This series examines the iterations of the Migration Cycle that have defined Western Civilization. The Migration Cycle is a repeating series of events in Western history, where cultures in a large region become stagnant and thereby vulnerable to mass migration. Eventually a point is reached where the dam breaks and the incumbent civilization is buried under a tide of foreigners. I call this moment the Deluge. But the Deluge doesn’t last forever, and after a few centuries of mingling between the conquerors and the conquered, new ethnic groups are forged that begin to produce civilization again.
In Part 1, we discussed the most recent Deluge, the Barbarian Invasions of AD 400-600. This Deluge ended the Classical period and birthed the Modern. To continue our study, we now turn to the Deluge responsible for producing the Classical era:
The Bronze-Age Collapse (ca. 1200-1150 BC)
Compared to the migrations of AD 400, we know very little of the events that precipitated the Bronze Age Collapse. Here’s what we do know1:
In the year 1200 BC, the Eastern Mediterranean was home to several sophisticated, powerful civilizations. These included (from West to East) the Mycenaeans, the Hittites, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Elamites. These empires formed a “great power club” that participated in an intricate system of diplomacy and trade. And central to this trading system was bronze.
Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. First developed around 3500 BC, bronze proved superior to copper and stone tools because of its durability and hardness. But unlike copper and stone, the tin required to make bronze was difficult to source. Tin is practically a rare earth metal, being present at only two parts per million in the earth’s crust. Bronze’s utility for making everything from farming tools to weapons and armor made tin extremely valuable, and the small tin deposits in southern Anatolia, northern Italy, and northern Spain were insufficient to satisfy demand. The only places that had sufficiently large tin deposits were in Cornwall and the mountains of Afghanistan—either journey being roughly a 6,000 mile round trip.
The use of bronze for farming opened the door for food production at a scale previously unheard of. Bronze tools allowed for the felling of trees, the digging of irrigation canals, and the clearing of wetlands. The resulting increase in arable land caused a population boom. Meanwhile, the combination of bronze armaments with the breeding of horses allowed for the emergence of the dominant weapons platform of that time: the chariot.
The chariot was to the Bronze Age what the tank was to the twentieth century. Manned by a driver who managed a team of two to four horses and at least one warrior armed with sword, bow, spear, and javelins, the chariot could deliver damage at long range or could pile into an enemy infantry formation to wreak utter havok. While the chariot had existed for centuries, the application of bronze made this ancient heavy-weapons-platform even more effective in battle, and the great powers developed complex systems for manufacturing and maintaining these weapons. In addition, the chariot riders were the elite soldiers of the Bronze-Age militaries—trained extensively in their craft and well-paid for their proficiency.
This was the world of the Bronze Age in 1200 BC: complex interdependent societies engaging in extensive trade, building and maintaining intricate systems of food production and warfare. Yet by 1150 BC, only Assyria and Egypt remained. While Assyria would go on to achieve Empire in the following centuries, Egypt would never again enjoy the power and prestige that it held pre-Collapse.
The archaeological record paints a dire picture: entire languages—oral and written—disappear practically overnight; pottery techniques regress in quality; settlements are either destroyed, abandoned, or substantially reduced in size. Only in mountainous regions do settlements survive.
What caused the Collapse is not well-known, but it is likely a combination of drought and crop failure followed closely by mass migrations of peoples from other affected regions, the most famous of which are the enigmatic “Sea Peoples.” But while theories concerning them abound, their identity is secondary to our discussion. Our focus is on the general state of the Bronze Age cultures before, during, and after the collapse.
Having no direct histories like we do of the Classical era, we can only guess at the extent to which the Bronze-Age peoples stagnated over time. However, achaeological evidence has given us a general picture of the late Bronze Age world, and we can draw a few conclusions:
For one, the complexity and efficiency of civic projects built during that time are consistent with a centralized authority, rather than small-scale landowners doing their own projects on their own land for their own benefit. A famous example is the draining of Lake Kopais a couple centuries before the Collapse. Another indication of a centralized authority structure is the meticulous record-keeping of everything that these societies produced. Records of such detail required a robust and powerful bureaucracy. It also implies that the state exercised a high degree of control over the economy.
