“In this era there were epidemics”: Russian historian - about the catastrophe of the Bronze Age

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“Modern science allows us to study the bones of Bronze Age people and say what caused their death.

They died of disease or were killed in battle if scientists find stab wounds.

Today, researchers already know that there were epidemics in this era.

It is possible that the plague led to the death of an entire population.

For example, the plague gene was discovered in the remains of ancient people who lived in the 30th century BC.

e., between the Dnieper and the Volga.

It is assumed that the migration of the population from this region caused the appearance of the virus in people who lived in Western Europe.

Perhaps it was because of the plague that many of the settled settlements of this region disappeared.

We can draw such a conclusion thanks to paleogenetic analysis and archaeological work.  

It also turned out that the population of the steppe and forest territories of Eastern and Western Europe suffered from hepatitis.

It could also lead to the death of cities, settlements, and entire populations.

However, it cannot be said that epidemics became the main cause of the catastrophe of the Bronze Age and because of them the entire population of ancient civilizations died.

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- At the moment, the archaeological community is trying to understand what was the main reason for the death of cultures and the disappearance of peoples.

It has been hypothesized that the warlike nomads of the Bronze Age came armed to Western Europe and destroyed the entire settled population.

Therefore, we cannot rule out that the raids led to the death of peoples.

After all, the famous Trojan War also took place at this time at the turn of the 13th-12th centuries BC.

e., according to some evidence in 1218-1217 BC.

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She was also described by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Recently, foreign scientists also spoke at a conference of the European Association of Archaeologists who studied the skeletal remains of inhabitants, as they believe, migrants or groups of nomads of the Bronze Age Yamnaya culture, who lived between the Dnieper and the Volga in the 30-26 centuries BC.

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They came to the conclusion that these groups, which came to Europe from the eastern lands, were very peaceful.

However, it cannot be argued that all nomadic tribes were like that.

• Gettyimages.ru

In my opinion, war and peace were both between the ancient civilizations and the nomadic tribes of the eastern regions. 

Rather, the cause of the death of ancient civilizations was an ecological catastrophe that occurred around the 22nd-20th centuries BC.

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Then there was a drought: no snow fell, no rain.

People left the territories of Northern Eurasia, many cities and civilizations in the Near East disappeared.

As for Ancient Egypt, around the XXII century BC.

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many pyramids were looted.

From the surviving written sources, scientists learned that the Nile dried up at that time.

People were dying of hunger and thirst.

To escape, they broke into the pyramids in search of food and water and plundered the ancient burial places.

Yes, now we can somehow prevent environmental disasters, but in the Bronze Age people did not have such an opportunity.

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- First there was an ecological catastrophe, which I have already mentioned.

Then people either died or went to other lands.

And it lasted about 200-250 years.

Then, at the beginning of 2000 BC.

e., the climate returned to normal and the population returned to its former habitat.

However, then another period begins, from the middle of the 2nd millennium BC.

e., when, for some as yet unknown reasons, many cultures of the Bronze Age come into play.

The peoples who lived in the Eurasian steppes are rapidly moving west.

And they become mercenaries of many states.

It is believed that the Cretan-Mycenaean civilization was just destroyed by nomadic peoples who arrived from the sea on ships.

Some of these tribes go to the east and destroy the cities of Central Asia and Bactria.

• Pyramids of Egypt

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Some Bronze Age civilizations existed for thousands of years, such as the Egyptian one.

Then they transformed and became the cultures of the early Iron Age.

Others existed for about 500-600 years, for example, as the Trypillia agricultural culture.

She was also urban, but her writing was not developed.

The existence of cultures depended on various historical circumstances, on their potential and on the resources they mastered.

Of course, the economic system that civilizations developed and supported also played an important role.  

What characterizes the Bronze Age?

- The Bronze Age lasted about 4 thousand years, starting from the 5th millennium BC.

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At this time, there were already differences in the development of the peoples of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Western and Eastern Europe.

Natural conditions were different, so cattle breeding, agriculture developed somewhere, cities, temples and their own culture appeared.

And somewhere people continued to live in a primitive state.

The most famous civilizations were located around the fertile crescent - the Eastern Mediterranean.

Where Israel is now, the states of the Levant, Mesopotamia and Anatolia existed in the Bronze Age.

A sign of civilization is urban culture, temple culture and writing.

Without writing, we have no right, for example, to call the nomadic cultures of the Eurasian steppes civilizations.

Many artifacts or architectural structures of the Bronze Age are well known to modern people.

Among them, in particular, the Egyptian pyramids.

Few people know that they belong to the Bronze Age and in the XXVIII-XXIV centuries BC.

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built for themselves by the pharaohs.

The famous Stonehenge in the UK was also built at this time.

• Assyrian war chariot, 3500 BC

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The Bronze Age is an era when many innovations were discovered and spread.

For example, wooden carts were invented for the development of the steppe spaces.

At the end of the 3rd millennium BC.

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man finally domesticated the horse and horsemanship appeared.

In the Bronze Age, the horse became part of the warrior's ammunition.

A light two-wheeled war chariot was also invented, in which horses were harnessed.

At the same time, new types of strategic weapons were invented.

In particular, a short bow appeared.

This weapon was subsequently used by nomads, including the Mongols.

The Bronze Age also saw the introduction of cavalry. 

Writing also originated in this era in ancient urban civilizations and spread further.

Scientists are still finding papyri and stones with inscriptions of ancient people, thanks to which they can track the history of human development.

In my opinion, another achievement of this century was the change in the human nutrition system.

For example, dairy and sour-milk products began to be eaten precisely in this era.

Another unique discovery of Bronze Age textile workers is the creation of wool fiber.

Many scientists believed that when people began to breed sheep, they obtained from them elastic and durable woolen fiber, from which beautiful fabrics were then made.

However, it turned out that the domesticated sheep had coarse hair, not suitable for making skin-friendly clothes.

It took Mesopotamian pastoralists a thousand years to breed a sheep with a soft fleece.

That same golden fleece, described by the Greeks in ancient myths, appeared in the Bronze Age, in Mesopotamia.

Then such sheep began to be bred in the southern Russian steppes, and woolen fiber spread from west to east and ended up in China.  

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- As I said earlier, in the middle of 2000 BC.

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migration began.

Many cities and towns fell into decay.

Trojan War at the turn of the 13th-12th centuries BC.

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was also a consequence of change, movement and destruction of civilizations.

The end of the Bronze Age is coming.

But humanity is able to find a way out of any situation, so new technologies began to be created, new materials were selected, etc.

At the turn of the 2nd and 1st millennium BC.

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bronze, which no longer existed, since many mines were empty, is being replaced by iron.

Such material was distributed everywhere.

A new era arises - the Iron Age, which leads to the emergence, development and flourishing of other civilizations.