Speaker 1: Hi, Hello, Welcome. This is Let's talk about myths baby,
Speaker 1: and I am your host live here with the final
Speaker 1: episode in our series on the Bronze Age and its Collapse.
Speaker 1: We've brought you through the Bronze Age civilizations of Greece
Speaker 1: into a little bit as much as we could about
Speaker 1: the wider Mediterranean during this period. Then it's collapse and
Speaker 1: all the many things that contributed to it. And so
Speaker 1: today I have for you a conversation with doctor Eric Klein,
Speaker 1: who is honestly probably the biggest name in Bronze Age
Speaker 1: slash the end of the Bronze Age and It's Collapse.
Speaker 1: Like you google Bronze Age Collapse, you're probably gonna get
Speaker 1: his book. It's called eleven seventy seven BC. And then
Speaker 1: there's a new one that's just come out very recently
Speaker 1: that is a sequel after eleven seventy seven. So that
Speaker 1: comes up a lot in this conversation where we talk
Speaker 1: about what little things contributed to the collapse, what we do,
Speaker 1: what we don't know, what is still being learned, what
Speaker 1: has changed in the many many years that we have
Speaker 1: been studying this stuff as humans and finding new things
Speaker 1: and using new technologies, like all the ways this stuff
Speaker 1: changes all the time, just because we change, and therefore
Speaker 1: we have better ways of interpreting the past. It's utterly fascinating.
Speaker 1: Eric and I had a really really fun conversation, such
Speaker 1: a joy and just oh, I cannot wait for you
Speaker 1: to listen. So I'm just going to stop rambling and
Speaker 1: let you get right into this incredible conversation conversations. When
Speaker 1: the network went down, the Bronze Age collapsed with doctor
Speaker 1: Eric Klein. But thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to talk to you.
Speaker 2: Well, it's fun for me and thank you for having
Speaker 2: me on. It's looking forward to it.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I have an assistant producer who's been
Speaker 1: working on a lot of the research because she's currently
Speaker 1: My background is in mythology and my degree is quite old,
Speaker 1: but she's currently studying and obsessed with the Bronze Age,
Speaker 1: and so she is very excited that I'm talking to you,
Speaker 1: and she gave me some questions to ask and stuff.
Speaker 1: So there's a Mikayla's somewhere being very excited.
Speaker 2: Yes sounds good, and Mikayla's at UBC at the moment, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Good good. Well, hopefully I'll be able to meet everybody
Speaker 2: in person at some point, but yeah, over the internets
Speaker 2: we'll do for now.
Speaker 1: It's nice. At least we have this, right. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's opened up a lot in the last few years.
Speaker 2: So it has. Yeah, just saying to my son that
Speaker 2: when previous books have come out, I mean ten years ago,
Speaker 2: fifteen years ago, it was all radio interviews, and now
Speaker 2: it's all podcasts. The technology has totally changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, well, and podcasts are great. I mean it's
Speaker 1: so easy to record remotely. And I started it in
Speaker 1: the pandemic where I had was having these conversations with experts,
Speaker 1: and I mean it's just easy and fun. And my
Speaker 1: show started out as a very casual, just like silly
Speaker 1: mythology podcast and grew to being an incredibly deeply researched
Speaker 1: and accurate mythology podcast where I touch on history. But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's good.
Speaker 2: That's good, and we need we need more of those
Speaker 2: ones that are fun, interesting and historically accurate. So there
Speaker 2: you go. You touch all the buttons.
Speaker 1: That is my goal always. I do have to share too.
Speaker 1: I was in uh it would have been just last year.
Speaker 1: Last year, I was on a boat ride from Naxos
Speaker 1: to d Loos, and there was this American couple sitting
Speaker 1: across from my friend and I and they started they
Speaker 1: struck up a conversation and we're chatting about, you know,
Speaker 1: where we were going and everything, and the man holds
Speaker 1: up a book and he was like, Oh, I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: I've been reading all about you know, the ancient world
Speaker 1: and we're going to day Los. I'm and it was
Speaker 1: your book. I was like, oh, yeah, no, I know
Speaker 1: very well. Like I was like, I'm hoping to have
Speaker 1: them on my show eventually. So yeah, it was very fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is funn You never know the ripple effects.
Speaker 2: You never know who's reading it, you know, as they say,
Speaker 2: you put it out into the wild, and then you
Speaker 2: don't know where it goes. So that's cool. Thank you
Speaker 2: for sharing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you're welcome. I recently had an experience like
Speaker 1: that myself where I wrote a book, but it was
Speaker 1: a book of mythology out and it was commissioned by
Speaker 1: the publisher, which tends to mean that they do a
Speaker 1: lot of things without bothering to tell me and I
Speaker 1: just find out later. And I recently had someone send
Speaker 1: me a picture of it in Turkish, and so that's
Speaker 1: how I learned that it exists in Turkish and I
Speaker 1: would love to see it myself, but at least I
Speaker 1: have a photover.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, that's funny, yeah, yeah yeah. If you have
Speaker 2: it in your contract that they have to talk to
Speaker 2: you about it when it's translated, then you find out
Speaker 2: if it's not on the contract, then you have no idea.
Speaker 1: Oh it is in the contract. I actually used to
Speaker 1: work for paying in random house in contracts, so I
Speaker 1: know what's in my contract. They just don't do it.
Speaker 1: But that's okay. I emailed them and eventually I'll follow it.
Speaker 2: But did they send you a copy of it?
Speaker 1: They are technical supposed to. So that's what my email
Speaker 1: was was because I found out that it existed a
Speaker 1: couple months ago, and I emailed and my editor was like, oh,
Speaker 1: yeah it does. And I was like, okay, great, can
Speaker 1: I get a copy? And she was like yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: send you on. And now I see that it's in bookshops.
Speaker 1: So I said to another being like, okay, where is
Speaker 1: it now? Oh? Thank you, Well, I'll get us right
Speaker 1: in so we, you know, use up all of our
Speaker 1: time on this I'm so excited. The Bronze Age, like
Speaker 1: I said, has very much been Michaela's pet project, but
Speaker 1: I've been working through all of her research and fortunately
Speaker 1: have a good grounding now before we speak. But yeah, essentially,
Speaker 1: I'd love to love to know more details about sort
Speaker 1: of all the different I mean, obviously so many things
Speaker 1: went into the collapse of the Bronze Age, and I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated in sort of the I guess the outside forces.
Speaker 1: Maybe could we can focus on or the theories rather
Speaker 1: and but maybe we'll start it off with just very
Speaker 1: something very simple, which is, you know, do you have
Speaker 1: do you a favorite thing to talk about when it
Speaker 1: comes to this aspect the end of the Bronze Age?
Speaker 1: Do you have like a pet bit that's your favorite?
Speaker 2: What is my favorite part of the collapse?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Good question, good question. I actually think my favorite part
Speaker 2: about the collapse, if one is allowed to put it
Speaker 2: that way, is the fact that out of all the
Speaker 2: things that have been suggested, and somebody says, choose one,
Speaker 2: which one do you like? Was it earthquake, was it disease,
Speaker 2: was it migration? Was it drought? And my answer is yes, yes,
Speaker 2: it's all of the above, and as my kids would say,
Speaker 2: it was a series of unfortunate events to quote Limony Snicket, right.
Speaker 2: So I think that's my favorite part is it's all
Speaker 2: of the above, right, So it's not one you don't
Speaker 2: have to choose, you can take them all well.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what makes it so much more
Speaker 1: interesting too, like it, and so much more believable, because
Speaker 1: I mean, I have this this video I saw years
Speaker 1: ago that just keeps coming up in this series because
Speaker 1: it's all I can think of. And it was this
Speaker 1: one of those guys on on Instagram, you know who
Speaker 1: who talks about history in that really loud and fast
Speaker 1: way where they can kind of make it sound like
Speaker 1: they know what they're talking about, even if they're spouting
Speaker 1: utter nonsense. And this guy had this whole thing about,
Speaker 1: you know, the greatness of the Mycenaeans and how incredible
Speaker 1: they were, and then how one day they just disappeared
Speaker 1: and all died out, and the people of the Greek
Speaker 1: mainland lost the ability to understand written word. And then
Speaker 1: from the dark ages, Homer came up, you know, fully
Speaker 1: formed like a theene out of Zeus's head and gave
Speaker 1: us these this language and these stories and it's just
Speaker 1: like the confidence with which these people say this, and
Speaker 1: then of course so many people believe them. And so
Speaker 1: it's the thing I keep returning to when it comes
Speaker 1: to this topic of you know how, no lots of
Speaker 1: things happened. We know generally why, you know, why the
Speaker 1: Mice and Knean period ended, why the Bronze Age ended,
Speaker 1: and and you know, to say they that humanity like
Speaker 1: lost the ability to understand written word is perhaps a
Speaker 1: little cruel to humanity, just a little exaggerated.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I'm seeing things on YouTube now where
Speaker 2: you've got all these people pontificating on the late Bronzeige
Speaker 2: collapse and everything else like that. They're going on and
Speaker 2: on and on and not giving any credit to the
Speaker 2: actual people who have worked on this, so that their
Speaker 2: listeners think that they came up with all of it.
Speaker 2: I'm just like, WHOA. First of all, I give credit
Speaker 2: where credits due, And secondly, it's like, I mean, in
Speaker 2: this case, it'll stop mansplaining to me, you know, that's
Speaker 2: what they're doing. So anyway, but at least, at least
Speaker 2: the Late Bronze Age is getting out there into the
Speaker 2: broader world well, and.
Speaker 1: It's it's things like this that that make you want
Speaker 1: to do the series of episodes that I get to do,
Speaker 1: you know, when I see this kind of nonsense and
Speaker 1: and the lack of sources and you know, all of
Speaker 1: those different things. A couple of years ago, I did
Speaker 1: a similar series on Atlantis because people were going off
Speaker 1: about all the different theories on Atlantis, and you know,
Speaker 1: so I released a series of episodes basically breaking down
Speaker 1: all the reasons why Atlantis is literally nothing exactly.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, I could. I could honestly see
Speaker 2: somebody starting a podcast that would be called yes but
Speaker 2: or no not Actually you know I'm going from there, Yeah, yes,
Speaker 2: confident but exactly. But you're right, Atlantis lends itself perfectly
Speaker 2: to it. Yeah, and I talk about that in my
Speaker 2: archaeology course, and there I'm leaning towards, well, is it
Speaker 2: Santorini if it's anything, or you know, is it really
Speaker 2: just Plato making it up about his ideal state?
Speaker 1: Well, and yeah, I kind of landed on you know,
Speaker 1: it is Plato making everything up, but maybe he was
Speaker 1: inspired by the general shape and history of Santorini.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what I tend to think,
Speaker 2: and I don't know how this would go in with
Speaker 2: your podcast, but I tell my students, I think there
Speaker 2: is a kernel of truth at the basis of most
Speaker 2: of the myths and legends. So you can point, you know,
Speaker 2: to the Trojan War, Yes, there is some stuff something happened.
