was killed in action. Alexander himself was hit in the head strong enough to be dismounted at Granicus, suffered a projectile would to the shoulder at the siege of Gaza, and nearly lost his life when he was shot in the chest by an arrow at the Mallian stronghold. Of course recounting those wounds and showing off the scars formed a part of his speech when he later tried and failed to persuade his army to advance further.
- fennecfoxen 5y agoWelcome to the ancient world, where such things are common! Turns out the modern one made some sort of progress morally since then.
- MPSimmons 5y agoCan someone tell me why archaeologists don't believe that Minoans were the Sea People?
- JudgePenitent 5y agoBecause of Egyptian inscriptions. If it was only one group, why do Egyptian inscriptions list 5+ groups? Here's the relevant article section: "The Philistines (known to the Egyptians as the Peleset) were among several groups listed as the Sea Peoples by the Egyptians. The other Sea Peoples were the Tjekker, the Shekelesh, the Ekwesh, the Shardana, the Danuna, and the Weshesh. An inscription on the tomb of Ramses III reads: “The foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray. No land could stand before their arms, from Khatte, Qode, Carchemish, Arzawa, and Alashiya on, being cut off at [one time]. A camp [was set up] in one place in Amurru. They desolated its people, and its land was like that which has never come into being. They were coming forward toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared before them. Their confederation was the Peleset, Tjekker, Shekelesh, Danuna, and Weshesh, lands united. They laid their hands upon the lands as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting.” Arzawa is in western Anatolia, Khatte is the Hittite realm in central Anatolia, Qode is Cilicia in modern southeastern Turkey, Carchemish was a city on the banks of the Euphrates River, Amurru was an Egyptian vassal in northern Lebanon and coastal Syria, and Alashiya is Cyprus. The Danuna are the Greek tribe of Danaans referenced by Homer in “The Iliad”. The ruins of the Hittite capital of Hattusa have been excavated, and the destruction of the city was between 1190 and 1180 BC. In the same decade, the city of Troy was destroyed as well, likely in what is remembered as the Trojan War. The identity of the other groups is less certain. The Mycenaean Greeks are known to have had contact with the EEF peoples of Sardinia - the Nuragics - from pottery finds. The etymology of Sardinia’s name is unknown, but the the name predates the arrival of the Phoenicians. The Shardana referenced by the Egyptians as being among the Sea Peoples may be Sardinians, Nuragics recruited by Mycenaean Greek sailors for campaigns of plunder and conquest. The Sardinians certainly knew of the wealth of the east - their copper, valuable in the Bronze Age as one of the ingredients for bronze, originated from Cyprus. Similarly, the name of the Shekelesh may refer to the aforementioned Sicanians in Sicily. Alternatively, it could refer to the Italic-speaking Sicels (relatives of the Romans) who invaded southern Italy and Sicily in the late 13th or early 12th century during a massive drought in their home, the Po River Basin of northern Italy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples#Primary_documentary_records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples#Primary_documentar...
- andygrd 5y agoReading that makes it abundantly clear that, as a species, humanity is pretty despicable.
- bjourne 5y agoThe Egyptians used the word "Peleset" and the Assyrians "Pilistu". The term is most certainly related to the Greek word "Palaistine" which can be traced to 5th century BC. But it is not clear what region ("land of the Peleset") or what people the term referred to. It encompassed the Philistines' five city states - Philistia - in southern Palestine (this comes from the Bible, I think it is unknown how many Philistine city states existed), but may also have encompassed a region larger than that. Since Palaistine referred to most of Palestine one can speculate that Peleset/Pilistu also did. Another theory is that Palestine came to be known as Palaistine after the Philistines via "pars pro toto", which means that a part becomes the name of the whole. One example is Russia, named after the Rus people who inhabited merely a small fraction of modern-day Russia. In other words, the Philistines may have been the dominant people in Palestine and the Greeks may have referred to the whole region as Palaistine, just as many people (sloppily) refer to the United Kingdom as "England". Numismatic evidence shows that the Philistine cities were large trading centers and minted coins earlier and in larger quantities than in other Palestinian cities.
- selimthegrim 5y agoWas Rus Kievan Rus originally?
- varjag 5y agoYes, and the link of it to Russia is rather thin.
