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The 'Sea People' (Ancient Maritime Invaders)

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original_fLeebLe

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A scientist says he may have found remains of the lost city of Atlantis.
Satellite photos of southern Spain reveal features on the ground appearing to match descriptions made by Greek scholar Plato of the fabled utopia.

Dr Rainer Kuehne thinks the "island" of Atlantis simply referred to a region of the southern Spanish coast destroyed by a flood between 800 BC and 500 BC. ...

Dr Kuehne noticed that the war between Atlantis and the eastern Mediterranean described in Plato's writings closely resembled attacks on Egypt, Cyprus and the Levant during the 12th Century BC by mysterious raiders known as the Sea People.

As a result, he proposes that the Atlanteans and the Sea People were in fact one and the same.

This dating would equate the city and society of Atlantis with either the Iron Age Tartessos culture of southern Spain or another, unknown, Bronze Age culture. A link between Atlantis and Tartessos was first proposed in the early 20th Century.

Dr Kuehne said he hoped to attract interest from archaeologists to excavate the site. But this may be tricky. The features in the satellite photo are located within Spain's Donana national park.

link
 
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Thu 9 Jun 2005
The Corryvreckan whirlpool
DIANE MACLEAN

... Some writers in recent times have been troubled with the setting of Homer's epic novel The Odyssey. A couple of startling re-appraisals of Odysseus's travels have re-set the voyage far from the Mediterranean and nearer the North Atlantic.

Edo Nyland, in his book Odysseus and the Sea People, lines up an impressive list of sources to give weight to his theory that all the action was far west of Greece. Plutarch, Tacitus and Dante are just a sample of the big-hitters he calls on to pitch for his theory that the journey was set in Ireland and the west coast of Scotland. Integral to our story though, is his conclusion that if you follow Homer's tale to where Odysseus was bewitched by Siren songs (Hebridean women waulking the heather on Iona, according to Nyland.), he reached the whirlpool of Charybdis. Nyland looks at tides and charts, cliffs and dimensions of all sorts of technical matters and concludes that Charybdis is no more, nor less than Corryvreckan.

Such a revisionist theory of a Greek classic needs looking into, or would if any academic thought Nyland's whirlpool theory held any, well, water. But it seems unlikely to gather serious research, if Dr Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart at Edinburgh University is anything to go by.

"Brilliantly mad", he says, before heading off laughing to reconsider his classics degree.
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This article: http://heritage.scotsman.com/myths.cfm?id=630222005

Last updated: 09-Jun-05 11:19 GMT
 
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The Biblical Tribe of Dan was most likely one of the invading Sea Peoples that caused so much destruction to the area around 1200 BC. The Mycenaean and Minoan cultures were destroyed, the Trojan War was probably a story of the invasion, and the Philistines were probably the refugees of Crete. In the Song Of Deborah the Judge asks 'Dan, why did you remain in your ships?' So it is possible that the Danes could be related to the tribe of Dan. The name Dan is used throughout Europe, the rivers Danube, Dnister, Dneiper, the Tuatha De Danann of Ireland, Achilles' tribe in the Illiad. It seems to be a sacred name in ancient Europe. ...

Around 300 BC Alexander invaded Canaan and destroyed many Phoenician cities, scattering the people and toppling their gods. Because of their history with the Persians he felt that he could not trust them to remain loyal to him while he marched eastward. He was concerned about his supply lines. ... Then about 100 years later Rome destroyed the Phoenician city of Carthage, once again scattering the people ...
 
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Food for thought. Some of these cases have been dealt with in Collapse by Jared Diamond but there is certainly new information regarding the possible causes for the fall of the Mycenaean civilisation.

Climate change: The great civilisation destroyer?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... ?full=true

06 August 2012 by Michael Marshall
Magazine issue 2876.

War and unrest, and the collapse of many mighty empires, often followed changes in local climes. Is this more than a coincidence? ...

... Achilles and his compatriots were part of the first great Greek civilisation, a warlike culture centred on the city of Mycenae that thrived from around 1600 BC.

