The late Bronze Age and AoE

We spent our Thanksgiving down in Arizona. Much of my family is down there, including my parents, and we split our time between the 'East Valley' (in the Phoenix metro) and the mountains to the northeast. It was a great time and, even if the kids can be exhausting, it was relaxing too. There's nothing quite as nice as more adults to help watch little kids and cousins to entertain them.

During our stay I read more in about a week than I had in six months. Reading tends to get away from me during the summer months (i.e. baseball) anyway but this year was worse. I'm getting older it seems and can't stay up past midnight everyday anymore, and movies have been winning out over books. But not on this trip. I've read while my parents and others entertain the kiddos and I've read late at night almost every day. And it's been fun. I read the second half (~300 pages) of Great Expectations (man I love Dickens) and then started on a history book.

Called 'The Birth of Classical Europe' it covers not only the Greeks and Romans of antiquity but the precursor civilizations that predated them. It's the first book in the Penguin History of Europe, a series that goes from the Bronze Age to today. I figured it would primarily cover the narrative of ancient Greece (the poleis, various wars, Alexander and the Hellenistic Age) and Rome (the Republic, Caesar and the Empire, eventually Augustine and Christianity). What I didn't expect was the focus, at least early on, to be almost wholly on archaeology (destroyed buildings/cities, pottery, burial sites etc.). I guess that shouldn't be a surprise, because that's how we know what we know. This book is all about showing the evidence we have and explaining what it means, not trying to justify oral histories or whatever.

From Wikipedia, click for link

We start with a Greek myth where Zeus, as a bull, captures the princess Europa and takes her to Crete, where she becomes the mother to King Minos. The Minoans (beginning about 2000 BC) were the very first advanced civilization in Europe, known primarily for their large palaces that were centers for administration, religion, everything. Eventually the Minoans were replaced by the Mycenaeans, a culture from the Greek mainland, who spread over the Aegean Sea over hundreds of years. This period (~1400-1100 BC), before the so-called Greek Dark Ages (~1100-750 BC), is when the ancient Greek legends take place. There were others, to be sure, but I'm thinking of the Iliad and the Odyssey. I learned that, while Troy is a real place that was destroyed several times, most likely the Trojan War was a work of fiction. It must be noted that Homer, if he was indeed a real singular person, lived during the 8th century BC (the 700s). The Trojan War supposedly took place around 1200 BC. That's a lot of time for the old oral histories to become more extraordinary. I guess, regardless of their truth, there's no doubt these epic stories impacted the development of ancient Greece as well as the culture of the west today. Part of me wants to pretend the war was real.

Alright, I don't want to just recount what I'm reading, though that can be fun too. In order to provide context on the Minoans and the Mycenaeans, the writers briefly touched on the other nearby civilizations during the 2nd millennium BC. These, who were mostly larger than their neighbors in the Aegean, included the Hittites, the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Taken in total that greatly made me want to revisit a video game from my youth, the original Age of Empires.

Age of Empires (1997) is/was a real-time strategy war game where, from on high, you command individual units to develop a civilization from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. You start with 'villagers' who perform manual labor, including hunting, gathering resources and construction. Through the consumption of resources you can advance through the ages (Stone->Tool->Bronze->Iron) and grow, with the aid of various technologies. But you're not alone in this world and there's a militaristic element as well. If you don't build strong defenses and/or an army you leave yourself susceptible. Eventually you need to conquer or be conquered. There are different game types but generally the last player standing (whether human or computer AI) wins. The initial release of the game included 12 civilizations to choose from, each with pros and cons that attempted to replicate real-life cultures. These included the Assyrians, Babylonians, Choson, Egyptians, Greeks, Hittites, Minoans, Persians, Phoenicians, Shang, Sumerians, and Yamato. This game 100% helped spur my interest in history, though I didn't know as much about the era as I do now.

Let's touch on the contemporaries of the Mycenaeans (Greeks) a la Age of Empires. We'll skip the East Asian civilizations (Choson/Korea, Shang/China, Yamato/Japan) because they were located on the other side of the world. The Minoans were already mentioned and, though influential, were basically contained to Crete. The Sumerians (6500-2000 BC), of southern Mesopotamia, were one of the earliest known civilizations on Earth but had already disappeared. The Persians (or Achaemenids, 550-330 BC), of modern-day Iran, who later ruled the entire Near East, weren't around yet. That leaves five.

Assyria was located in northern Mesopotamia, and in total lasted about 2600-609 BC. It was an outgrowth of the city-state at Assur (northern Iraq). 1363-912 BC was the Middle Assyrian Empire and it was overall a time of ascendency over Babylon in Mesopotamia and the Hittites in Anatolia. Assyria is known for its warrior kings and effective government administration, allowing it to effectively rule a large swath of territory.

Babylonia was centered in Babylon, in southern Mesopotamia (south of Baghdad, Iraq), and existed about 1900-539 BC. Babylon rose to prominence following the decline of the Akkadian Empire, which had itself replaced the Sumerian Empire. From 1595-1155 BC Babylon was ruled by the Kassite dynasty, who were not native to Mesopotamia. During this period, which was the longest dynasty in Babylonian history, Babylon was relatively weak and generally dominated by its neighbors. If you're curious, this does not include the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II ('the Great'), who ruled much later, 605-562 BC.

Ancient Egypt needs no introduction. Dating to 3100 BC, Egyptian culture lasted well into Roman times (~400 AD?). The Pharaohs, who ruled as God-kings, made use of the fertile Nile delta and for good long stretches had a strong and stable kingdom in northeast Africa. The pyramids of Giza were, amazingly, built in the 2500s BC. The New Kingdom period, from about 1550-1069 BC, saw the height of ancient Egypt's strength and territorial reach, which included the Levant (Israel, Lebanon, etc.). Ramesses II (also 'the Great') ruled during this time, from 1279-1213 BC. He's the most celebrated Pharaoh of the New Kingdom, perhaps all time, and is also the ruler most associated with the biblical story of the Exodus.

The Hittite Empire was the great power in Anatolia (Turkey) from about 1650-1190 BC. Made up of a group of people connected by language, likely the oldest Indo-European language, the Hittites were originally unorganized centrally and spread out over a number of cities. Before long strong kings consolidated power in a kingdom based in Hattusa (central Turkey). It was one of the Hittite kings that conquered Babylon in the early 1500s BC and installed the Kassites, their allies, as rulers. Eventually the main Hittite kingdom fell to the Assyrians but smaller groups lasted hundreds of years afterward.

The Phoenicians were based along the coast in the Levant, and were a Semitic people part of the group known as Canaanites. They became important during the Bronze Age collapse, about 1200 BC and stuck around more than a thousand years. Unlike the other civilizations here they were not a large political and military entity. Instead they held small city-states (such as Tyre) and built a maritime trading empire throughout the Mediterranean. Phoenician artifacts have been found as far away as Spain and it was Phoenicians that founded Carthage (in North Africa) in the ninth century BC.

Great map of the region ~1300 BC (Elam was a precursor to Persia)

These civilizations ebbed and flowed through the end of the Bronze Age and at the beginning of the Iron Age, competing for territory and preeminence, before the eventual coming of the Persians, Greeks/Macedonians and Romans.

Well, I'm not sure why I thought this would be a quick and easy post. Trying to quickly explain a whole bunch of different ancient civilizations was no joke, but I did have a good time doing it. And yes, I'll probably end up going to Steam and looking for Age of Empires.