- trhway 5y agoThe "thinness" is subject to interpretation (and today especially because of Ukraine situation it has become a political issue with Ukraine actively developing its own independent history and claiming Kievan Rus for itself, and also in Russia there are people who don't like the idea of the state's Viking ie. non-Slavic origination) which one can decide for theselves by looking at historic facts. Yes, the south and western dukedoms (on the territory of modern Ukraine an Belarus) of Kievan Rus were for around 2 centuries under Mongols and Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and thus the link was pretty much broken there. Where is the north/east dukedoms have existed without interruption, growing and expanding and ultimately getting unified into Moscow dukedom (later tzardom) which continuing expanding became the Russian empire. The Russian aristocrats direct descendants of the one of the early Kievan Rus Viking ruler - Rurik (whose descendants ruled the Rus and later the Moscow dukedom for centuries) - are still around.
- danans 5y ago> Around 3000 BC, a group of savage tribes now known as the Indo-Europeans invaded Europe from eastern Ukraine and southern Russia, destroying the EEF civilizations east of the Rhine in at most two centuries. It detracts from the writer's argument to uniquely characterize the IE Europeans as savage here. Savagery was the norm for all groups at the time. Monopolies of violence didn't exist in any significant way, and institutions were also non-existent. Some civilizations appear more egalitarian than others, i.e Crete, Indus Valley, but the idea of non-savagery as a virtue didn't emerge until much later, and we don't know how much savagery those civilizations might have engaged in because we have lost their histories.
- JudgePenitent 5y agoWell said
- phonypc 5y agoI did not get the impression that the author intended to uniquely characterize them as savages. Yes, it's the first instance of that word, but the preceding paragraphs are about replacements/displacements/invasions by other groups.
- jacobolus 5y ago“Savage tribes” in this context means something like “less settled with a less specialized society/economy”, and is not intended to be a value judgment or indication of some ethnic group’s inherent qualities, or even a comment on their level of violence: it is possible for a tribe to be both peaceful and “savage”/“barbaric”/“uncivilized”, or both “civilized” and brutally violent. For example, notice the author of this blog post starts with a description of a campaign of horrifying brutal violence perpetrated by “civilized” Greeks. One feature of language (for better or worse) is that words whose denotation involves some associations considered to be negative in one context tend to be used as slurs, adding and intensifying negative connotations until they eventually become confusing when used in the original non-normative sense. The word “savage” originally just meant “wild” (literally, “from the forest”), i.e. not domesticated. Under this original definition, a rabbit is “savage” but an aggressive guard dog is not.
- selimthegrim 5y agoI’m not sure what he means by the most Slavic ancestry being from female slaves in the Middle Ages. Who was taking slaves besides the Turks?
- e44858 5y agoMost accounts I've read of ancient battles include the winners enslaving the losers, so it seems to have been common practice.
- 1cvmask 5y agoThis alleged historical article calls Alexander the Great Greek. He is Macedonian. Macedonians are a completely different people with a different language and different alphabet. Would you take an alleged historical article on Stalin if the article mentioned Stalin to be German or that Cleopatra was Spanish. Macedons invaded and took over the Greek kingdoms: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_(ancient_kingdom) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonia_(ancient_kingdom)
- varjag 5y agoThis is undermined a lot by sheer will of modern Greeks to fight tooth and nail for the name of Macedonia.
- buescher 5y agoIt's a controversy that predates Alexander. It won't get settled on HN.
- turndown 5y agoAs we are being pedantic, technically Alexander the Great was Greek by standards of his time, since he could trace his lineage back to Alexander I, who had to prove they were a descendant of a Greek man in order to participate in the Olympic Games.
- hallarempt 5y agoWhatever calls itself "macedonian" these days is completely unrelated to what used to live there BC.
- phonypc 5y ago>Macedonians are a completely different people with a different language and different alphabet. Sure but... Alexander and his countrymen didn't speak that language or use that alphabet, and were not of that people. You might as well say he was an Ottoman Turk, or a Roman.
- mannerheim 5y ago> different alphabet Where is the source on this? According to this[0]: > The surviving public and private inscriptions found in Macedonia indicate that there was no other written language in ancient Macedonia but Ancient Greek So Macedonia was a kingdom where the aristocracy spoke Attic and later Koine Greek, and the vernacular being either a Greek dialect or other Hellenic language. So the written language would have been Attic/Koine. Alexander, being royalty, would have spoken and written in Attic/Koine Greek. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Macedonian_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Macedonian_language
- anonu 5y agoThe Phoenicians have always been considered the merchant sea people of the Levant. I'm not too clear on why the article doesn't seem to make that connection. The Phoenicians made glass, and a prized purple dye harvested from the murex snail. Cedar wood that was in abundance was used to make ships. With these things, the Phoenicians were able to establish trade routes with far off cities to the West of them.