As might be expected from this state of affairs, the common man had very little that he could truly call his own2. All the wealth created from trade and production accrued to the very top, and was distributed back down by the bureaucrats. Even farmers did not store their own seed; they received their allotment from the palatial center at the start of planting season, and all their harvest aside from what they needed for the winter was carried off to be stored in the palace granaries. That food would be used to feed the smiths and craftsmen who built and maintained the king’s chariots, as well as the nation’s soldiers, priests, and princes.
Meanwhile, the answer to chariot supremacy wasn’t developed by these peoples. Outsider tribes from Central Europe are responsible for developing counter-chariot tactics. Colleen Darnell3 explains:
The end of this form of chariot warfare was the result of the development of a new type of warfare that begins in Late Bronze Age Europe, especially Central Europe and Italy. Archaeological and epigraphic evidence in these regions indicates the development of a new panoply: spears, long swords, body armor (i.e. greaves and corselets) and small round shields. These weapons spread quickly throughout Europe, reaching as far west as the Iberian Peninsula. Body armor and close combat weapons were infantry equipment par excellence in the ancient world and presuppose the massed infantry tactics that become the trademark of late Bronze Age raiders known as the Sea Peoples. The massed Sea People infantry, consisting of armored soldiers wielding long slashing swords and spears nullified the effectiveness of chariot warfare. The chariotborne archers would have had difficulty penetrating armor, and a span could not charge into the massed infantry, but the spears and swords of the Sea Peoples would be effective against the other chariot runners and the chariots themselves. The Sea Peoples had thus developed the ideal weapon to combat almost every major military force in the Mediterranean during the thirteenth century BC.
So we have a set of societies that have the following in common:
A centrally-planned economy;
A stratified society where those at the top get access to everyone else’s wealth4;
A robust bureaucracy to keep the wealth-extraction going;
A failure to develop new weapons and tactics that might upset the status quo.
These features are consistent with a bloated, overbearing government. Given enough time, these governments would have turned their societies stagnant. Unlike the Barbarian Invasions, however, mass migration doesn’t appear to build in the centuries prior to the collapse. Instead, all the migrations would be unleashed at once upon the Bronze Age world.
There was certainly trouble in the leadup to the Deluge. Even the best land needs to rest, and the Bronze Age civilizations didn’t have a system of rotating fields out of service. This meant that, gradually, the soil was depleted of essential nutrients and successive harvests got less abundant. Dwindling harvests would have been a triple-threat: they would have resulted in rising discontent at home, trade disruptions, and financial crises. These would present enough of a challenge without other tribes developing new tactics. Then the drought hit.
In the late 13th century BC, drought struck Europe. Northern tribes that once had little incentive to test their fate against chariots now pour into Mycenae, their new tactics and their desperation finally crushing the backbone of the Bronze Age military. But there is not enough food in the Mycenaean granaries, so the survivors—both Mycenaean and barbarian—take to the seas, seeking not plunder, but sustenance. The fall of the Mycenaean power centers is the first domino in the chain, and in the span of a single lifetime the Bronze Age order is reduced to smoke and rubble.
What followed was the Greek Dark Ages5, a period from 1150 - 800 BC characterized by migrations, war, and limited influence for the few major political centers in the former Mycenaean world. The historian Thucydides describes this period:
Even after the Trojan War, Hellas was still engaged in removing and settling, and thus could not attain to the quiet which must precede growth. The late return of the Hellenes from Ilium caused many revolutions, and factions ensued almost everywhere; and it was the citizens thus driven into exile who founded the cities.
Notwithstanding the chaos of this period, however, the land was given a chance to rest after centuries of intensive cultivation6. The peoples settling former Mycenaean territory created societies that no longer prioritized “useless eaters” like the Mycenaean bureaucrats. And sure enough, the overthrow of a stagnant bureaucracy unlocked a flurry of innovations in the following centuries.
The innovations of Classical civilization are as myriad as they are fundamental:
Iron forging becomes the predominant means of weapon production.
Horse breeding develops horses that are strong enough to carry riders on their backs. Cavalry is born.
Homer pens his epics and Hesoid his myths. These two become the first—and arguably, the most influential—authors in the history of Western literature.