Speaker 2: You can point to the legend of Theseus and the
Speaker 2: Minotaur and look at the ruins of Conolso's yes, maybe
Speaker 2: you know, so I think same thing so Atlantis. Maybe
Speaker 2: evocative memories of Santorini, but who knows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I think those are important because it
Speaker 1: does give you some kind of basis for how these
Speaker 1: stories come about, and then you can look at, you know,
Speaker 1: but where the accuracies lie and where it's mostly just
Speaker 1: you know, invention.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. Yeah, yeah, I like the idea of some
Speaker 2: things being I think the word is the electrical, where
Speaker 2: you're making something up to explain something you can see.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, well, you know, in my Bronze Age series,
Speaker 1: I'm talking a lot about you know, the where, the where,
Speaker 1: the oral tradition and the mythology you know, ties in,
Speaker 1: because obviously that's what I'm most interested in, and I
Speaker 1: think it's what's going to connect well with my listeners.
Speaker 1: You know, I love the kenosos of it all. You know,
Speaker 1: you look there and you're like, well, I could see
Speaker 1: how this can look like a labyrinth. Like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of bulls too. They had a real thing for
Speaker 1: bull like canography. Like you can see kind of where
Speaker 1: these things come about. When there is you know, five
Speaker 1: hundred years gap in between.
Speaker 2: Right and absolutely and when you get like wall paintings
Speaker 2: in Egypt that show people leaping over bulls in front
Speaker 2: of a labyrinth, and then you go, whoa, okay, but
Speaker 2: that dates to seventeen hundred BCE. You're like, wait a minute, okay,
Speaker 2: or the Menoans in contact with Egypt that that's yes,
Speaker 2: they are okay, and you go from there. And same
Speaker 2: thing with the Trojan War, which I think is partner
Speaker 2: parcel of the whole Late Bronze Age collapse. I've got
Speaker 2: no problem at all with something having happened at Troy,
Speaker 2: you know. And you can point to the Hittite records
Speaker 2: where they mentioned not one, not two, not three, but
Speaker 2: four wars that they fought in and around Troy. So
Speaker 2: the question for me is not was there a Trojan War?
Speaker 2: The question for me is which Trojan war was Homer
Speaker 2: talking about? And how does it link to the ones
Speaker 2: that the Hittites are talking about. So I do think
Speaker 2: that there's a lot of interplay between history, archaeology, mythology,
Speaker 2: and that's where all of this comes in and is
Speaker 2: so much fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well and it is. I mean, that's yeah, That's
Speaker 1: what I love so much about it. And what I've
Speaker 1: been trying to like dig into all of my scripts
Speaker 1: for this series is just where I can link in
Speaker 1: the mythological references, the ways that you know, the what
Speaker 1: what the people later were looking at and how they
Speaker 1: were able to tie it to whatever cultural memory they had,
Speaker 1: and then you know, transform it into the myths that
Speaker 1: we have today.
Speaker 2: And then you look at things like systems collapse, which
Speaker 2: is probably what the late Bronze Age collapse is, and
Speaker 2: you realize that if you're Colin Renfrew working in the
Speaker 2: late seventies and you're defining a systems collapse, one is
Speaker 2: that you've got a so called dark age afterward, in
Speaker 2: which people are looking back at the Golden Age and
Speaker 2: reminiscing and you know, hello Homer, right and hello, he
Speaker 2: see it. So I'm like, yeah, okay, and you know
Speaker 2: that poor hecid. I wish that I were not living
Speaker 2: in an age of iron, and like, yeah, you are,
Speaker 2: deal with it?
Speaker 1: So right, Oh, the idea of poor he sid Yeah, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I mean is it the perfect way to dive a
Speaker 1: little deeper into you know, all the all the different
Speaker 1: kind of things that went into it. So you know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the wars of in the Hittite record, and like,
Speaker 1: what what are some I'm trying to think of a
Speaker 1: better way of phrasing a question, but I'm just so
Speaker 1: curious in you know, all the different I suppose records.
Speaker 1: I'm quite interested in the records that we have that
Speaker 1: give us, you know, some sense of what was happening,
Speaker 1: and you know, if it can be tied later to
Speaker 1: myths that come out, I mean, even better. But I'm
Speaker 1: just so curious in what the records say because I know,
Speaker 1: obviously we're dealing with so many different different bits and
Speaker 1: pieces when it comes to how we learn about this collapse,
Speaker 1: but in terms of what they were writing, like what,
Speaker 1: you know, what do we know?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So that's a very interesting question because in addition
Speaker 2: to all the archaeology where we've gone and we've dug
Speaker 2: up the cities, and yes, this one's destroyed. No, this
Speaker 2: one isn't. And this one gets hit by an earthquake,
Speaker 2: this one gets hit by humans. We do have a
Speaker 2: lot of written records, as you say, but they differ
Speaker 2: from society to society, which is probably not surprising. And
Speaker 2: they differ in the amount of information we can get
Speaker 2: for them and in how much we can trust them
Speaker 2: at face value versus exaggeration. So, for instance, we don't
Speaker 2: have nearly as much information from the Myceonians because they're
Speaker 2: writing in linear b and their clay tablets are concerned
Speaker 2: with accounting from the palaces, so they're you know, they're
Speaker 2: talking about how many chariot wheels you've got, how many sheep?
Speaker 2: They they do not, perhaps surprisingly talk about and we
Speaker 2: traded with Egypt, and we traded with Cyprus. There's actually
Speaker 2: no real mention of trade or anything like that in
Speaker 2: the linear.
Speaker 1: Be Really, I was totally wrong about that. Oh that's
Speaker 1: so interesting. I knew it was all palace records, but it's.
Speaker 2: All palace records. What we do have. What we do have, though,
Speaker 2: are like the names of items, where the foreign name
Speaker 2: comes with the foreign item, some of which might surprise you.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a name of a spice Cyprus, which
Speaker 2: you know may or may not come from it's not
Speaker 2: spelled quite the same. But the word for ivory comes
Speaker 2: from the hit type, the word for gold, the word
Speaker 2: for kiton. I mean, a lot of these things come
Speaker 2: from the Near East. The word for sesame sasama, and
Speaker 2: linear b comes directly out of Akkadian and all of that. So,
Speaker 2: and we have the names of a couple of people.
Speaker 2: There's one guy named Api Appi Coutio, the Egyptian, and
Speaker 2: he's in charge of like eighty sheep picked canalso's like,
Speaker 2: why is a guy named the Egyptian in charge? So anyway,
Speaker 2: so the linear B tablets from mainland Greece and Canalsos
Speaker 2: are not as much help as you might expect. On
Speaker 2: the other hand, the hittype records, as I mentioned, talk
Speaker 2: about wars, conflicts problems with an area in northwestern Anatolia
Speaker 2: modern Turkey, in a region called Osawa and Osoa seems
Speaker 2: to be a confederation of like twenty two cities and states.
Speaker 2: In fact, the word Aswa gave rise to Asia. That's
Speaker 2: where we get the name Asia from. And in among
Speaker 2: the twenty two cities and towns is, one called Tarusa
Speaker 2: and another Willusa. Willis seems to be the name for
Speaker 2: Troy for the Hittites, and Tarusia or Tarusa is apparently
Speaker 2: the area around It's like the troad versus Troy. But
Speaker 2: you know, in Greek we've got Troy, which is Ilios,
Speaker 2: of course, and there would have been a digamma originally,
Speaker 2: so it would have been like a W. It would
Speaker 2: have been Willios, and the W drops out over time.
Speaker 2: Willios in Greek, Willusa in Hitsite. Hello, it's Troy. So there.
Speaker 2: And they're talking about, as I say, about four conflicts
Speaker 2: starting back in the fifteenth century BC. So I'm actually
Speaker 2: wondering if the Trojan War stories that come down to
Speaker 2: us from Homer and the Epic cycle might not be
Speaker 2: telescoping of two or three hundred years of on again,
Speaker 2: off again conflict at any rate. The Hittite records also
Speaker 2: talk about the fact that there is drought and famine
Speaker 2: towards the end of the Late Bronze Age, and they
Speaker 2: talk about campaigns that their kings. Do we know from
Speaker 2: archaeology that they've actually abandoned their capital city of Hatusa
Speaker 2: just before the end, so when part of it's burnt,
Speaker 2: it's already abandoned. So we've got some info from the
Speaker 2: Hittite records. The Egyptians, of course, are useful, and that's
Speaker 2: where the Sea Peoples come from, because twice Pharaoh Marnepta
Speaker 2: in twelve oh seven and Pharaoh Ramsy's the third in
Speaker 2: eleven seventy seven BC, And that's where the title of
Speaker 2: my first book in this series came from. They talk
Speaker 2: about a coalition attacking Egypt twice within you know, thirty
Speaker 2: year period. We call them the Sea People, so that's
Speaker 2: the name that the French Egyptologists came up with, but
Speaker 2: the Egyptians actually tell us their names the Palsse, the
Speaker 2: Dnian or Danuna, the Shardana or Sheridan, the Shekelesh, and
Speaker 2: so we've been playing linguistic games with them. Are the
Speaker 2: Shardana or the Shordan from Sardinia for example? Are the
Speaker 2: Shekelesh from Sicily? Are the Danuna or Dnian? Is that Homer?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I thought right.
Speaker 2: Exactly. And actually in the earlier wave there's a group
Speaker 2: called the equesh are the equest the Achaeans, and so
Speaker 2: do we have one group from the Aegean coming in
Speaker 2: twelve oh seven, and another group coming in eleven seventy seven,
Speaker 2: and the Egyptians, who don't know better, call one way
Speaker 2: the Equestion on the next wave then or dany So anyway,
Speaker 2: the only group that we think we can actually identify
Speaker 2: is the palesse set. Those are the Philistines. And in
Speaker 2: the Hebrew Bible it claims the Philistines come from crete,
Speaker 2: from kaftor so, you know, there may be something to that. Now,
Speaker 2: the Egyptians say that they beat these sea peoples both times,
Speaker 2: but you know, can you take the Egyptian records at
Speaker 2: face value?
Speaker 1: Are they going to say when they.
Speaker 2: Lost exactly when the Egyptians ever say when they lost them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got beat really badly, Like they're not going
Speaker 1: to rate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even the Battle of Cadessh, which was a draw
Speaker 2: back in about twelve seventy four that we know, you know,
Speaker 2: we know it was a stalemate, but the Egyptians claim
Speaker 2: a victory. So so do the Hittites for that matter.
Speaker 2: But never mind. So, you know, so one place that
Speaker 2: has provided really interesting records is the site of a
Speaker 2: port city on what is now the north coast of Syria.
