Why Did The Sea People's Collapse?

It has been said that the Sea Peoples invasions are the main cause of the Late Bronze Age collapse, but who were the Sea Peoples? There is not knowledge about the Sea People from their own perspective. Most everything gathered about them comes from the Egyptians texts that have been found by archeologists. In 1207 BC, Egypt (while under the reign of Ramses III) battled against the Sea Peoples and was the only major power to defeat them. The book makes the point that this was only a “Pyrrhic victory” (9). Even though it is clear that the Sea Peoples did have conflicts with other countries, not all the blame for the end of civilization can be put at their feet. The main argument of this book was to show that a combination of human and natural events led to the collapse (11). Eric Cline’s book is broken into 5 acts with each act leading to the final demise of the Late Bronze Age. The first act discusses mainly the beginnings of international trade. The book puts a long of emphasis on the relationship between Egypt and the Minoans. Eric Cline states that, “Minoans seem to have been in both the import and export business, industriously networking with a number of foreign areas in addition to Egypt,” (22).

Another motive he likely had was to show the comparison in how this time period is to today’s time. He stated that “the politics, trade, and diplomacy were not all that different thirty-five hundred years ago as they are now,” (72). That statement essentially plants the seed into the reader’s head that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Some of the minor events leading up to the demise of the Bronze Age are ones that the country is facing today, like climate control. Cline’s motive was to show that there is no consensus to what happened then, and that factually, there has to be more to the fall than the Sea