Richard Stanbery

I am still confused as to the origins and story of the tribes known only as the sea people who helped cause the collapse of the Minoan and Hittite civilizations. They seemed to leave the Phonecians alone. Were they in league with them, possibly transported to the levantine area by Phonecians ships for the purpose of making war on the enemies and rivals of the Phonecians? Any ideas?

Belisarius

Join the club! In the 13th century BCE there appears to have been some sort of 'apocalyptic' collapse of civilisations brought about by two huge migrations across Anatolia, one from the NW, the other along the coast from the SW. This latter group were propably the "Sea Peoples" mentioned in Egyptian records. Who they were is still a matter for debate.

Richard Stanbery

That was also about the time that the Olmecs were comming onto the scene in the Americas, If I remember right.

Also, it seems that the sea people not only left the Phonecians cities alone, even recatured one for the Phonecians and returned it to them. So, it seems that there was some special relationship between the sea-peoples and the Phonecians.

So, in my twisted brain, I have been wondering if the sea-people were used as proxy armies by the Phonecians in return for something like a manifest destiny on a different land that the Phonecians had discovered(Americas). Once the rivals of the sea people were ground down, like the Egyptians weakened, the Hitties collapsed, and so on, then the Phonecians loaded them up on ships and transported them to central America as payment.

This works for the Phonecians, as it gets a dangerous group far away after thier work is done. It also adds a trading partner on thier overseas trading routes.

The Phonecians would only have to send a few of thier shamen with the settlers to form a priest class. The export of the Baal worship religion was a common thing seemingly for the Phonecians to do. As in the case of Ireland, they sent the celts there from Spain and N Africa, and established a form of Baal worship there. That makes it easy to control the populations without the need to garrison everywhere like the Romans did.

It is a practical solution for both the Phonecians and the Sea-peoples. I find that when two machiavellian societies find a common mayhem to proffit from, they usually do it.

It also might fix the timeline of the sea-people dissappearing from the Med area about the same time as the Olmecs began appearing in Meso-America?

The Phonecians kept thier cards close to thier chest, and retained many of thier secrets. Hano, the Cathagenian admiral tells of his voyage around Africa, where he went and repopulated some of the older Phonecian settlements and colonies. Hmm. they were already in those places before his time?

But, when Carthage fell, that was about the time that the Olmecs did too, and the civilization had to reinvent itself with the advent of the Maya.

So, to me it seems on the surface like this theory would anser quite a few questions pretty neatly> Q...were the sea-peoples depicted with beards?

Edratman

Richard Stanbery, the major flaw in your theory is that metallurgy did not make it across the Atlantic.


But I do agree that Columbus had some clue from another source that land was to the west.

Richard Stanbery

Metalurgy, yes there is that. But ask yourself, if you were a Phonecian Prince, and you had a Meso-American tribe under your thumb, working and gathering nicotine and cocoa for you to trade with the Pharoahs and such, why upset the applecart?
If these indigeonous peoples are under religious control and doing what you want, then why give them enough technology to rebel?
Also, if the priestly class is busy keeping the populace under your thumb, just how, or could one go about teaching them these things? It would mean building up a tradesmen class of iron workers, and that leads to social unrest down the road.
Anyway, the Meso-Americans knew enough about metalworking to gather and produce the item that you really wanted; gold. So, why mess things up?
Just some thoughts?

Edratman

But I don't think you could keep metallurgy secret.

I am basing that on the the entire Eurasian-African landmass was aware of iron making in a relatively short period of time.

To elaborate, copper smelting is relatively easy, requires low temperatures and most likely would have first been noticed by someone making glazed pottery. (All color pigments are metallic oxides.) Maybe someone left a pile of green in the glazing oven, had a little smoky fire and voila, copper. Tin was probably found in a similar manner. Finding the proper alloy for bronze was a lot of work and I have no real conjecture for how it was done. Bronze weapons were pretty much all over the old world, yet who would trade or give away such a significent advantage? A lot of the work was probably done by slaves, and only one had to escape.

Now how someone learned the process of turning iron ore into cast iron is a much more difficult problem. You need to have forced air from a bellows to make a charcoal fire hot enough to reduce iron ore, and you need to do it in a reasonably confined furnace to provide enough carbon monoxide to do the reduction. I cannot even speculate how this was stumbled upon. Yet once again this concept swept across the old world in a relative heart beat. And again, this was a major discovery, a mega edge in warfare. Who would share this? Again I attribute the sharing to an escaped slave.

So from the history of the old world, I deduce that one cannot keep the secret of metallurgy a secret.

That is the foundation of my reasoning.

Richard Stanbery

It would be easy to isolate Meso-America from escaped slaves if only the shamen of the priestly class were allowed to go there on the Phonecian ships? Also, the shamen would control all manners of industry, thier great calenders and religious dogma would have ensured complete control of any enterprise that started up on its own.
So, I agree with you, iron working is something that could have, and should have, started up on its own, unless it were suppressed.

whalebreath

There are so many holes here I'm not sure where to start.

Coca was never produced in Meso America, only in the Andean region which is a long, long way for a substance that has to be used fresh to be effective.

The idea that ancient Egyptians used modern day drugs has been disproved many times over and can be traced to samples contaminated by intoxicated lab assistants.

Your unfortunate comments re:the Olmecs are indicative of a .

Terrarius

The Hittite civilization ended with the fall of the city of Ugarit - reportedly after a threatening solar eclipse.

A total eclipse at Ugarit can be found for 1086 BC.

Referring to the GISP2 Greenland ice-core, a huge volcanic eruption happened some 3080 years ago. This matches with the blast of Santorini.

The idea of some homeless Aegeans with navigational know-how appears quite plausible.

monolith94

Indicative, perhaps, but not proof-positive. Why even bring this up? His theory is as likely the result of fantastical daydreaming as it is the result of a neo-colonialist mindset. Why leap to the worst conclusion?

To be honest, RS, your theory doesn't strike me as very likely. I've never seen any evidence to support the idea that a mass migration on the level of the Olmecs having come from the "sea peoples" would be possible at all. It's an interesting little conjecture, and tempting because it conjures up great visions of a fleet of noble Phoenician ships predating Colombus, but while the Phoenicians may have had the wherewithal to cross the Atlantic, I'm just not convinced that they had the organizational skill to orchestrate a mass movement like you're describing.