Dissecting the mess that is the "Did the Bronze Age Really Collapse?" video by Kings and Generals (Part 1)
Our homeboy really took the L this time.
Greetings everyone, subscribers and AHP’ers and everyone else who wandered in here somehow, once again. Been a while since I last made a post here, and you probably shouldn’t expect to see too many of those in the future either, but this one I felt I just had to make and its scope was much larger than that of a regular Facebook or Discord post and so that is why I am here to do the job properly.
If you don’t know, Kings and Generals is one of the most popular history channels on YouTube, mostly dealing with military history but also dabbling in other parts of it as well. I can’t say what period of history is its specialty, but let me tell you one thing - it certainly isn’t the Bronze Age. The guy’s other videos on the period were already meh for me, but this one was the one that broke me and compelled me to write this up. Don’t get me wrong, I like the channel and I’ve been a fan for years, but that’s all the more reason to critique it when it warrants critique. After all, it has around 2.7 million subscribers and so it can be quite a problem if it spreads misinformation to such a large audience. Because this video is, well, not of very good quality, to put it mildly. So, let’s get into it, analyzing every agonizing second of it (note - this is only part 1 of this analysis, as there were so many mistakes Substack would not allow me to make it into one post, so I will release the second part in the near future). Here’s the link so you could watch it for yourself if you wish to do so:
Already the first thing noticeable is its thumbnail, which, as my good friend and fellow Bronze Age enthusiast, noted, has been basically traced over the Age of Empires game cover. Most notably the center figure, but the ones on the sides also bear an uncanny resemblance. See below for a comparison.
But that’s a whatever from me, as there are many far greater offences to come, so strap in for the ride. Timestamps are written so you could check the claims for yourself.
0:16 - Sumer and Mesopotamia are listed as separate entities, despite Mesopotamia being a region within which Sumer emerged.
0:22 - The trade networks are said to have been spread from “Sicily to the Indus Valley”, however, this claim is wrong on at least one side. From the west, the furthest point of trade with the Near East was actually Britain, which provided the much needed tin for the Bronze Age civilizations, while the easternmost point could have been Southeast Asia, needed for the same material. The eastern connection is more dubious and so the claim can be forgiven, but Britain should really have been mentioned. See the trade map below.
0:36 - The proper term would be the Late Bronze Age Collapse, because the Bronze Age had many collapses, so while this one is the most popular, it is not the only one. A minor note, but I think it’s still important.
0:53 - Alright, here’s where I take the most issue with the video, its premise to be exact. KG (Kings and Generals - I will abbreviate it as KG from this point on) makes it out to be a dichotomy between the Sea Peoples destroying everything and no collapse happening. Of course, this is a false dichotomy, as the collapse could and did still happen even with the Sea Peoples not figuring as much as thought before. They were a mere symptom of the collapse, which itself happened because of other reasons, but still nonetheless did happen. This thinking that it’s either war with barbarians or no collapse, is quite simplistic and even childish if I do say so myself. That’s how I approached history when I was like 12, everything only purely through a military lens, but I grew out of it. Apparently military history channels still haven’t.
1:00 - Oh, this was just the intro. Like I said, strap in, it’s gonna take a while.
1:16 - YouTubers and ads for pointless apps or websites, name a better duo. But I guess a man’s gotta earn his bread somehow. At least it’s not Raid Shadow Legends…
2:16 - Alright, we’re back. Let’s see what’s in store for us next…
2:26 - Oh Horus, Sobek, and Thoth almighty, nothing in my life could have prepared me for such a terrible sight. His maps are never really of the best quality, but this… This is horrible. This may be one of the worst maps I’ve seen in my life.
What a terrible day to have eyes. What a desecration this is. Seriously, my man, you gotta fire your visual editor. And if you did this yourself, you should hire one. May Ra have mercy on your soul for this abomination. Where do I even begin…
Mycenae - The area marked as Mycenaean Greece contains only central Greece, despite Mycenaean Greece having controlled only southern Greece, and not really expanded past Boeotia. Mycenae itself seems to be at the right place, yet Ephesus and Halicarnassus are pushed deep inland, despite being coastal cities. Byzantium is also marked, even thought it had not yet been founded. Same for the Italian cities, it would be centuries more before they would be founded.
Egypt - Do you see the problem here? Do you? Well I do. At first I wondered why it looked so bloated, apparently expanding all over the desert, and soon the horror set in - the cities have been moved to the desert. Yes, the cities which should have been on the Nile are in the middle of the desert, for some unholy reason. Also, they have Greek names instead of their Egyptian names, despite those Greek names only being used from the Ptolemaic period onwards. Also also, Cairo is there for some reason, despite being a thing only from the Arab times, Thebes (Waset, actually, in its Egyptian form) is much more to the north, and Nubia, despite being a region, is labeled as a city.