Speaker 2: And there we have archives from three or four different
Speaker 2: private merchants who are also working for the palace, and
Speaker 2: they talk about life on the one hand going on
Speaker 2: just as per normal right up until the end. I mean,
Speaker 2: there's even one guy who's sending his ships back and
Speaker 2: forth to Crete. But then all of a sudden we
Speaker 2: get reports of enemy ships being seen, that enemy troops
Speaker 2: have landed at rasib Andhani, which is right there on
Speaker 2: the coast, and that troops are advancing towards Ugarit. And
Speaker 2: we know that Ugart is destroyed by humans. There are
Speaker 2: arrowheads in the walls, there's a meter three feet of destruction,
Speaker 2: and yet we don't know who the enemies are because
Speaker 2: they just say the enemy. So from Ugart we then
Speaker 2: get an idea of the end. And some of the
Speaker 2: other texts, and these were ones that have only just
Speaker 2: been published. They came out in French in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: and then an English translation published by Yuri Cohen in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, where the texts from Ugart are talking about
Speaker 2: a famine and that they're all dying, and that they're
Speaker 2: writing to the pharaoh of Egypt, including Marnepta, the same
Speaker 2: guy as the thought to see people's and the King
Speaker 2: of Ugart writes to Menepta saying that we're dying here,
Speaker 2: there's a famine. Can you send us anything? And interestingly
Speaker 2: we're missing that letter, but we have Marnepta's response, in
Speaker 2: which he quotes the letter. He says, you wrote to
Speaker 2: me saying X, Y and Z and so here, I'm
Speaker 2: happy to help. These sends seven thousand dried fish, plus
Speaker 2: beads and textiles. And I'm not sure how the beads
Speaker 2: and textiles would help the famine, but the dried fish
Speaker 2: went a long way. I'm sure. Yeah. So there we
Speaker 2: would have no reason to doubt it. It's not exaggeration,
Speaker 2: it's not a public record, it's a private letter between
Speaker 2: kings and so that for me is a very useful
Speaker 2: textual source. So, like I say, we've got a number
Speaker 2: of different sources from different cities. The question is how
Speaker 2: much can we take at face value and how much
Speaker 2: can we say, Okay, that really was the situation, but
Speaker 2: I would love to have more. For instance, we don't
Speaker 2: have anybody writing contemporaneously saying help, help, the sky is falling,
Speaker 2: we're collapsing. Oh send help. We've got earthquakes, you know,
Speaker 2: we don't have that. We do have people saying we're
Speaker 2: being invaded, send re fores months. But you know, was
Speaker 2: anybody aware at that time that they were collapsing and
Speaker 2: wrote about it? You know, was there somebody who was
Speaker 2: at Clytemnestra that was you know, predicting the future or
Speaker 2: other people like that? Yeah? You was there anybody like that?
Speaker 2: And a Southsayer and you know, was she ignored? So
Speaker 2: we don't have that, unfortunately, but we do have a
Speaker 2: lot of information.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting that that what the textual sources
Speaker 1: we do have don't talk about the natural disasters that
Speaker 1: we know were happening. Like I have a real pet
Speaker 1: obsession with the eruption of thera just because I love
Speaker 1: a good volcanic eruption, Like they're just fascinating. And I've
Speaker 1: went to Akritiri a couple of years ago and just you know,
Speaker 1: game changer, and it is fascinating that. I mean, I
Speaker 1: know that it's considerably earlier, you know than when things
Speaker 1: are collapsing, but I know, but still that there were
Speaker 1: earthquakes happening so often, and it's interesting that they don't ever,
Speaker 1: you know, write that down. Of course, I think probably
Speaker 1: a big problem with this time period and the writings
Speaker 1: is that they were much more practical than they were later.
Speaker 1: You know, there was the writing was much more about
Speaker 1: whether it was going to be useful versus like recording
Speaker 1: things for posterity.
Speaker 2: Right exactly, And they weren't busy doing that, that is
Speaker 2: for sure. But we do know that there's a period
Speaker 2: of about fifty years when there's earthquakes back then and
Speaker 2: earthquake storm as Amos North from Stanford has called them,
Speaker 2: and they're affecting many of the cities at that time,
Speaker 2: including Troy. We know that Troy six is destroyed by earthquakes.
Speaker 2: So then there's another earthquake at Comel Hatan in Egypt,
Speaker 2: where i'm an Hotep the Third's palace was, and at
Speaker 2: Mycena maybe at Turns that's a bit debated now, but yeah,
Speaker 2: we've got all that, and yet earthquakes were a big
Speaker 2: factor and yet nobody's writing about them, which okay, you know.
Speaker 1: So it goes yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting though,
Speaker 1: the earth shakes, Like you'd think you'd write it down
Speaker 1: or like say it to somebody, but I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not necessary for any kind of record keeping maybe,
Speaker 1: but it's yeah, it's interesting. So I feel like this
Speaker 1: is now just me being like a nerd for natural disasters,
Speaker 1: but like I feel like, if there's an earthquake at Myceni,
Speaker 1: they'd probably feel it a tarans like it's.
Speaker 2: Not far yes, exactly exactly you would think, so you
Speaker 2: would think so right, right, And I realized I mispoke
Speaker 2: not quite Amnesty. Of course it's Cassandra who does all
Speaker 2: the profitsing, right, So you know, were there any Cassandra's
Speaker 2: back then, I'm sure there were, but they didn't write
Speaker 2: their words down. So and that's where where I mean
Speaker 2: the archaeology comes in because you know, as one of
Speaker 2: the books that I read when I was younger, the
Speaker 2: Mute Stones Speak, you know, we've got to get archaeology
Speaker 2: to tell its story. And it's wonderful when the written
Speaker 2: text can supplement it, you know, and that's something that
Speaker 2: we especially find in the Iron Age when you've gotten
Speaker 2: the Neo Assyrian texts and all of that. But here
Speaker 2: at the end of the Late Bronside where I would say,
Speaker 2: so reliant on what the archaeologists are finding and how
Speaker 2: they interpret it. But that's why there's so much room
Speaker 2: for agreement and disagreements when you're looking at the same
Speaker 2: data and two people can see two different stories there.
Speaker 2: But we definitely have tons of evidence for the late Bronzides,
Speaker 2: some written and some not.
Speaker 1: Mm well, and I know, you know, when it comes
Speaker 1: to writing, especially during this period, we're really dealing with
Speaker 1: the elites, right that the people who have the ability
Speaker 1: not only to write, but to have it preserved. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's something that you know, if you're
Speaker 1: just coming to this as an outsider, like interested in
Speaker 1: the subject, it's harder to remember because now anyone can
Speaker 1: write something down and have it preserved. But back then,
Speaker 1: like you know, there there's a lot that has to
Speaker 1: go into some thing not only being recorded but surviving
Speaker 1: for us today. And that does mean that it is
Speaker 1: really the people, the rich people, the elites in power
Speaker 1: that can.
Speaker 2: Do that exactly, and that is very much a problem
Speaker 2: from back then. And that was some of the comments
Speaker 2: that I got on the first book, including in some reviews.
Speaker 2: He's telling the story of the one percent, what about
Speaker 2: the ninety nine percent? And my response is, yeah, what
Speaker 2: about him? I'd love to be able to talk about him.
Speaker 2: Show me the evidence because and that even after the collapse,
Speaker 2: you know, in the aftermath and the Iron Age again,
Speaker 2: and what I say in the sequel that's just about
Speaker 2: to come out after eleven seventy seven BC, in the
Speaker 2: front of the book and the preface and the prologue,
Speaker 2: I explicitly say, I can only report what I know.
Speaker 2: I can only report what we found in archaeology or
Speaker 2: from the written text. And in the case and I
Speaker 2: give the example of the Neo Assyrians. They're talking about
Speaker 2: the king and the administration, they're talking about the one percent.
Speaker 2: I said, so I can't really tell you what it
Speaker 2: was like for a peasant out in the hinterlands unless
Speaker 2: somebody has gone and excavated it. So I say, unfortunately,
Speaker 2: this is the story of the elite, and I just
Speaker 2: can't tell you the story of the unnamed millions out there,
Speaker 2: much as I would want to do that. So we
Speaker 2: are our hands are tied by the evidence that's been
Speaker 2: left to us, that's for sure. And the least we
Speaker 2: can do is acknowledge that and say, you know, there's
Speaker 2: a lot that remains untold.
Speaker 1: When I imagine the archaeological record does give us certainly more
Speaker 1: when it comes to you know, some level of normalcy
Speaker 1: like obviously not deep out in the country unless you
Speaker 1: suddenly figure out how where to excavate and can manage it.
Speaker 1: But in terms of you know, even the palatial structures
Speaker 1: and stuff, the archaeology would would, I imagine give us
Speaker 1: some idea of what a slightly more normal person lived.
Speaker 2: Like, assuming somebody has found a site and excavated it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely right, But even there it's it's worth the mercy
Speaker 2: of our technology to a certain degree. I mean, it
Speaker 2: used to be thought that in the aftermath of the
Speaker 2: Brownze age on the Greek mainland that between seventy and
Speaker 2: ninety percent of the people had died or had migrated.
Speaker 2: We've now lowered that a maximum sixty percent diet or migrated,
Speaker 2: maybe more like forty percent. Sarah Murray and Ian Morris
Speaker 2: have suggested the popular las plummeted from six hundred thousand
Speaker 2: down to about three hundred and thirty thousand people on
Speaker 2: the Greek mainland. But part of that, part of the
Speaker 2: reason why we've ratcheted it back and said, oh, it
Speaker 2: wasn't ninety percent the diet, it's only forty percent, is
Speaker 2: because now we're finding more iron age sits that we
Speaker 2: hadn't been able to find before, and so with every
Speaker 2: new site you're like, Okay, more people survived or whatever.
Speaker 2: So again I keep in mind that when we're calling
Speaker 2: something like the aftermath of the collapse a dark gauge,
Speaker 2: it's frequently a reference to the fact that we don't
Speaker 2: know what happened. It's dark to us, which is why
Speaker 2: you've got so many scholarly articles where the title is
Speaker 2: new light on the dark Gauge. You know, new light.
Speaker 2: It's like, eventually there's enough light. It's not a dark
Speaker 2: age anymore. And in fact, I don't think that the
Speaker 2: Iron Age is a dark age, and that's what a
Speaker 2: lot of Skylar are arguing now. The problem is that
Speaker 2: the general public doesn't know that yet. So you still
Speaker 2: see the centuries after the Late Run's Age collapse late twelfth, eleventh, tenth, ninth,
Speaker 2: even down into the eighth still called the world's first
Speaker 2: dark age. I mean, even the pr for eleven seventy
Speaker 2: seven talked about the aftermath being the world's first dark age.
Speaker 2: So in the sequel at the end, I make the
Speaker 2: argument and I agree with my colleagues that say stop
Speaker 2: calling this a dark age, just like the Middle ages.
Speaker 2: They don't want theirs called the dark Age anymore, same
Speaker 2: with us. So I'm in the camp that says, can
Speaker 2: we just call it the Iron Age, which is accurate,
Speaker 2: doesn't cause you know, cast any aspersions. But so anyway,
Speaker 2: so it's part of how much we know, and that's
Speaker 2: where the technology that our including remote sensing and that
Speaker 2: are surveying techniques and all that is, if you'll excuse me,
Speaker 2: shedding more light on this period.
Speaker 1: No, I think it's really important to emphasize that, Like
Speaker 1: it's something that I've been aware of in writing this
Speaker 1: of you know, both noting that it used to be
Speaker 1: called or and it's still sometimes called a dark age,
Speaker 1: but all the reasons why that's not really applicable and
Speaker 1: just is misleading because I think that people do really
Speaker 1: consider a dark age more to be about like, you know,
Speaker 1: what is happening versus this idea of a lack of sources.
