[JudgePenitent]

Well written article considering the very diverse time frames and sources.

"Around 3000 BC, a group of savage tribes now known as the Indo-Europeans invaded Europe from eastern Ukraine and southern Russia, destroying the EEF civilizations east of the Rhine in at most two centuries. Not content with their new lands, the Indo-Europeans learned how to build boats and launched a new wave of bloody conquests 350-600 years later."

"Two branches of the second Indo-European wave play a role in this story. The first was was the early Greeks themselves, who arrived in northern Greece (Macedonia and Thessaly) at the end of the 3rd millennium BC."

"Ancient DNA finds from the Elati-Logkas site in western Macedonia confirm the identity of the invaders. The earliest known Greeks are found in this site, and despite several centuries of time separating them from the initial conquest, they were quite distinctive from their predecessors. About 2/5ths of their ancestry came from the original Indo-Europeans. Even more of their ancestry came from the subjects of the Indo-Europeans further north, who by the time of the invasion had mixed considerably with their conquerors."

"Thucydides writes that the Greeks of the centuries before the Trojan War had no conception of national identity. Instead, they identified with their tribes, some of them named in Homer’s epic poem “The Iliad”."

A common theme of steppe peoples- settled tribes identify with lands; nomads identify with cultures.

This source identifies the sea peoples as a mixture of middle eastern groups, using the Egyptian inscription on Ramses III tomb as a reference. Western Anatolia, Hittite (central Anatolia), Cilicia (modern southeastern Turkey), Carchemish (city on the banks of the Euphrates River), Amurru (Egyptian vassal in northern Lebanon and coastal Syria), and Alashiya (Cyprus). The Danuna are the Greek tribe of Danaans, among the groups (and some others whose identity is uncertain) that the Egyptians claimed were aligned as "Sea Peoples".

The identity of the Sea People is a very important group to know because they were a major force in the Bronze Age Collapse; a collapse which set the stage for the rise of the Phoenicians, and 500 years later the Greeks.

This article is confusing however, because it asserts that the Sea Peoples were Greek: "Alexander’s destructive path down the Levantine coast was not unprecedented, even among Greeks. Over 800 years before, other Greeks had laid waste to the Levant, known only to their adversaries as the mysterious “Sea Peoples”."

Yet as also quoted this article reads the Egyptian burial inscription of Ramses III as a conglomerate of Middle Eastern peoples- not Greek (except for Danaan).

This chart from wiki is beautifully done and shows the evidence we have for the movements of peoples quite well, and might help explain the identity of the Sea Peoples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse#/medi...

Notably, we see the black arrow (Proto-Indo-European/steppe/PIE peoples probably) pressing into Anatolia/Hattusa. Were these the same people rolling through the Greeks? Was it the pressure of these forces that forced the Sea Peoples to attack Egypt (because they lost access to safe coastlines for trade)? Did Phoenicia know this was going to happen, and made an alliance that history has long since lost?

Here's the overall effect the Bronze Age Collapse had, from wiki: "The palace economy of Mycenaean Greece, the Aegean region and Anatolia that characterized the Late Bronze Age disintegrated, transforming into the small isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages. The Hittite Empire of Anatolia and the Levant collapsed, while states such as the Middle Assyrian Empire in Mesopotamia and the New Kingdom of Egypt survived but were considerably weakened. Conversely, some peoples such as the Phoenicians enjoyed increased autonomy and power with the waning military presence of Egypt and Assyria in the Levant."

Well summarized; the only certain winner here was Phoenicia. Thus, one would assume that if anyone wanted the Bronze Age Collapse, it was Phoenicia. A waning Egypt and Assyria meant stronger profits for long distance traders.

Another question I've had about the Bronze Age Collapse is why the Sea Peoples fought on both sides of the Egyptian empire. I don't see the strategic value in doing this, and from what I remember the battles fought on the Western Egyptian border were years apart from the North-Eastern battles. Were fleeing Greeks pressing into Northern Africa, causing local tribes to attack Egypt?