The first Olympic Games are held in 776 BC.
Developments in mathematics and geometry, such as the work carried out by Pythagoras (570-495 BC).
Developments in Architecture that still stand today, such as the Parthenon and the Roman Colosseum. The Parthenon is famous (among other things) for the incorporation of the Golden Ratio into its design, a number that was of considerable interest to the Classical Greeks.
Republican government, defined by suffrage of male citizens, property rights, decentralized ownership of food production, separation of powers, and the right of citizens to purchase and own state-of-the-art weaponry—provided they use it to defend the state that enfranchised them7.
The concept of the Integrated Man, an impossible ideal in the stratified Bronze-Age society. The Integrated Man is best summarized by Thucydides: “The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”
Just like with the Barbarian Invasions, some knowledge was never recovered. The most famous example is the Cyclopean masonry that appears in all Mycenaean ruins (see below), so named because the Classical Greeks couldn’t fathom how such masonry could be done without the help of cyclopes. Like the lost Roman technology, however, the knowledge that is lost doesn’t force humanity back to “square one”, and the following Classical civilizations would go on to eclipse those of the Bronze Age, just as we have eclipsed the Classical.
Since we are rapidly approaching the limits of our historical knowedge, it’s worth taking stock of the common themes between the two periods we have discussed. The time interval around the Deluge can be broken into six stages:
Wealth Consolidation: In a process that usually takes several centuries, the upper-crust of society becomes predatory toward its own people, accruing wealth for itself by stealing it from those with less political power. Insofar as they are successful, the elite become ever more preoccupied with preserving their ill-gotten gains, creating vast taxation systems with powerful bureaucracies to keep the wealth extraction going.
Stagnation: In the face of an overbearing state serving a rapacious elite, ordinary people begin to produce and innovate less. Stagnation carries a psychological and spiritual price as well as an economic one; birthrates decline as well as economic output as ever more people choose to “opt out,” becoming dependent on the system.
Migration: With stagnation creating physical and spiritual space for foreigners, migrations begin to occur. These will increase in scope and effect over time. As both history and current experience bear out, this phase is exponential in its effects; it starts with the new peoples having very little power and influence, but as they settle in the land and bear children, their political power grows. The good fortune of the migrants attracts ever more migrants in a disastrous feedback loop.
The Deluge: When a series of borders has been porous enough for long enough, an inflection point is reached where the dam breaks and foreigners stampede into territory formerly belonging to the defenders. Civilizations can survive the deluge, but only at great cost, and never by keeping the elite that caused the migration in the first place.
Settling: The conquering groups now learn to live together, gradually intermingling with the conquered. Over time, this process produces a new people with a renewed cultural cohesion. During this time, aftershock migrations may continue. What most people call “the Dark Ages” actually corresponds to the Settling Stage.
Renaissance: The newly coherent peoples begin to produce culture again. Freed from the stagnant ways of the previous people, they are able to innovate and will borrow out of what is preserved from the previous age to eclipse the achievements of their forebears. Over time, however, the people will become complacent and the elites rapacious, paving the way for the next iteration of the cycle.
These motifs appear to varying degrees both in the Barbarian Invasions and the Bronze Age Collapse. We can also see that there is a 1,600 year gap between the two Deluges. If this is indeed a cycle, then we should expect to see another Deluge, with the accompanying themes, around the year 2800 BC.
Sure enough, this date falls right in the middle of the estimated time period of the Indo-European Migrations. The Indo-European migrations and the history of the peoples they conquered will be the subject of Part 3.
See this article for more information about the lot of the common man in Bronze Age Mesopotamia.
From The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah: Grand Strategy in the 13th Century BC, by Colleen Manassa, copyright 2003 The Yale Egyptological Seminar
The biblical story of Joseph provides an account of how this redistributive system developed in Egypt.
Once again, this term is misleading at best. Archaeologists don’t consider this time period to be obscure, and this era is defined by the most important technological advancement in millennia: iron smelting.
It’s interesting to overlay the crop failures of the Bronze Age Collapse with the requirement given to the Hebrews to let their land rest from cultivation every seventh year.
Every aspect of Classical Greek government stands as a rebuke of their Mycenaean predecessors.