Late Bronze Age Collapse

We're living through the final years of an era. There's little doubt about that. Everywhere there are signs of late era insanity. All sorts of weird things are happening. It's as if reality itself has been suspended. However, as observed repeatedly through history, things have a tendency to get awfully real right when everybody start thinking that nothing really matters. The only question is, how real are things going to get this time around?

I'm fond of using late 18th century France as an example of what sort of insanity we're currently seeing at a global scale. But there are hints of Weimar Germany as well. That would be a less severe case of insanity. On the other hand, there are similarities with late Roman empire too. That would lead us into a prolonged recession. However, nothing would be as epic as a repeat of the late Bronze Age collapse that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean some time between 1200 and 1150 BC.

There's not a lot known about what happened, but the few facts that we have speak volumes, and it's not very hard to imagine at least one plausible mechanism that set the whole thing going.

A key thing to note is the fact that the kingdoms in the Eastern Mediterranean were all organized around a palace economy. A small group of priests and royals held the rest of the population in economic bondage through systems of taxation and subsidies. All production belonged to the elite who took it upon themselves to distribute the goods among the population.

Needless to say, the elite became immensely rich. They built huge palaces. The cities of the time were walled palaces from where the elite planned and organized society as a whole. It's therefore a misnomer to call the walled structures cities. They were more like the forbidden city in China, palace complexes where the elite lived in luxury at the expense of everybody else.

Another thing to note is that the elite saw it as completely natural to go to war against peripheral people for no other reason than to collect slaves and treasures for themselves.

Seen in this light, the sudden appearance of the so called Sea Peoples is much less of a puzzle than many have made it out to be. It's also understandable that these Sea Peoples seemed content to burn palaces to the ground and leave it at that. They showed little desire for power. They came, they killed, they burned and they left. The message was clear. They wanted the constant raiding and looting to stop. Instead of fighting the enemies on their own turf, they built fleets so that they could get to the heart of the problem and deal a permanent blow to the whole rotten structure.

With the palace dwellers finding little support in their own population, beyond some token patriotism, the Sea Peoples had little trouble winning their wars. Only Egypt managed to stave them off, and only at great cost.

What followed was the so called Greek Dark Ages, which weren't all that dark. The economy was merely scaled back to something more manageable and fair. There were no more palaces to support. Villages prospered. Trade between equals replaced the command structure of the palace economy. The disappearance of fine luxury goods was not so much a sign of decay as a sign of fairness. No-one was so rich that they could afford the luxuries enjoyed by kings.

This pattern is identical to that of the more recent Dark Ages that came after the fall of Rome. That too was marked with a return to fairness in trade and commerce. Luxury goods were no longer produced. There was also a marked reduction in record keeping. People lived free without having to be registered and counted.

Those dark ages were periods of freedom, both lasting about 500 years, and we can only hope that we will soon enter a similarly prolonged period of relative fairness and equality.

Sea Peoples

By The original uploader was Seebeer at German Wikipedia. - Transferred from de.wikipedia to Commons by Arcibel., Public Domain, Link