Speaker 1: And that's really applicable to the Middle Ages too, where
Speaker 1: you know, people considered it a dark age is in
Speaker 1: terms of like you know, human intellect and stuff, and
Speaker 1: that's just it's very unfortunate for the people that we're
Speaker 1: living then. And I think about that with the Iron
Speaker 1: Age a lot, because I mean the Iron Age is
Speaker 1: when we get the development of everything that I certainly
Speaker 1: obsess over when it comes to ancient Greece, Like they
Speaker 1: weren't doing nothing. They weren't some suddenly dumbed down group
Speaker 1: of people, Like just a lot of things change and
Speaker 1: they stopped, you know, recording things in the same way,
Speaker 1: and so we don't know. But that doesn't mean it
Speaker 1: wasn't happening exactly.
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean it wasn't happening, and it doesn't mean
Speaker 2: they weren't trying their best. And even a dark day,
Speaker 2: it's not you know, the total collapse in degeneration with
Speaker 2: wild dogs howling, and you know people and I do
Speaker 2: talk about this at the towards the end of the sequel,
Speaker 2: but yeah, you know, we're going to get the standardization
Speaker 2: of the alphabet courtesy of the Phoenicians, who then bring
Speaker 2: it over to Greece and to Italy for that matter,
Speaker 2: and so our people in Greece are going to be
Speaker 2: able to start writing, certainly by the eighth century, and
Speaker 2: maybe even earlier. There's some new research that is debating
Speaker 2: whether the alphabet made it over as early as the
Speaker 2: eleventh century. Which I'm in total favor of because that's
Speaker 2: when it gets standardized over in the Near East. Why
Speaker 2: would Greece be three hundred years behind. Bring it on
Speaker 2: over and you know, we've got I think at some
Speaker 2: point there's thirty three different variations of the early alphabet,
Speaker 2: so they're experimenting. So yeah, this is a time of innovation.
Speaker 2: It's the time of invention. And not only do you
Speaker 2: get the standardization of the alphabet, you also get iron
Speaker 2: and it gives the name to this. You get the
Speaker 2: invention of iron, which is probably courtesy of the Cypriots,
Speaker 2: it's looking like right now, and they're making bimetallic knives
Speaker 2: and weapons where the blade is made of iron and
Speaker 2: the hilt, you know, inlaid with bone or wood or ivory,
Speaker 2: but fastened on with rivets made of bronze. So you
Speaker 2: get both bronze and iron. And it looks like the
Speaker 2: Cypriots are kind of making the transformation from the segue,
Speaker 2: if you will, from the Bronze age to the Iron age,
Speaker 2: and that on Cyprus they've been working with copper all
Speaker 2: this time and now they move into iron, and along
Speaker 2: along with the exportation of these objects, both degrees and
Speaker 2: the Southern Levan. It looks like they're also exporting the
Speaker 2: know how, the technology, and then of course you've got
Speaker 2: iron ore in every country and so everybody's then able
Speaker 2: to make it. So this is a period of invention, innovation, transformation.
Speaker 2: And one thing that I take a look at in
Speaker 2: this sequel, I borrow the adaptive cycle, which is something
Speaker 2: that you frequently see in environmental studies, biology and such.
Speaker 2: But the basic ideas you know, empires rise and fall, right,
Speaker 2: that's the adaptive cycle. You get a release phase and
Speaker 2: then you get an innovation phase and then everything comes back.
Speaker 2: I think that's what we're looking at here. The Bronze
Speaker 2: Age collapse is the release phase, the omega phase in
Speaker 2: adaptive cycle, and then the Iron Age not a dark age,
Speaker 2: but it's the alpha phase, which is defined as a
Speaker 2: period of invention and innovation trying to grapple with what's
Speaker 2: just happened. And I think that's a perfect analogy right here.
Speaker 2: So it's almost the opposite of a dark age. And
Speaker 2: in fact, some scholars like John Poppadopolis and Sarah Morris
Speaker 2: at UCLA have argued that this is not a dark age,
Speaker 2: it's far from it, and so have some of the
Speaker 2: people that are studying the Near East. So I'm just
Speaker 2: literally jumping in the bandwagon and agreeing with you that
Speaker 2: this is a time of invention and innovation. It's actually
Speaker 2: a very exciting time. I mean, I'm a Bronze Age person,
Speaker 2: that's where my heart lies. But I have to admit
Speaker 2: that the Iron Age is pretty darn interesting, So I'll
Speaker 2: give them that.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm really big on the classical and archaic, so
Speaker 1: we can kind of find the middle ground there in
Speaker 1: the Iron But I mean, it's so interesting to me
Speaker 1: that it's ever been called the Dark Age because regardless
Speaker 1: of what we did or did not know, like what
Speaker 1: we've known for a long time is that it did
Speaker 1: give rise to the oral tradition that would become like
Speaker 1: the Homeric epics. Like the idea of referring to the
Speaker 1: time when those were being created, you know, as a
Speaker 1: dark age is so ironic given that you know, so
Speaker 1: much of quote unquote Western civilization has been attributed to
Speaker 1: the Greeks, like during and from that, I was like, why, like,
Speaker 1: there's just so much kind of happening there that seems contradictory.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, But if you think back too, the Greeks
Speaker 2: themselves never talked about a dark age. No, that's as
Speaker 2: James Whitley once said, the dark Age of Greece is
Speaker 2: our own conception. And you know, and that's where again
Speaker 2: John Popadopoulos said, the Greeks didn't know of a dark age.
Speaker 2: Why not trust their better judgments? And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: why not trust their better judgment? Right? So yeah, I
Speaker 2: would absolutely agree. Any age that's got everyone from Homer
Speaker 2: to Hecia Disapho went onward, is not, in my mind
Speaker 2: a dark age.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they're giving us amazing stuff that we all
Speaker 1: still love. So yeah, Now the alphabet that you mentioned,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of new research coming through about
Speaker 1: when it was, you know, happening in Greece, was that
Speaker 1: the some of the stuff that's been published recently about
Speaker 1: on Andros. There was something that recently came out about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know if it is or not. I'd
Speaker 2: have to look, but I'm thinking of the research that
Speaker 2: Wilhelmina Wall has been publishing out of I think I
Speaker 2: think she's at Leiden but doing really interesting work on
Speaker 2: the origins of the alphabet. But yeah, this is new
Speaker 2: stuff rally, and there's a couple of Greek archaeologists working
Speaker 2: on this as well. So I don't know what the
Speaker 2: pushback is going to be from the actual philologist or
Speaker 2: linguists or anything like that. But from an archaeological point
Speaker 2: of view, looking at the earliest Phoenician alphabet and the
Speaker 2: earliest inscriptions in Greece, I think we can push it
Speaker 2: back further. But Brio Yanni's has been talking about this anyway,
Speaker 2: the field is definitely alive and well, and I think
Speaker 2: it may shake up some of the tried and true
Speaker 2: things that we've been teaching for years. So I mean,
Speaker 2: there are other things that we're going to shake up.
Speaker 2: I mean, I start my book by dismissing the Dorian invasion.
Speaker 1: Lovely, I'd love to hear more about that.
Speaker 2: Well, there's nothing here. It didn't happen, Okay, No, just no.
Speaker 2: Exactly all the maps that have the Dorian coming down,
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, exactly. So I actually start the book
Speaker 2: with that. I end the book pleading for no dark ages.
Speaker 2: It's an iron age. I begin the book with the Dorians.
Speaker 2: In fact, I start out with the Dorians came down
Speaker 2: from the north, brandishing their weapons of iron. They overran
Speaker 2: Greece and took over and d and then I pause
Speaker 2: figurative literally, and then say, but it probably never happened,
Speaker 2: And what that's a good way to start to open
Speaker 2: the book, right right, So, yeah, but it probably never happened.
Speaker 2: The problem is that you see it all over the internet.
Speaker 2: You see it in online encyclopedias, and I actually call
Speaker 2: out one or two by name in the book with
Speaker 2: the link, so, which means I'm pretty sure within three
Speaker 2: weeks of the book appearing in mid April that the
Speaker 2: online encyclopedias will have changed their entry and either the
Speaker 2: link will be dead or they will have changed it
Speaker 2: to not say what I've got. So I've got screenshots,
Speaker 2: I've got the receipts. So but yeah, they still talk
Speaker 2: about the Dorians coming sweeping down from the north at
Speaker 2: about twelve hundred PC and ending my Synian civilization. And
Speaker 2: I'm like no, And I reached back and quote scholars
Speaker 2: all the way back to like Rheese Carpenter in the
Speaker 2: sixties saying things like the Dorian invasion is a mirage,
Speaker 2: that it's an invasion without invaders, that everything they're supposed
Speaker 2: to bring with them is already there and can be
Speaker 2: attributed to them. So you know, I think it's like
Speaker 2: herotidaus enthusidities. We're trying to, in a way make this
Speaker 2: up so they could explain the dialects of Greece, you know,
Speaker 2: Ionic versus Dorac versus whatever. But archaeologically speaking, there's no
Speaker 2: evidence for it. Now, of course, we do have the
Speaker 2: problem with evidence of absence or absence of evidence is
Speaker 2: not and all that right, absence of evidence is not
Speaker 2: evidence of absence. We can't find the Dorian invasion. One
Speaker 2: could argue that doesn't mean it didn't exist. I do
Speaker 2: think it didn't exist. What we've got instead, how about
Speaker 2: if it's not an invasion, but it's a migration. We
Speaker 2: do have people moving back and forth at that time,
Speaker 2: not a problem, but there is a world of difference
Speaker 2: between a migration and an invasion, two very different things.
Speaker 2: So I start out the book saying, if we're wrong
Speaker 2: about the Dorian invasion, and we have to change our
Speaker 2: textbooks because they're in the textbooks. I mean the textbook
Speaker 2: that I was using for my Ancient Mediterranean Civilization's class.
Speaker 2: It's got a page and a half two pages on
Speaker 2: the Dorian Invasion. And I would tell my freshmen. Because
Speaker 2: it's a freshman class. I would say, you know, rip
Speaker 2: those pages out of the textbook because that's wrong, right,
Speaker 2: or if we're going to discuss it, let's discuss it.
Speaker 2: But so it's still around, and we just have to
Speaker 2: we have to let the general public know that that
Speaker 2: stuff is not right. So you know, there's another episode
Speaker 2: for you, Yes but you know, or or no, not
Speaker 2: so much. The Dorian Invasion. Did it happen? No? Right,
Speaker 2: But again, this is not news to scholars, but it
Speaker 2: is news to the general public. And everywhere I look
Speaker 2: on the internet, they're like, oh, and I'm I'm fully
Speaker 2: expecting that after the sequel comes out, we'll see a
Speaker 2: whole other sloop of podcasts of people man explaining why
Speaker 2: the Dorian Invasion either happened or didn't happen and taking
Speaker 2: credit for everything that you know that we've done. But anyway,
Speaker 2: there's lots of I guess one could say, miss and
Speaker 2: legends about this period, some of which are accurate and
Speaker 2: some of which just aren't, and we got to figure
Speaker 2: out which is which.