Hatti - Isn’t even labelled Hatti and is instead named as “Hittites” which isn’t in line with the other countries. You know, Egypt isn’t called “Egyptians”. Anyways, in this series of great migrations, Hatti decided to move east. It should contain most of Anatolia, but instead it barely contains Anatolia, leaving it desolate, and stretches to Mesopotamia and the Levant. Hattusa is also much more to the east.
Assyria - Is ways too tiny. And probably in the wrong place, but I can’t say because the rivers Tigris and Euphrates aren’t even shown on this atrocity of a map.
Babylonia - There is a convenient gap between Assyria and Babylonia. Very nice of those two kingdoms to not claim some of the most fertile land on the planet and leave it to no one in particular. And, I might be going blind but, are there mountains in Mesopotamia? If so, they definitely should not be there.
Elam - Susa is way too much to the north and east, and in general Elam is way too blobby, whereas it should be mostly hugging the sea.
Also, a random structure in the middle of the Arabian Desert is indeed random.
Here is a map I made for comparison, and while it is for my alternate history setting (The Bronze Horus novel series), and so contains some alternate details, I would say it’s still many times more factual
And here is a map I pulled from wikipedia, found in a few seconds of searching. Would that have been so difficult, Mr. KG?
Alright, I think I’ve written about the cursed map enough. Let’s move on, there are still 12 minutes left.
2:58 - Sure, it could be called a Mediterranean world, but it only involved the Eastern Mediterranean, while also involving all of Mesopotamia and Elam, which did not touch the Mediterranean at all, so it is kinda misleading. Babylonia, Assyria, and Elam were as important, if not more important, than Hatti, Mycenae, and Egypt, and should always be mentioned when discussing the period.
3:10 - Stratified societies existed since the invention of writing, that has been a thing for thousands of years. It’s not like it was some anarchist utopia before the Late Bronze Age.
3:20 - Enhanced version of the monstrosity of the aforementioned map. Crete is now also labeled as a city and not an island.
3:53 - Stop saying “Mediterranean World” when you are literally showing Assyria and Babylonia too, for Horus’ sake.
4:14 - The “Cold War” is more about the Mycenaean and Hittite conflict, which fought by proxies in western Anatolia, such as the Trojan War. Egypt’s and Hatti’s conflict did turn hot pretty soon once they met. Also convenient gap in the Levant. What is it with those gaps?
4:29 - Italy and Spain is mentioned in the trade, which is now further than the Sicily claim made earlier, but Britain is still not mentioned. Also, it would be Iberia and not Spain, as Spain did not exist at that point (Italy didn’t also, but we have the Italian Peninsula there, so no need to change the name).
4:54 - No, the common narrative is not destruction and war, that may have been the common narrative many years, decades ago. The Sea Peoples hypothesis has been discredited for quite a while now. You can’t really make a good argument if you don’t even understand what you’re arguing about.
5:23 - Again, the false dichotomy. All these collapse events in Mycenae and Hatti and Egypt are being attributed to the Sea Peoples, despite no one really claiming these days that they were the cause of all that.
5:30 - Actually, the Sea Peoples commonality was that they all were mostly from the Mycenaean Greece or western Anatolia, after these regions had fallen. They weren’t some random barbarians from nowhere, at least not the majority of them.
5:50 - Again, I’m probably sounding like a broken record at this point, but I gotta emphasize it. KG is correct that the Sea Peoples involvement is dubious and that they may not have been the cause of the collapse, but that doesn’t mean that the collapse didn’t happen anyways. Because it did, caused by other factors, and the Sea Peoples were the result of some of those collapsed societies - Mycenae, Hatti, and Alashiya most notably.
6:45 - Some cities did indeed survive the collapse. But that’s just survivorship bias, as most, especially in Greece, did not. We have evidence of destruction in most major Mycenaean cities at roughly the similar time, just because some weren’t destroyed doesn’t prove anything.
That’s where I’ll end this part, roughly at the middle of the video, because Substack won’t let me write for any longer. But believe me, there’s still plenty to write about, so stay tuned for the second part of this unintentional series.
Image Credits
Idk how you credit this, it’s just the cover to Age of Empires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Age_of_Empires_Coverart.jpg
D. Berger, J. S. Soles, A. R. Giumlia-Mair, G. Brügmann, E. Galili, N. Lockhoff, E. Pernicka: Isotope systematics and chemical composition of tin ingots from Mochlos (Crete) and other Late Bronze Age sites in the eastern Mediterranean Sea: An ultimate key to tin provenance? PLoS ONE 14 (6), 2019
Screenshot from the KG video
My own map
Map made by Enyavar, from Wikipedia