- wolf550e 5y agoThe Bible certainly doesn't think the people of Tyre and Sidon were the same people as those of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron and Gath. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithobaal_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithobaal_I and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines
- philwelch 5y agoI think he’s writing more about where the sea people came from rather than where they ended up afterwards. But yes, the Phoenicians, and hence the Carthaginians, being descendants of the Mycenaean Greeks does provide yet another example of Greek/Italic conflict.
- mcguire 5y agoI'm not sure what connection you refer to. The Phoenicians are not referred to until ~1500BCE, by which time the Mycenaean and Minoans had been doing their things (mostly trading) for a few hundred years. The Phoenicians didn't peak until after the Late Bronze Age Situation (~1200BCE).
- hallarempt 5y agoWhat a load of nonsense...
- JudgePenitent 5y agoWell written article considering the very diverse time frames and sources. "Around 3000 BC, a group of savage tribes now known as the Indo-Europeans invaded Europe from eastern Ukraine and southern Russia, destroying the EEF civilizations east of the Rhine in at most two centuries. Not content with their new lands, the Indo-Europeans learned how to build boats and launched a new wave of bloody conquests 350-600 years later." "Two branches of the second Indo-European wave play a role in this story. The first was was the early Greeks themselves, who arrived in northern Greece (Macedonia and Thessaly) at the end of the 3rd millennium BC." "Ancient DNA finds from the Elati-Logkas site in western Macedonia confirm the identity of the invaders. The earliest known Greeks are found in this site, and despite several centuries of time separating them from the initial conquest, they were quite distinctive from their predecessors. About 2/5ths of their ancestry came from the original Indo-Europeans. Even more of their ancestry came from the subjects of the Indo-Europeans further north, who by the time of the invasion had mixed considerably with their conquerors." "Thucydides writes that the Greeks of the centuries before the Trojan War had no conception of national identity. Instead, they identified with their tribes, some of them named in Homer’s epic poem “The Iliad”." A common theme of steppe peoples- settled tribes identify with lands; nomads identify with cultures. This source identifies the sea peoples as a mixture of middle eastern groups, using the Egyptian inscription on Ramses III tomb as a reference. Western Anatolia, Hittite (central Anatolia), Cilicia (modern southeastern Turkey), Carchemish (city on the banks of the Euphrates River), Amurru (Egyptian vassal in northern Lebanon and coastal Syria), and Alashiya (Cyprus). The Danuna are the Greek tribe of Danaans, among the groups (and some others whose identity is uncertain) that the Egyptians claimed were aligned as "Sea Peoples". The identity of the Sea People is a very important group to know because they were a major force in the Bronze Age Collapse; a collapse which set the stage for the rise of the Phoenicians, and 500 years later the Greeks. This article is confusing however, because it asserts that the Sea Peoples were Greek: "Alexander’s destructive path down the Levantine coast was not unprecedented, even among Greeks. Over 800 years before, other Greeks had laid waste to the Levant, known only to their adversaries as the mysterious “Sea Peoples”." Yet as also quoted this article reads the Egyptian burial inscription of Ramses III as a conglomerate of Middle Eastern peoples- not Greek (except for Danaan). This chart from wiki is beautifully done and shows the evidence we have for the movements of peoples quite well, and might help explain the identity of the Sea Peoples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#/media/File:Bronze_Age_End.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#/medi... Notably, we see the black arrow (Proto-Indo-European/steppe/PIE peoples probably) pressing into Anatolia/Hattusa. Were these the same people rolling through the Greeks? Was it the pressure of these forces that forced the Sea Peoples to attack Egypt (because they lost access to safe coastlines for trade)? Did Phoenicia know this was going to happen, and made an alliance that history has long since lost? Here's the overall effect the Bronze Age Collapse had, from wiki: "The palace economy of Mycenaean Greece, the Aegean region and Anatolia that characterized the Late Bronze Age disintegrated, transforming into the small isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages. The Hittite Empire of Anatolia and the Levant collapsed, while states such as the Middle Assyrian Empire in Mesopotamia and the New Kingdom of Egypt survived but were considerably weakened. Conversely, some peoples such as the Phoenicians enjoyed increased autonomy and power with the waning military presence of Egypt and Assyria in the Levant." Well summarized; the only certain winner here was Phoenicia. Thus, one would assume that if anyone wanted the Bronze Age Collapse, it was Phoenicia. A waning Egypt and Assyria meant stronger profits for long distance traders. Another question I've had about the Bronze Age Collapse is why the Sea Peoples fought on both sides of the Egyptian empire. I don't see the strategic value in doing this, and from what I remember the battles fought on the Western Egyptian border were years apart from the North-Eastern battles. Were fleeing Greeks pressing into Northern Africa, causing local tribes to attack Egypt?
