alt Hacker NewsHasn’t that been the primary hypothesis for a while?
Them essentially being refugees / displaced and looking for a new place, not them being spawned on the map like a cheap rts scenario.
Hasn’t that been the primary hypothesis for a while?
Them essentially being refugees / displaced and looking for a new place, not them being spawned on the map like a cheap rts scenario.
Yes, I think so. I remember Eric Cline mentioning this hypothesis in a lecture or a podcast about a decade ago.
Sea people as refugees displaced by drought, famine, war or just a general societal collapse.
In any case, the temporal coincidence of the bronze age collapse and the wide-spread adoption of iron working, which was inferior to bronze at first but more readily accessible, is fascinating*. I am not sure if we have a full picture of the role of that change yet. (Was it just a consequence of the collapse of trade and tin imports, or did it cause the destruction of the bronze age empires in the first place, or just prevent their return, or was it more complicated?)
(*) I do not mean the superficial tautology of "iron age" following the "bronze age" but the fact that the bronze age, in this region, ended in a societal collapse.