Speaker 1: M M. It's funny I'm trying to think of, you know,
Speaker 1: because I really don't touch on history too much. As
Speaker 1: outside of like, you know, the kind of classical period
Speaker 1: history or surrounding the playwrights, because I love them and
Speaker 1: they talk about myths. But you know, so I've touched
Speaker 1: into history a couple of times on the show, you know,
Speaker 1: in my own research, and one of them was last
Speaker 1: year I did a series on Sparta and it was
Speaker 1: broadly about the Sparta sort of the Spartan mirage, you know,
Speaker 1: the myths that Sparta created for themselves, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that's the only time I've ever touched on the
Speaker 1: Dorian invasion. And I'm trying to remember what I said,
Speaker 1: but I from what I remember of looking into it,
Speaker 1: it felt to me more like a Spartan myth than
Speaker 1: it did history. And so I'm hoping that that's kind
Speaker 1: of where I landed at the time, because that's what
Speaker 1: it felt like. It's just like another of the things
Speaker 1: that the Spartans kind of, you know, mythologized about themselves,
Speaker 1: and that kind of took it, sort of caught hold
Speaker 1: and lasted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree. I would absolutely agree that it
Speaker 2: was part of the Spartan mirage, all the stuff that
Speaker 2: Paul Cartlidge and other people talk about, and yeah, the
Speaker 2: Dorians are part and parcel of that. They were very
Speaker 2: important for those Spartans. So yeah, I absolutely agree. And
Speaker 2: in my History of Ancient Greece course when I teach it,
Speaker 2: I say the exact same thing. I touch on it
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like I thought it wasn't. Well, clearly
Speaker 1: I didn't. I don't know. Now I'm fascinated, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it always seemed unlikely to me, like why
Speaker 1: it just yeah, it feels like an unlikely explanation for
Speaker 1: what happened, And.
Speaker 2: Well, the thing is unlikely or not. I mean, the
Speaker 2: Dorian invasion, it could happen. It's very much like the
Speaker 2: Sea People's. I mean, in the original eleven seventy seven book,
Speaker 2: I start with the Sea People's and so now in
Speaker 2: the sequel I thought, okay, let me start with the Dorians,
Speaker 2: and so we have the same sort of questions like
Speaker 2: if the Sea peoples actually did invade like the Egyptians,
Speaker 2: then why couldn't the Dorians have invaded also? Right? And
Speaker 2: one could ask that the part of the problem is
Speaker 2: that for the Dorians, as I said, there's no archaeological evidence.
Speaker 2: For the Sea People's, there's no archaeological evidence either, you know,
Speaker 2: we can't find them anywhere. We do have textual evidence, right,
Speaker 2: the shard And that's part of the problem. The Shardana
Speaker 2: or the Shurdan. They're mercenaries. We see them fighting in
Speaker 2: the Near East, both for Egypt and against Egypt from
Speaker 2: like the fourteenth century on. They're known quantities. And yet
Speaker 2: point me to a site anywhere that you can say,
Speaker 2: this is where the Shardana come from, right in Sardinia
Speaker 2: or wherever there isn't one yet, right, And even Ugart
Speaker 2: where they talk about the enemy ships showing up, they
Speaker 2: don't say the Shardana. There is one text that mentions
Speaker 2: a Shardana. So we've got the same sort of thing
Speaker 2: for the sea people's and for the Dorians. And so
Speaker 2: I guess one could ask, and I'm just talking off
Speaker 2: the top of my head here, but why do we
Speaker 2: accept the sea peoples and not the Dorians. Well, the
Speaker 2: sea peoples, I now think are as I mentioned, are
Speaker 2: part of the equation in terms of being victims as
Speaker 2: opposed to oppressors. They are migrating because of a drought,
Speaker 2: and I would have no problem with the Dorians doing
Speaker 2: that as well. I have no problem with the Dorians
Speaker 2: migrating at the end of the Late Bronze Age. I
Speaker 2: just don't want the Dorians invading. And similarly, I'm not
Speaker 2: so sure the Sea People's invaded per se. I think
Speaker 2: they are migrating, and we've got evidence, especially in the
Speaker 2: Southern Levant now, for the Philistines, who are part of
Speaker 2: the Sea Peoples, as having been a much more peaceful
Speaker 2: assimilation into the region than one would expect. So maybe
Speaker 2: that's the answer. And I guess what I'm doing in
Speaker 2: both books is arguing for a migration rather than an invasion,
Speaker 2: for both to see people's and the Dorians. And I
Speaker 2: think that explains the evidence we've got. It explains some
Speaker 2: of the tics that we've got, and it doesn't do
Speaker 2: away with them completely. It just massages it slightly to
Speaker 2: fit the evidence that we've got. So, you know, you
Speaker 2: want to call it a Dorian migration, I'm cool. Call
Speaker 2: it a Dorian invasion. I'm not so sure about that.
Speaker 2: But you know, again, but this is nuances, this is semantics,
Speaker 2: and you know, somebody out in the general populace is
Speaker 2: going to say invasion, migration, whatever. I'm like, no, not whatever,
Speaker 2: let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. Well, and that's I'm so glad that you
Speaker 1: brought it up that way because I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things that we've been really trying to
Speaker 1: drill in in this whole series is the way that
Speaker 1: the ancient Mediterranean was broadly about migration, like the way
Speaker 1: that you know, it wasn't about you know, this group
Speaker 1: of people lived in this land and only in this land,
Speaker 1: and they are the indigenous peoples, and and you know,
Speaker 1: across Mediterranean it was a very shared space. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of going back and forth, a lot of migration,
Speaker 1: especially if we're dealing with drought and other like climate
Speaker 1: change things that would force people to migrate. And I
Speaker 1: think that especially because of the myth of Western civilization,
Speaker 1: you know, we have this idea that like ancient Greece
Speaker 1: existed in a little bubble, a little vacuum of like
Speaker 1: just them, and they were very Greek and they started everything.
Speaker 1: And it's like even the ancient Greeks are like, well,
Speaker 1: the Phoenicians gave us the alphabet, and you know, Aphrodite
Speaker 1: probably came from Cyprus, and you know, like they give
Speaker 1: us so much evidence for migration, both of culture and
Speaker 1: language and people. But I think it really is important
Speaker 1: to remind everyone that this wasn't like set you know it,
Speaker 1: Migration happened a lot and a lot of people, a
Speaker 1: lot of different people from different places lived together in
Speaker 1: the same place, quite peacefully and quite happily. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't always about an invading force like I think we
Speaker 1: think about it because of later colonialism. We imagine that
Speaker 1: if there is a large group of people, it is
Speaker 1: always going to be an invading force. And I think
Speaker 1: that that's a really important myth to break, and you know,
Speaker 1: and really just point out all the evidence that suggest
Speaker 1: that that's not really what was happening.
Speaker 2: Broadly, I agree. And if you look, if you look
Speaker 2: closely at the sea people's inscriptions in Egypt, the one
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of Ramses the third and his inscription on
Speaker 2: his wallet med at Habu. In addition to a scene
Speaker 2: of the naval battle between the Egyptians and the Sea peoples,
Speaker 2: he's got right next to it a scene of the
Speaker 2: sea people's literally migrating. You see the women and the
Speaker 2: children sitting on an ox cart, you know, with their
Speaker 2: Samsonite luggage in the cart with them. You know, it's
Speaker 2: a migration. It's not a bunch of men popped up
Speaker 2: on testosterone just rating. It's an entire family migrating, and
Speaker 2: we see the picture. So I actually said in the
Speaker 2: original book that I thought that the analogy for the
Speaker 2: Sea People's would be the dust Bowl in the nineteen
Speaker 2: thirties in the United States, where the people moved from
Speaker 2: Oklahoma to California. More recently, I would say the people
Speaker 2: fleeing the Civil War in Syria would be the equivalent
Speaker 2: of Sea People's. You know, they're just looking for a
Speaker 2: better home where there, you know, not in the middle
Speaker 2: of a war zone. People migrating trying to get to Europe,
Speaker 2: for example. These are all, I would say, examples where
Speaker 2: I wouldn't call that an invasion per se, I would
Speaker 2: call it a migraine. And I think it's the same
Speaker 2: at the end of the Late Bronze Age, in the
Speaker 2: beginning of the Iron Age, we definitely have evidence for
Speaker 2: lots of migration, not just in Greece, but elsewhere as well.
Speaker 2: There may be that may be were the kingdoms of
Speaker 2: like Moab and Ammon and even Etom. Even people they're
Speaker 2: either migrating or they're nomadic at the time. At the
Speaker 2: end of the Late Bronze Age, And of course I
Speaker 2: think it was Herodotus that talks about the Etruscans migrating
Speaker 2: from Anatolia because of a drought in about twelve hundred BCS.
Speaker 2: So you know, there you go, there's your Herodotus talking
Speaker 2: about a drought and a migration at the end of
Speaker 2: the Late Bronze Age. Whether it's accurate or not, you know,
Speaker 2: who knows, but.
Speaker 1: Sure, but when they're writing it into their myths or
Speaker 1: their you know, history or what Herodotas wanted to be
Speaker 1: history like, it still is coming from somewhere. It's just
Speaker 1: recently read yesterday somebody. It was a whole thing on Twitter,
Speaker 1: but essentially it was like this the notion that Rome
Speaker 1: was like not a city of immigrants, which is so absurd,
Speaker 1: and Rome obviously like, yes, you know, I won't pretend
Speaker 1: that the aia it is not Augustine propaganda, but the
Speaker 1: idea of Romans coming from from Troy like had to
Speaker 1: have come from somewhere, even if they just imagined themselves
Speaker 1: as a city of immigrants. That's an incredibly important, like
Speaker 1: cultural tradition that they established for themselves. And I think
Speaker 1: that it it's really important to point this stuff out
Speaker 1: because today, our modern ideas are so based in like
Speaker 1: fear mongering and all these different things about migrants, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's just horrible stuff. And I
Speaker 1: think that often especially like you know, just what I
Speaker 1: call history bros. But I appreciate that you call them
Speaker 1: man's plains some please, like you know that the YouTuber guys,
Speaker 1: and it, like, I think that that mentality comes into
Speaker 1: those that kind of telling of this idea of invasions
Speaker 1: instead of migrations, and it just kind of perpetuates these
Speaker 1: problems that we have in the modern world and which
Speaker 1: have like you know, really really important modern issues attached
Speaker 1: to them, but then are being put on the ancient world.
Speaker 1: And when we put that kind of stuff on the
Speaker 1: ancient world, it almost gives legitimacy to the to the
Speaker 1: actions of today, right, this suggestion that, oh, well, it
Speaker 1: was an invasion and it was bad and they fought
Speaker 1: back or whatever it is, you know, but yeah, whereas
Speaker 1: a lot of it was migration. Not to say that
Speaker 1: they weren't having wars obviously, but like it's important to
Speaker 1: point out what things are migrations versus invasions.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I think that's where a lot of the
Speaker 2: what did you just call them the history bros. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they they lose the or they never knew the nuances
Speaker 2: and what's the saying the devils and the details. So
Speaker 2: the nuances matter at this absolutely yeah, absolutely so, especially
Speaker 2: if you're ing and trying to compare the modern world
Speaker 2: to the ancient world. You know, you need you need
Speaker 2: to have the facts straight. And a lot of the
Speaker 2: people on YouTube, let's just say, do not have their
Speaker 2: facts completely in order.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, it's not the best. I mean not to
Speaker 1: say that there aren't some good some good work being
Speaker 1: put out there, but unfortunately the loudest ones tend to
Speaker 1: be the ones that are the most wrong.