- theknocker 5y agoEvery time I look into this, it becomes obvious we know exactly who most of the "sea people" groups were, but everyone has to pretend we don't because extant race obsessed populations don't like the answers.
- kromem 5y agoSo much wrong despite so much right. Making the sea peoples all Greek totally flies in the face of the written records at the time, for example where Ugaritic leaders wrote to Cypress for help given the ships attacking them and got the response "it's your own ships." SOME of the sea peoples were Greek. But a single genetic result most closely matching Crete (which was only 40% not "almost completely") shouldn't be extrapolated to be all the sea peoples. And it ignores the research that the Minoan ancestry was in line with the Anatolian farmers of the Neolithic period. It also ignores the role of Lybia in the early Egyptian records of sea peoples battles, as well as Ramses II's capture of many peoples following Sherden/Lybian battles and then Hittite battle of Kadesh (where he captured 12 groups of tribes). And arguably the biggest oversight (not just by OP but by many looking at this period) is failing to put aside the myth of ethnocentrism and monotheism from the Israelite story of 12 tribes fleeing Egypt under Moses with oldest part of that story referring to Dan "staying on their ships." The Greek story of the Exodus claimed many different people left, and placed the fleeing of Danaus alongside them. Danaus, the likely eponymous leader claimed to be a brother of the Pharoh with 50 sons and connected with Lybia. Sounds kind of like Ramses II, who had 50 sons and whose forensic report identified him as appearing to have been a Lybian Berber. Sure weird that a lot of the sea peoples conquered territories were then named for Mopsus/Muksus, including the Denyen of Adana who centuries later still had a ruling "House of Mopsus." I wonder if that has anything to do with Dan, who "stayed on their ships" in the Song of Deborah - the earliest part of the Bible, in Judges 18 ending up with a grandson of Moses as chief priest. There's a lot more, especially in the Cretan/Lybian genetic overlap with the Ashkenazi, particularly given the 80% pre-history European mtDNA lineages. Or in Aegean archeology for details in claimed Biblical history. But suffice to say the sea peoples shouldn't be as much a mystery as it remains if only people would do a better job looking at what's clearly myth (Abrahamic lineages given Y-haplogroups and early Israelite monotheism) and who was writing the story (Judah, who wasn't a group present earlier on).
- phonypc 5y agoTL;DR: Moses did the Late Bronze Age collapse?
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoWhy do you say that Judges 18 (or all of Judges, if that was your meaning) is the earliest part of the Bible?
- danans 5y ago> Even today, sea transport is cheaper than land transport. In the Bronze and Classical Ages the advantage of sea transport was even more extreme. There was no need for the construction of roads and tens of tons could be transported long distances. Travel times by sea were considerably less than those on land, and armies could be resupplied far away. Bronze Age states with strong navies would have a tremendous advantage over their rivals This is a fascinating observation to consider even terms of our modern era. Prior to the pandemic, the cost to ship a $20-retail pair of athletic shoes to the US from Asia via the sea was only $.30. [1] Every passing technological wave that triggers growth seems to concentrate it most in strategic maritime areas (even if much of the raw materials and goods flowing through maritime channels originate in landlocked/inland areas). One theory of these historical invasions is that that wealth eventually attracts the attention of inland peoples who eventually band together to attack the maritime cultures. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d5d_HXGeMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d5d_HXGeMA
- inglor_cz 5y agoIf we continue the observations, sea transport is so dominant that the English language uses the word "shipping" even in context of sending goods over land [0]. All the e-shops speak about "shipping", even if it just involves a small truck on a distance of ten miles from the warehouse to your door. [0] Not my native language, though; landlocked nations use other expressions.
- rendall 5y agoI followed this writer for awhile, listened to his seminars and even interacted with him occasionally over Twitter, and over time gathered the impression that narrative takes precedence over precision. I was always entertained, but couldn't distinguish between known, speculative, and even fictional elements in his writing.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago>>>>> Tyre was well fortified, and the city-state included a walled island off the coast. Unfortunately the sea castle is no longer due to centuries of silt accumulation on the causeway, effectively "merging" old tyre with mainland. However, another walled island is in Sidon ("Saida"), nearby. It is quite a sight. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidon_Sea_Castle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidon_Sea_Castle Going back to Tyre - The hippodrome of Al Bass, with a bit of luck (ex: concert or wedding lightining placement, etc) would rival Baalbeck itself as the most extraordinary site in Lebanon