By 1100 BC, not long after the Trojan war, many of its cities and settlements had been destroyed or abandoned. The survivors reverted to a simpler rural lifestyle. Trade ground to a halt, and skills such as writing were lost. ...

The region slowly recovered after around 800 BC. The Greeks adopted the Phoenician script, and the great city states of Athens and Sparta rose to power. "The collapse was one of the most important events in history, because it gave birth to two major cultures," says anthropologist Brandon Drake. "It's like the phoenix from the ashes." Classical Greece, as this second period of civilisation is known, far outshone its predecessor. Its glory days lasted only a couple of centuries, but the ideas of its citizens were immensely influential. Their legacy is still all around us, from the maths we learn in school to the idea of democracy.

But what caused the collapse of Mycenaean Greece, and thus had a huge impact on the course of world history? A change in the climate, according to the latest evidence.

Greek Dark Ages

While many archaeologists remain unconvinced, the list of possible examples continues to grow. The Mycenaeans are the latest addition. The reason for their downfall has been the subject of much debate, with one of the most popular explanations being a series of invasions and attacks by the mysterious "Sea Peoples". In 2010, though, a study of river deposits in Syria suggested there was a prolonged dry period between 1200 and 850 BC - right at the time of the so-called Greek Dark Ages. Earlier this year, Drake analysed several climate records and concluded that there was a cooling of the Mediterranean at this time, reducing evaporation and rainfall over a huge area.

What's more, several other cultures around the Mediterranean, including the Hittite Empire and the "New Kingdom" of Egypt, collapsed around the same time as the Mycenaeans - a phenomenon known as the late Bronze Age collapse. Were all these civilisations unable to cope with the changing climate? Or were the invading Sea Peoples the real problem? The story could be complex: civilisations weakened by hunger may have become much more vulnerable to invaders, who may themselves have been driven to migrate by the changing climate. Or the collapse of one civilisation could have had knock-on effects on its trading partners. ...
 
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I'm starting this thread on the subject of the 'Sea People' - a mysterious group described as marauders arriving from the sea in ancient times. There are enough references to them to believe there was an actual group, but their precise identification has remained a subject of speculation. Some of these speculations associate the Sea People with Fortean subject matter (e.g., Atlantis).

The Sea People have been mentioned in the following FTMB threads:

Atlantis thread:
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/atlantis-thread.1427

Lost tribe of Israel
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/lost-tribe-of-israel.13495

Prehistoric Maritime Global Kingdom?
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/prehistoric-maritime-global-kingdom.24677
 
This news item suggests we may finally get some perspective on the mysterious 'Sea People' ...

3,200-Year-Old Stone Inscription Tells of Trojan Prince, Sea People

A 3,200-year-old stone slab with an inscription that tells of a Trojan prince and may refer to the mysterious Sea People has been deciphered, archaeologists announced today (Oct. 7).

The stone inscription, which was 95 feet (29 meters) long, describes the rise of a powerful kingdom called Mira, which launched a military campaign led by a prince named Muksus from Troy.

The inscription is written in an ancient language called Luwian that just a few scholars, no more than 20 by some estimates, can read today. Those scholars include Fred Woudhuizen, an independent scholar, who has now deciphered a copy of the inscription. ...

Woudhuizen and Eberhard Zangger, a geoarchaeologist who is president of the Luwian Studies foundation, will publish findings on the inscription in the December issue of the journal Proceedings of the Dutch Archaeological and Historical Society.

If the inscription is authentic, it shines light on a period when a confederation of people that modern-day scholars sometimes call the Sea People destroyed cities and civilizations across the Middle East, scholars say. The kingdom of Mira, which engaged in this military campaign, was apparently part of this Sea People confederation given their participation in the attacks. ...
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http://www.livescience.com/60629-ancient-inscription-trojan-prince-sea-people.html
 
They came up in class on Thursday. I'm doing Greek & Roman Art and Architecture. Literally led to a Dark Age with cities burned and societal breakdown. Linear B was literally lost. An Egyptian inscription refers to invaders being repelled. While it was about people coming from the Sea, it may have referred to refugees fleeing from the Sea People's attacks and the societal breakdown afterwards.