Speaker 2: Right, Yes, there are some very good ones. I should
Speaker 2: not wump everybody together, but yeah, there are others where
Speaker 2: you would definitely want a yes, but or no not
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 1: Well, sensationalizing gets your views unfortunately, Right, It's like all
Speaker 1: the documentaries that we see that have utter nonsense infused
Speaker 1: in them because sensational is exciting.
Speaker 2: So it is, uh, it is.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear more about, you know, what's
Speaker 1: happening at this period beyond Greece, because obviously I focus
Speaker 1: mostly on Greece, but I want you know, we've talked
Speaker 1: a little about the Hittites and the Egyptians, which is wonderful,
Speaker 1: but I know a lot was happening more further inland,
Speaker 1: wasn't it, like even into Mesopotamian stuff. Were they having
Speaker 1: like a similar kind of collapse or their own version?
Speaker 2: Yes and no. And this is where this is, first
Speaker 2: of all, where it gets very interesting, but also where
Speaker 2: the sequel becomes even more important. So on the face
Speaker 2: of it, at the end of the Late Bronze Age,
Speaker 2: you know, everyone goes down. Actually what happens is it's
Speaker 2: the network that goes down, the globalized Mediterranean network, as
Speaker 2: Susan Sherritt and others have called it, the ones that
Speaker 2: are linking everybody where nobody is more than three hops
Speaker 2: away from anybody else, so that it's a small world network.
Speaker 2: That network collapses at the end of the Late Bronze
Speaker 2: it's the links are cut. The actual societies are each
Speaker 2: affected in different ways, and that's what I'm exploring in
Speaker 2: the sequel. Wonderful, but that's where it comes in because
Speaker 2: at the end of the Late Bronze Age, on the
Speaker 2: surface of it, it looks like the Assyrians and the
Speaker 2: Babylonians do better than many of the other people. And
Speaker 2: indeed they're all the way in inland Mesopotamia, as you said,
Speaker 2: the tigers and Euphrates rivers. They are too far inland
Speaker 2: to be hit by the sea peoples. They at first,
Speaker 2: at least don't seem to have been hit by the
Speaker 2: drought and the famine, maybe because they're on tigers and
Speaker 2: Euphrates and in other words, they seem to have survived
Speaker 2: better well. As it turns out, and I go into
Speaker 2: in the sequel, the answer is yes and no. They
Speaker 2: do survive longer, at least at first without the drought
Speaker 2: and without the famine. They're not impacted immediately. They're not
Speaker 2: impacted necessarily at eleven seventy seven like the others, nor
Speaker 2: do they have to fight or anything like that. But
Speaker 2: they do keep records. And this is what's nice, is
Speaker 2: that they don't collapse. It's not how systems collapse. They
Speaker 2: still have the king, they still have the administration, they
Speaker 2: still have the economy, they still have the standing army,
Speaker 2: they still know how to write right. They haven't lost
Speaker 2: civilization per se. They're definitely not in a dark age,
Speaker 2: but we are missing royal records for about seventy five years.
Speaker 2: At that period, there just aren't any right, they're still around,
Speaker 2: but we don't have records. We don't know why are
Speaker 2: they writing on some other material or whatever. And then
Speaker 2: when we do start getting records again about seventy five
Speaker 2: years into it, down at about say eleven hundred BC,
Speaker 2: they start saying, we now have a drought, we now
Speaker 2: have famine, we are now resorting to cannibalism. So they
Speaker 2: do get hit, but it's like almost one hundred years
Speaker 2: later than anybody else. But what happens is they also
Speaker 2: rebound because they never lose everything entirely. And so by
Speaker 2: the ninth century, the Neo Assyrians are not only back
Speaker 2: up and running, but they're busy conquering all of the
Speaker 2: ancient earies. In fact, one thing of has changed. Back
Speaker 2: in the Bronze Age, like the Assyrians and the Babylonians,
Speaker 2: they were good commercial partners, were trading with everybody else. Right,
Speaker 2: we even have Minoan sandals that are sent over to
Speaker 2: Hamarabi of Babylon in the eighteenth century.
Speaker 1: That's adorable. I don't know why it's so cute.
Speaker 2: It is cute, but it's even better because he didn't
Speaker 2: like him, and he returned them, and it tells us
Speaker 2: that in the records, and I've always wondered, oh, why
Speaker 2: did he return them? Are they too small? You know,
Speaker 2: to last millennium? But anyway, so the Assyrians and the
Speaker 2: Babylonians in the Brownze Age were good, dependable trading partners.
Speaker 2: Now in the aftermath of the collapse, the people that
Speaker 2: the Assyrians and Babylonians were trading with, many of them
Speaker 2: had collapsed. The Assyrians go down, the Mycenaeans go down.
Speaker 2: What the Neo Assyrians do when they come back up
Speaker 2: in the ninth century is they start attacking and taking
Speaker 2: the stuff. Whereas before they've been like, look, I'll give
Speaker 2: you this for this and this for this, now they're like,
Speaker 2: give me what you got, right, give me what you got,
Speaker 2: and they are either demanding in tribute or actually capturing everything.
Speaker 2: So that changes in the Iron Age is the nature
Speaker 2: of the relationships with the Assyrians and Babylonians. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's changed a little bit. And what's happening in the
Speaker 2: Iron Age is quite different in some ways from the
Speaker 2: Bronze Age. But I would say that's where the combination
Speaker 2: of doing the research for the first book eleven seventy
Speaker 2: seven BC. Added to the research for the second book,
Speaker 2: The After eleven seventy seven BC has given me and
Speaker 2: hopefully the readers, a more nuanced look at what happened before, during,
Speaker 2: and after the collapse, so not just in terms of
Speaker 2: resilience and everything, but in how the different relationships were affected.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that I say in the
Speaker 2: sequel is the collapse of the Late Bronze Age is messy.
Speaker 2: The aftermath is even more messy.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm. I mean makes sense when something that big
Speaker 1: goes down, Yeah, it's gonna leave a mess behind.
Speaker 2: This is true, and that's interesting. But you know, again
Speaker 2: from the archaeology and the textual records, we only have
Speaker 2: bits and pieces. So I compare it to a kaleidoscope
Speaker 2: where you're looking through and you've got all these pieces
Speaker 2: and sometimes they can form a picture and other times
Speaker 2: they're just you know, disjointed fragments, and we've got to
Speaker 2: put them all together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. I it kind of you
Speaker 1: can kind of see how uh culture would would kind
Speaker 1: of get to that point if they're having their their
Speaker 1: you know, drought and famine, late and they've seen that
Speaker 1: everyone else has kind of fallen around them, Like I
Speaker 1: can I can see how a mentality would develop of like, well,
Speaker 1: if we can't do the trading, like, but we're also
Speaker 1: the ones who kind of, you know, stayed the strongest
Speaker 1: as everyone crumbled. Like the the immediate reaction that kind
Speaker 1: of time period is to be like, well, I guess
Speaker 1: we'll take what we used to trade.
Speaker 2: For, right, Absolutely, we've still got our standing army. You don't.
Speaker 2: We're just going to come and take your stuff, right yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And like you know, they used to have diplomacy,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't possible anymore. And it's so interesting. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting how much you know, being inland can help.
Speaker 1: But it makes sense, you know, like even in just
Speaker 1: in terms of like the natural the earth factors. You know,
Speaker 1: it is such a different place compared to like when
Speaker 1: you're right on the coast of the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2: And exactly, but look, you know the Phoenicians who were
Speaker 2: on the coast, Look, they were able to take advantage
Speaker 2: and in contrast to the Neo Assyrians, the Phoenicians are
Speaker 2: busy trading with everybody. You don't see, you know, the
Speaker 2: Phoenicians conquering, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so after so they're still doing that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you do eventually get the Phoenician colonists,
Speaker 2: just like you get Greek colonization, and so you get
Speaker 2: you know, the Phoenicians on Cyprus, you get the Phoenicians
Speaker 2: founding Carthage on all of that, and there would be
Speaker 2: obviously some military to go with that, but some of
Speaker 2: the earliest evidence we have them is I would say,
Speaker 2: more peaceful maritime ventures in which they're going out and
Speaker 2: trading for what they need and including as far west
Speaker 2: as Spain. So but you know, then eventually you can't
Speaker 2: blame them just I mean, I don't know, maybe you
Speaker 2: could blame them just like Greece, you know, and the
Speaker 2: Archaic period and the colonizing Curied, they start sending out, well,
Speaker 2: in the Greeks case, start sending out their excess population,
Speaker 2: and so we get the Phoenicians expanding that way too.
Speaker 2: But again at first, it's I like to imagine it
Speaker 2: much more peaceful. We got this, you got that, we
Speaker 2: need it, let's go as opposed to the Assyrians with
Speaker 2: you got that, we want to give it to us.
Speaker 2: But again, one thing I would hasten to add is
Speaker 2: that we're coming at this from the Neo Assyrian written
Speaker 2: records for the most part, and I do not know
Speaker 2: that we can take them all, or most or any
Speaker 2: at face value, because again, the Neo Assyrians are very
Speaker 2: much like the Egyptians. Neo Assyrians never lose a battle.
Speaker 2: They always win, they always conquer, they always take loot,
Speaker 2: you know, and really, actually.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is it likely, just you know, statistically exactly so.
Speaker 2: And there is some intimation that in some of the battles,
Speaker 2: like when the Assyrians and the Babylonians are fighting, that
Speaker 2: the Assyrians may have lost a couple of times. But again,
Speaker 2: this is where we have to be careful of taking
Speaker 2: inscriptions at face value, especially when they're obviously being used
Speaker 2: as propaganda, when they're put up on blocks in the
Speaker 2: king's palace for people to see where he's definitely boasting.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's one one of my favorite inscriptions. He
Speaker 2: calls himself a stormtrooper, and I'm thinking, oh, you're in
Speaker 2: Star Wars. Huh, you're a stormtrooper. Okay, that's pretty cool, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: What would the word be like, what would be like
Speaker 1: a more literal definition than we could call it a
Speaker 1: storm trooper.
Speaker 2: This good question. I have to go back and look
Speaker 2: at the actual Lakadian and see. But he does call
Speaker 2: himself a stormtrooper and compares his opponents to little little
Speaker 2: desert rodents hopping away as he comes after them. So yeah, okay, fine.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well maybe maybe don't take that fully as truth, you.
Speaker 2: Know, exactly. So this is part of the problem. And
Speaker 2: this is again what I say towards the beginning of
Speaker 2: the book is not only do I only have the
Speaker 2: information from the top one percent and don't really know
Speaker 2: how the bottom is doing, except in some cases where
Speaker 2: they give us like annual crop yields, which was sometimes
Speaker 2: on the records. But I also can't say for sure
Speaker 2: that we can take this at one hundred percent believability.
Speaker 2: You know, are they gaslighting us? Are they exaggerating? You know,
Speaker 2: did you really kill that many you know, wild bulls? Right?
