While initial versions of the hypothesis regarded the Sea Peoples as a primary cause of the Late Bronze Age collapse, more recent versions generally regard them as a symptom of events which were already in motion before their purported attacks.
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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This. As I understand it, they were really refugees escaping famines, regime collapses and other hardships. They were seeking better opportunities. While they did cause strain where they landed, the primary reason for the bronze age collapse was due to the famines and such. Essentially, as the dominos fell, the world economy fell as well. More famines and the like, and, hence, more refugees, being the result. It honestly resembles our current state of affairs world wide so much it's ridiculous.
Edit: I love typing on phone keyboards and having more mistakes than properly spelled and formatted sentences.
So you're saying the Sea People are back?
They call them Boat People now, but same thing.
I'm over exaggerating a lot. I suppose I'm being Doom and Gloom about the current state of the old US of A. I'm worried that one of the key economies might crash with an idiot making the decisions. There have been multiple migrations over the past 10 or so years. It could be the case that if things continue as they are, we will see a global economic crash soonish.
So you're telling me that no system is stable under conditions of material instability?
This might actually be good news... For people 200 years from now.
A question that I've not seen addressed: The Sea Peoples showed up, raided, invaded, really successfully. Why didn't they stay? Why did they go back to wherever they came from? Isn't that what the Vikings were doing in Britain (also Normandy?) for a while before they decided to stay there?
Maybe they were just really aggressive tourists that kept breaking things by accident. It was all one big Mr. Bean-esque accident.
"Mr..Bean collapses the bronze age"
...I'd watch it
That'd be more of a Blackadder thing, surely. Feel like we're getting our Rowan Atkinson characters mixed up
Yeah... you could be correct there.
Rude, time-traveling Americans.
Wr got tired of colonizing the present and decided to colonize the past.
The most likely scenario is there were immigrants fleeing their homelands for a better life.
The problem with history is we just up and belief what the rules say is true. We know from centuries of more detailed records that is simply not true but when it comes to ancient civilizations we just wholesale accept it.
"Look the despot wrote it down a dozen times, it must be true! Propaganda is beyond their level of cleverness of those silly stone chiselers!"
This just shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the work of history is done.
Historians don't just read something, believe what it says, then say "that's history, job done".
They tease from a source glimpses of the past.
Each document or artifact provides information, and meta information, that can be used to give us a fuller picture of the past, whether the writer was telling the truth (whose truth?), writing known falsehoods, writing fiction, etc.
No historian believes The Lord of the Rings is true, but if looked at through the lens of history it could be a valuable historical artifact. The Lord of the Rings could teach one about things like: the state of literature and publishing in the mid-twentieth century, cultural attitudes towards war, religion, and industrialization, linguistic fluency among the population, the writer's education level, social standing, and personal attitudes, etc.
You don't exclude a source because it may have a bias, or known falsehoods, or missing information, etc.; you account for those in your study of the source and piece together what we can know despite those issues.
So let me get this straight, you think the field of history fails to consider that people can make up bullshit?
The problem with history is we just up and belief what the [rulers] say is true.
I think that's what you meant? If so - no "we" don't. Actual historians are well aware of the possibility (probability?) of ancient propaganda, take that into account when coming to conclusions, and don't claim that something is true beyond what the evidence demonstrates.
Not a historian, but my understanding is that there was widespread crop failure, which led to many people fleeing to major cities to search for a better way of life. Many of these people traveled by boat, which led the home country to view them as sea people. The influx of immigrants further strained the dwindling resources of the home country due to the aforementioned crop failures, which then led to a collapse of many of the cities. Which in turn caused more people to flee to other cities
So to answer your question, I don't think the sea people were really even a singular group people, it's just an umbrella term for immigrants that were fleeing from their home
My theory is that they did stay.
Imagine if they came back now and wrecked shit.
Oh so that is what the UFOs are :O
Sorry, that was me.
My bad.
How many times have you been told you can look at the bronze age just don't touch!
Fall of Civilizations has an excellent episode on this:
They also have a book out, i would buy it, but it would be $100 AUD after exchange rates and shipping
It is an excellent book however.
Is it good? I love the podcast, but can't justify the cost!
Egypt succesfully defeated them iirc
But never recovered from the military losses and the collapse of trade.
they came literally from the sea. Just walked out, fucked everything up and went back to Atlantis.
I'm sure scholars know why my hair brained theory is bogus, but what happened to the other 999 ships voyaging home from Troy? Also wouldn't it be easier to maintain a 10 year siege if you were doing a bit of coastal raiding the whole time?
While Troy was a real place and probably did experience some sort of war with the Greeks, the Iliad and the Odyssey aren’t really historical accounts.
I don't know. They talk about it in Xena a few times. How many sources do we need?
God damn you. I thought Xena was an actual source I had never heard of and went looking for it.
Welcome child. It gets weird bollywood in the later seasons. Good luck.
Yeaaaalalalalalalayeah!
Atlantis went under right around that time. It's clear that the population was looking for new real estate.