Its dealt with in more detail in Greek & Roman History which I'll likely do next year.
 
I had never run into the sea people so did a little research, and it looks as though there are quite a number of very reasonable possibilities for their origin (if it is even an identified people and not random aggressors who happen to know how to use boats.) The period around 1200BC was one in which there was a lot of tribal movement going on from central Asia, pushing into Europe, the far east, and south ending up in the Peloponnese, with people who were pushed on pushing south in reaction. Not surprising that some of them were sailors. All if would take was a few years of drought and/or an effective and aggressive leader to start the dominoes falling.
 
Lb8535 said:
All if would take was a few years of drought and/or an effective and aggressive leader to start the dominoes falling.
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That was the point of the study ramonmercado cited in his August 2012 post above. Evidence indicated climatic upheaval and prolonged drought during the very period when wars were common and the Sea People were (allegedly) rampaging all around the eastern Mediterranean area.

I also agree with your point about "random aggressors who happen to know how to use boats." It's never been clear to me that there was a single "Sea People" about whom all the different stories were told. As a result, I haven't been able to embrace theories that ascribe a single origin to the Sea People (e.g., that they were the survivors of Atlantis).
 
Lb8535 said:
I had never run into the sea people so did a little research, and it looks as though there are quite a number of very reasonable possibilities for their origin (if it is even an identified people and not random aggressors who happen to know how to use boats.) The period around 1200BC was one in which there was a lot of tribal movement going on from central Asia, pushing into Europe, the far east, and south ending up in the Peloponnese, with people who were pushed on pushing south in reaction. Not surprising that some of them were sailors. All if would take was a few years of drought and/or an effective and aggressive leader to start the dominoes falling.
Click to expand...
The Greeks of the period are often described as pirates. For them, travelling by sea was often preferable to tackling the greek terrain, and even the noblest of myths that may describe the late bronze age (but could also describe the archaic period just as much*) paint them as raiders. They were, perhaps, the Vikings of that time and place. If some were displaced, it would have been natural for them to take to the seas and raid. I've no doubt they formed a part of the sea peoples. I'm sure that in one of many books I have which covered the late bronze age, it says in Egyptian inscriptions the achaeans are potentially mentioned as being among the threats of the time. But it could be any one of loads of books, and I don't have the time to trawl through them now.

EDIT *that may describe the late bronze age (but could also describe the archaic period just as much*)

I should have said here that the myths may describe the greek dark ages rather than the archaic period. If I recall, I think that was from M Finley's The World of Odysseus, in which Finley argues the culture and rituals described in Homer better match the evidence from the dark age period than the late mycenaean period.
 
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PeteByrdie said:
The Greeks of the period are often described as pirates. For them, travelling by sea was often preferable to tackling the greek terrain, and even the noblest of myths that may describe the late bronze age (but could also describe the archaic period just as much*) paint them as raiders. They were, perhaps, the Vikings of that time and place. If some were displaced, it would have been natural for them to take to the seas and raid. I've no doubt they formed a part of the sea peoples. I'm sure that in one of many books I have which covered the late bronze age, it says in Egyptian inscriptions the achaeans are potentially mentioned as being among the threats of the time. But it could be any one of loads of books, and I don't have the time to trawl through them now.

EDIT *that may describe the late bronze age (but could also describe the archaic period just as much*)

I should have said here that the myths may describe the greek dark ages rather than the archaic period. If I recall, I think that was from M Finley's The World of Odysseus, in which Finley argues the culture and rituals described in Homer better match the evidence from the dark age period than the late mycenaean period.
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In the brief peek I took at summary info, it was noted that the Egyptian sources which have many references to "sea people" sometimes also ascribe names to the tribes and also describe alliances. And yes, piracy was an honorable profession in coastal and island Greece for well before the Mycenaen period. Once kingdoms were stable and wealthy enough to establish navies, probably not quite so popular. Odysseus seems to have had a good knowledge of operational piracy.
 
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