Speaker 2: And so on? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, I mean it's yeah, it's so interesting, especially
Speaker 1: the textual record stuff like I think about that, you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to a just even mythology, right like
Speaker 1: it it's yeah, we still only even when it comes
Speaker 1: to mythology, we still only have the stuff that not
Speaker 1: only they back then deemed you know, worthy of being
Speaker 1: written down. But then whoever you know, in the last
Speaker 1: thousand years or the thousand years that followed, decided to
Speaker 1: keep it like and record it again and long enough
Speaker 1: for us to have it like. There's so much missing,
Speaker 1: and I think it's Yeah, it's important to remember, you know,
Speaker 1: the nuance of what we do have and also what's
Speaker 1: possible that we don't have.
Speaker 2: Right right, exactly too much information. It's a plethora. It's
Speaker 2: as smart as board.
Speaker 1: I feel like, Okay, I'm going to look at a
Speaker 1: couple of I have some questions from Mikayla just as
Speaker 1: we get closer to the time. I'm sure we've kind
Speaker 1: of touched on a number of these things. But are
Speaker 1: there any you know, really big misconceptions about the Bronze
Speaker 1: Agent It's collapse that you feel like are very relevant
Speaker 1: and we haven't talked about already.
Speaker 2: Yes, So the biggest misconception about the collapse that we
Speaker 2: haven't talked about, but that you touched upon, not in
Speaker 2: relation to this, but you like volcanoes, You like the
Speaker 2: eruption of Santorini. Yeah, and who doesn't like a good eruption?
Speaker 2: Right right? The biggest misconception is that the eruption of
Speaker 2: Santorini contributed to the Late Bronze Age collapse. I see
Speaker 2: that everywhere. I still see it everywhere, even though we've
Speaker 2: managed to hammer home to some degree the idea that
Speaker 2: the eruption of Santorini was back in the sixteenth century,
Speaker 2: maybe the fifteenth at the latest, but somewhere between sixteen
Speaker 2: twenty eight and fifteen fifty, and the collapse is at
Speaker 2: twelve hundred, so that's, you know, three hundred and fifty,
Speaker 2: four hundred years. Santorini had nothing to do with the
Speaker 2: Late Bronzis for last I know, I know, but I'm
Speaker 2: still seeing the history bros. I like that. I'm going
Speaker 2: to start using that. I'm still seeing them on the
Speaker 2: internet going yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, fine, but it did
Speaker 2: impact create and I'm like yeah, and the Minoans bounced back,
Speaker 2: and they're like, but it could have had a century's
Speaker 2: long ripple effect. I'm like, could h didn't know, And
Speaker 2: then others saying, well, maybe it exploded again, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: one scholar has suggested there might have been renewed activity
Speaker 2: in about twelve hundred, but no, that's for me. That's
Speaker 2: the biggest misconception. Yeah, And when people are watching some
Speaker 2: of my lectures from back in twenty sixteen, the comments
Speaker 2: are like, you didn't even mention Santorini. And then I'm like,
Speaker 2: watch the Q and A because I dismissed it there.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so that's yeah, so I said, that's the
Speaker 2: biggest misconception Santorini and the eruption has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with the late ron Sage collapse.
Speaker 1: Fair, fair, all right, I'll take it. And then sorry,
Speaker 1: now I'm looking at my questions. The Usually I just
Speaker 1: go with whatever I'm thinking about. Do you think that
Speaker 1: there's anything in this period that is not getting you know,
Speaker 1: the tension that it deserves.
Speaker 2: I think things aren't getting the attention. Well yeah, I
Speaker 2: would say yeah, But no, I'm thinking of how to
Speaker 2: phrase this because, on the one hand, most of the
Speaker 2: things that contributed to their collapse I see around today.
Speaker 2: You know you can check the boxes off. Yes, climate
Speaker 2: change yes, yes, famine yes, earthquake yes, disease yes, invaders yes, migrants.
Speaker 2: You know, we've got everything that they had back then,
Speaker 2: plus we've got you know, nuclear weapons, so.
Speaker 1: And human made climate change and.
Speaker 2: Human made climate change and Hello, they collapsed. You know,
Speaker 2: the Late Bronze Ages came to an end. There's no
Speaker 2: question about that. Why you think we're not going to
Speaker 2: come to an end? I don't know. That's eubristic. Every
Speaker 2: civilization has either completely collapsed or had to transform so
Speaker 2: that it was basically not recognizable. Again, Why you think
Speaker 2: that's not going to happen to us? I have no idea,
Speaker 2: So I think it's going to happen. I agree. I
Speaker 2: think it's not a matter of if it's it's when.
Speaker 2: When is it going to happen? You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah? How fast are we going to let it happen
Speaker 1: by letting made climate change continue? On?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, climate And think back to two thousand and
Speaker 2: eight with the financial crisis on Wall Street. I mean
Speaker 2: we came really close to having a globalized meltdown right there.
Speaker 2: But especially with the pandemic, I would say, And with
Speaker 2: climate change, that's my other worry. That's where I don't
Speaker 2: think we're doing ourselves any favors. No, Yeah, I mean definitely.
Speaker 2: The scientific evidence is showing that there was climate change
Speaker 2: back in the Late Bronze Age. Scientific evidence is also
Speaker 2: showing there is climate change. Now, why stick your head
Speaker 2: in the sand and pretend it's not happening. And this
Speaker 2: is one of the common sense things they come up
Speaker 2: with at the end of the sequel is, look, prepare
Speaker 2: for extreme weather events. Just go ahead and do it.
Speaker 2: We're seeing it all the time anyway. If you prepare
Speaker 2: for it and an extreme weather event does not occur, fine,
Speaker 2: not a big deal. If you prepare for it and
Speaker 2: it does occur, good, Now you're in a good position.
Speaker 2: So this was something I was interviewed by Adam Frank
Speaker 2: on NPR after the first volume came out, and I
Speaker 2: was happily blithering and blathering on about, well, you know,
Speaker 2: the Hittites didn't know what was happening to them. They
Speaker 2: had climate change, and know it wasn't caused by Hittite SUVs.
Speaker 2: It was Mother Nature polymp petroleum from the earth exactly.
Speaker 2: But I said, we're much more advanced technologically and everything else,
Speaker 2: and we know all about climate change. We know it's
Speaker 2: causing the dry outs and all that. And Adam Frank
Speaker 2: just said to me, yes, but are we advanced enough
Speaker 2: to do anything with our knowledge? And that I had
Speaker 2: no answer to. So that is something I would point
Speaker 2: to again. I don't think enough is being done. I
Speaker 2: think we're giving too much airtime to the naysayers. There's
Speaker 2: definitely a climate change, Come on, people, right, so what
Speaker 2: are we going to do about it? Let's do something
Speaker 2: and if we're ready, we're ready, and if we need it,
Speaker 2: it's there, and if not, it's not. And you know, again,
Speaker 2: hello late bronze age collapse. Look what happened to them?
Speaker 2: You know? And hard on the heels of that is okay?
Speaker 2: What about after collapse? What about resilience? What about transformation?
Speaker 2: Don't you understand? What about coping versus adapt There's so
Speaker 2: many lessons from the ancient world if we're just willing
Speaker 2: to listen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm so thrilled. I'm so thrilled that this is
Speaker 1: you know, what you wanted to mention, And it is
Speaker 1: almost identical in a brilliant way to my conversation with
Speaker 1: Flint that will have aired just a few days before this.
Speaker 1: And honestly, like, the way we as humanity are not
Speaker 1: doing enough about climate change is my pet obsession in
Speaker 1: my daily life. Like it's literally I'm sure some of
Speaker 1: my friends would argue I talk about it too often,
Speaker 1: Like it I am completely obsessed with how capitalism is
Speaker 1: the main reason why we just are not actively saving
Speaker 1: ourselves because the money is in is in the stuff
Speaker 1: that's destroying us. And I didn't know that that's what
Speaker 1: this Bronze Age series was going to become because I
Speaker 1: just had not learned enough about the climate change aspect
Speaker 1: of the collapse. So I'm just so thrilled that like that,
Speaker 1: not only that it is this major talking point when
Speaker 1: it comes to this, but that so many people working
Speaker 1: on this and working in this field are connecting it
Speaker 1: to what's happening now in the way that you are,
Speaker 1: And it just it fills me with like just a
Speaker 1: little bit more hope than I had before. Not enough,
Speaker 1: not enough hope, but.
Speaker 2: Like some some hope. Ye little hope is better than none.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly. And I mean this is something I've made
Speaker 1: into like a talking point on the show before My
Speaker 1: show is like, you know, more political than a mythology
Speaker 1: show probably needs to be. But it's just who I
Speaker 1: am as a person, and so it's it's like a
Speaker 1: fairly regular thing that I talk about, especially you know,
Speaker 1: in connection with the elites. So it's been quite fun
Speaker 1: to be able to be like, oh, well, I'm going
Speaker 1: to just also be able to talk about climate change
Speaker 1: in a collapse of the elites when it comes to
Speaker 1: the ancient world.
Speaker 2: So well, it also shows how relevant all of this is,
Speaker 2: that this isn't just ancient history, it's not just ancient mythology.
Speaker 2: It is relevant to us today, and you part that's
Speaker 2: part of the enduring legacy of myths and legends and
Speaker 2: all of that is there continuing relevance. But in this
Speaker 2: particular case, it's relevant to whether or not we survive
Speaker 2: as a species, which I think is just a little
Speaker 2: bit important.
Speaker 1: It's a tiny bit important. Yeah, you know, we might care. Yeah, right. Well,
Speaker 1: to kind of close on a slightly more upbeat question,
Speaker 1: is there anything or any particular you know, research field
Speaker 1: of study when it comes to this topic that you
Speaker 1: think is quite exciting, like new new research that's being
Speaker 1: done or coming out. I know you touched upon some
Speaker 1: you know, adjustments to when we think the alphabet, which
Speaker 1: is very exciting. But you know, is there anything else
Speaker 1: that's kind of thrilling?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's actually a lot. But one thing that I
Speaker 2: would the one thing I would point to is the
Speaker 2: work with ancient DNA that is so so important, so
Speaker 2: interesting and so fraught with potential problems. So you know,
Speaker 2: just to get the ancient DNA out of the ancient
Speaker 2: skeletons can be difficult, but then interpreting it also. So
Speaker 2: on the one hand, we have great new stuff, like
Speaker 2: there were four Philistine infants that were excavated at ascalon
Speaker 2: underneath the floors of the houses, and those infants are
Speaker 2: probably the grandkids of the Sea peoples who settled down
Speaker 2: in Canaan, because the genetics show and I know genes
Speaker 2: don't work quite this way, but the little kids are
Speaker 2: like forty percent local Canaanite and sixty percent from elsewhere,
Speaker 2: and the computer models indicate that the elsewhere is most
Speaker 2: likely to be either crete or Spain or Sicily, and
Speaker 2: that's exactly where we thought the Philistines were coming from. Anyway,
Speaker 2: you know, the kids have been identified and the houses
Speaker 2: as Philistine because of the pottery and everything else. But
Speaker 2: there the DNA matches. Of course, the problem is four
Speaker 2: kids is too small a sample, but still, you know,
Speaker 2: it fit what we were already thinking, so that is interesting.
