this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 week ago (4 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Maybe they were just really aggressive tourists that kept breaking things by accident. It was all one big Mr. Bean-esque accident.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

"Mr..Bean collapses the bronze age"

...I'd watch it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That'd be more of a Blackadder thing, surely. Feel like we're getting our Rowan Atkinson characters mixed up

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah... you could be correct there.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Rude, time-traveling Americans.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Wr got tired of colonizing the present and decided to colonize the past.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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!"

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So let me get this straight, you think the field of history fails to consider that people can make up bullshit?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

My theory is that they did stay.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sorry, that was me.

My bad.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

How many times have you been told you can look at the bronze age just don't touch!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fall of Civilizations has an excellent episode on this:

Episode 2: The Bronze Age Collapse

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They also have a book out, i would buy it, but it would be $100 AUD after exchange rates and shipping

[–] jaemo 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It is an excellent book however.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Is it good? I love the podcast, but can't justify the cost!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Egypt succesfully defeated them iirc

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

But never recovered from the military losses and the collapse of trade.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

they came literally from the sea. Just walked out, fucked everything up and went back to Atlantis.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Imagine if they came back now and wrecked shit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Oh so that is what the UFOs are :O

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't know. They talk about it in Xena a few times. How many sources do we need?

[–] stevedice 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

God damn you. I thought Xena was an actual source I had never heard of and went looking for it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Welcome child. It gets weird bollywood in the later seasons. Good luck.

Yeaaaalalalalalalayeah!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Atlantis went under right around that time. It's clear that the population was looking for new real estate.