Speaker 2: The problem is when modern pundits and such get hold
Speaker 2: of the data and start saying things like, let's look
Speaker 2: at the DNA of Minoan's and Mycenians and relate it
Speaker 2: to people in Greece today and start making comparison. You know,
Speaker 2: so and so has always been here, so and so
Speaker 2: migrated in. This is where we have to be careful
Speaker 2: of a the proper interpretation of the actual results and
Speaker 2: then be how you use it and maybe making it
Speaker 2: relevant or not, because you.
Speaker 1: Can blame the modern dangers of that exactly.
Speaker 2: That's dangerous, right, And the scientists are already pointing this
Speaker 2: out that you've got oftentimes a huge difference between the
Speaker 2: actual scientific report that might come out in Nature or
Speaker 2: Science or something, and then the media's interpretation of it,
Speaker 2: where the article and the headline are almost clickbait, like
Speaker 2: you you know, implied earlier. And I do that all
Speaker 2: the time, where I see something on the Internet or
Speaker 2: somebody sends it to me and I'm like, oh, that's
Speaker 2: sensational interesting. But to their credit, even those articles usually
Speaker 2: have a hyperlink buried somewhere in the article, right, you
Speaker 2: have to look for the blue word and you click
Speaker 2: on it. It takes you to the original publication in
Speaker 2: the scientific peer reviewed journal and you read that you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's what they were saying, Yeah, that doesn't really matter
Speaker 2: with what the media reported, so and again that's what
Speaker 2: we can learn. But the general public, they don't go
Speaker 2: and see the original. They just see the media report.
Speaker 2: And you know, and even if we later this happens
Speaker 2: all the time, if we later come out and say yes,
Speaker 2: but we never get the bandwidth for our rebuttal that
Speaker 2: the original story had, right, same thing, William Lantis, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, yeah, oh, definitely, Yeah. You never get to
Speaker 1: reach the same people or as many people. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and I just think of the ways that that kind
Speaker 1: of thing can be used to.
Speaker 2: Justify absolutely absolutely and yet and yet this worked with
Speaker 2: ancient DNA and the other what people are calling the
Speaker 2: exact life sciences. This, as some of my colleagues have
Speaker 2: called it, this is the third wave in our chaeology
Speaker 2: where we're using all the new scientific stuff. And so
Speaker 2: I think the next couple of decades, the next generation
Speaker 2: in our chaeology is going to be very exciting, and
Speaker 2: topics like the Bronze Age collapse and the aftermath are
Speaker 2: going to go along with that, and that we're going
Speaker 2: to have a lot more data coming in the future
Speaker 2: such that I don't know, I was thinking the other night,
Speaker 2: if the next generation is going to look back on
Speaker 2: what we're doing now and go, yeah, they were right
Speaker 2: about this, they were wrong about that. You know, always
Speaker 2: we can look back at our predecessors and go, yeah, right, right,
Speaker 2: wrong wrong wrong right wrong right, No door innovasion, Migraine, Yeah,
Speaker 2: exactly right. No dark ages, no darkcases, an iron age.
Speaker 2: So I wonder what you know our students or the
Speaker 2: students of our students, or the students of our students
Speaker 2: of our students, are going to say about our work
Speaker 2: at some point.
Speaker 1: But yeah, provided we solve climate change.
Speaker 2: Provided we solve climate change, there is that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there have to be students of.
Speaker 2: Students, one hopes.
Speaker 1: Oh dear, that's how I make my apparently lighthearted end
Speaker 1: question back.
Speaker 2: Into I was going to say, and that's sending on
Speaker 2: an upbeat note.
Speaker 1: Yep, that's what I do. That's what I do here.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this. This was absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 1: I learned so much. I'm so excited. I'm a little
Speaker 1: annoyed that I can't talk about thera, but that's okay,
Speaker 1: that's my fault.
Speaker 2: We can do we can do therast some other time.
Speaker 2: So perfect, Yes, yes.
Speaker 1: Well, just before we close up, do you want to
Speaker 1: tell my listeners. I mean, you've mentioned your books a
Speaker 1: couple of times, but I think this episode will be
Speaker 1: coming out on April thirtieth, so I think the sequel
Speaker 1: will be out, So if you want to tell my listeners,
Speaker 1: just like, reiterate those titles and where they can buy them,
Speaker 1: which I imagine is everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yes, certainly. So. The sequel that is coming out on
Speaker 2: April sixteenth is called After eleven seventy seven BC, The
Speaker 2: Survival of Civilizations, and yes, that'll be available from Amazon direct,
Speaker 2: from Princeton University Press, or your local booksellers if you
Speaker 2: would like to support them. That will actually be coming
Speaker 2: out on the very same day as another publication. The
Speaker 2: original book was eleven seventy seven BC, the year civilization collapsed,
Speaker 2: and that came out from Princeton in twenty fourteen. With
Speaker 2: the revised edition which is what people should read, that
Speaker 2: came out in twenty twenty one. Now, the other publication
Speaker 2: that's coming out on the same day as my sequel
Speaker 2: is the graphic version of the original, which is Brilliance.
Speaker 2: It's drawn by Glennis Fox, who's an archaeologist and cartoonist,
Speaker 2: and she has essentially translated the original into another language,
Speaker 2: the language of cartoon and graphic version. The drawings areutiful.
Speaker 2: It's huge. I mean it is thick, heavy, glossy paper,
Speaker 2: beautiful drawings. And what she has done is translated my
Speaker 2: text into the story told through the eyes of two
Speaker 2: young kids from that time period. We've got Hell short
Speaker 2: for Palesset, a young boy about twelve years old, and
Speaker 2: his friend Sisha, again about twelve years old. She's Egyptian
Speaker 2: and she is a scribe. She knows how to read
Speaker 2: and write. And the two of them are running around
Speaker 2: the Aegena and Mediterranean trying to figure out why everything
Speaker 2: is collapsing and what has happened, and whether Grandpa Pel's
Speaker 2: grandpa who was a sea person, what he actually did
Speaker 2: in the battles, And so you see it through the
Speaker 2: eyes of the kids, but you also have both me
Speaker 2: and Glynnis parachuting in from time to time up in
Speaker 2: the corner of the panel, telling the reader things that
Speaker 2: the two kids could not possibly have known. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like, oh, well, when Schleiman came here,
Speaker 2: he did this, and so so it's basically four new
Speaker 2: characters introduced. It is so compelling, it's so wonderful. I'm
Speaker 2: so excited about it, and I'm hoping we get a
Speaker 2: whole new readership everybody from age seven to seventy, you know,
Speaker 2: especially like if you don't like to read, but you
Speaker 2: like comic books, this is this is it for you.
Speaker 2: And if you're too younger, you have only just started reading,
Speaker 2: you can you know, there's the pretty pictures and anyway,
Speaker 2: and you can play Where's Waldo with you know, with
Speaker 2: me and with Glennis anyway. So those two, both the
Speaker 2: sequel and the graphic version of the original, will come
Speaker 2: out mid April, and I'm very excited about both of them.
Speaker 2: So thanks for the opportunity to mention them.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm thrilled. I've seen photos you've posted in the
Speaker 1: cover of the graphic and it looked like gorgeous, So
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to know what's inside. And I mean, it
Speaker 1: sounds like it'll be really beneficial broadly, but I know
Speaker 1: there's also a lot of people who just learn visually,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think that that's so beneficial for
Speaker 1: so many people. That's great and also just fun. That's
Speaker 1: a fun little graphic novel version.
Speaker 2: It is, and she really, yeah, it's interesting. In order
Speaker 2: to put it in the graphic version, she distilled it,
Speaker 2: so you know, it's got the most essential twenty five
Speaker 2: percent of the original text, you know that kind of thing. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: the process was fascinating. She and I did a webinar
Speaker 2: the other day and in which she walked the viewers
Speaker 2: through her process of drawing. Oh my god, the work
Speaker 2: that it went, that went into it is amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I can only imagine. Yeah, yeah, oh that's wonderful, wonderful. Well,
Speaker 1: I will link to everything in the episode's descriptions so
Speaker 1: people can find it. And that's great. And is there
Speaker 1: any last f you want to share with my listeners
Speaker 1: before I let you go?
Speaker 2: No, I just I thank you. And you know, contrary
Speaker 2: what I might have sounded like, I am optimistic about
Speaker 2: our future. But we'll see. It's up to us, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, oh, well, thank you so much. This was
Speaker 1: such a thrill, my pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thank you. It's been an honor and a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Uh, Nerds, thank you so much for listening to this
Speaker 1: entire series. Holy crap, it was. It was quite a
Speaker 1: thing to create. Probably are this was probably our biggest,
Speaker 1: maybe in line with Sparta, but man, the Bronze Age
Speaker 1: is wild because because it's the Bronze Age, because it's
Speaker 1: so much older than all the other stuff that we
Speaker 1: work with, because it is so heavy in archaeological evidence
Speaker 1: and so lacking in text. It's just such a departure,
Speaker 1: but one that is utterly fascinating. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: I've learned so much. I hope you have too. These
Speaker 1: have been such joyful and fascinating conversations. I'm just so
Speaker 1: thrilled to have brought them all to you. You can
Speaker 1: find in the episode's description links to the books and
Speaker 1: things that were mentioned by Eric Klein, and I hope you,
Speaker 1: you know, check out more on the Bronze Age, or
Speaker 1: maybe just you know, the next time you hear a
Speaker 1: history bro trying to tell you about the Dark Ages
Speaker 1: and how everyone suddenly became incapable of intelligence until Homer
Speaker 1: sprung out, now you'll know. Now you'll know why that's
Speaker 1: all nonsense. I mean, it was pretty obviously nonsense because
Speaker 1: that's just not how humanity works. But now you have
Speaker 1: the receipts, let's talk about. Mis Baby is written and
Speaker 1: produced by me Live Albert Michayla Smith is the Hermes
Speaker 1: to My Olympians, my assistant producer, and honestly, I mean
Speaker 1: she's the person behind this Bronze age series of episodes.
Speaker 1: Couldn't it wouldn't possibly have existed without her. She might
Speaker 1: be existing in the background of this, but I want
Speaker 1: to make clear who It's a lot of Michaela's doing,
Speaker 1: and Laura Smith is the incredible audio engineer and production
Speaker 1: assistant who works on all of these conversation episodes doing
Speaker 1: technological things that I never learned how to do. Thank you, Laura.
Speaker 1: Laura's also working to make my website helpful, so stay
Speaker 1: tuned for more on that. The podcast is part of
Speaker 1: the iHeartMedia Network. Listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, and help me continue bringing you
Speaker 1: all of this incredible mythological and historical stuff by becoming
Speaker 1: a patron, where you will get access to loads of
Speaker 1: past bonus episodes Patreon dot com, slash myths Baby, or
Speaker 1: the link is in the episodes description. Thank you all.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I can't believe this series is over.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely It's been a wild ride. I just love
Speaker 1: the ancient world so much and I really love the
Speaker 1: you do too. I am live and I love this
Speaker 1: shit I just said