[David JD Johnson]

Dear Dan,
Thanks for the info on shields and fighting style.

However I don't agree with your other chronology, unless you don't think the Mycenaeans had anything to do with the Trojan War. The collapse of the Mycenaean palaces (and the Hittite empire and Ugarit and a few others, plus attacks on Egypt and Cyprus) all took place around 1200/1150BC. That is well documented. The areas that the palaces had controlled lost literacy as far as can be told. No more Mycenaean pots were exported to Cyprus. The earliest iron objects found in Greece (knives with iron blades) came from Cyprus. Cyprus did much better because it did not have a centralised Palace culture but was able to rebuild on a localised production and export of copper and timber radiating out in all directions from the Troodos mountains.

I am perfectly willing to take Homer back from the usual date given him as late 8th century (which is widely disputed anyway). It is tragic that the Illiad and Odyssey are the only small remnant of a cycle covering the whole Trojan war with the events leading up to it and the later consequences of the returning Greeks.

[David JD Johnson]

The end of the Bronze Age is a matter of judgement Aston when the iron technology dominated over the Bronze one. In Cyprus iron objects were being produced from about 1200 BC and the change over in production took place during the 11th century (so a conventional date of Bronze Age/Iron Age is 1050, but this is just a convention because of the earthquakes around that date.).

[David JD Johnson]

"Aston" should have been" as to". Auto-correct again

[Dan Howard]

[David JD Johnson]

Dan, I presume you realise you are the odd one out here, not me.

I haven't read that particular book but I have read dozens of books and hundreds of papers on Cypriot history over the Bronze Age and early Iron Age which are absolutely consistent in terms of dates in that later period. Absolute (rather than relative) dates have changed a little for the early Bronze Age/ Middle BA junction (at one time 1900BC, now 2000/1950). Of course dating is done in a variety of ways, all interlinking to confirm or support each other - in Cyprus partly done by relating to things going on in other countries with more datable events (for example a pottery style produced in a very limited period being exported and found elsewhere). When written records start things are a lot easier. (I assume we would agree about dates in the Archaic period).
I presume you also claim that Egyptian dates at the time of the Sea People attacks are 200 years out.

You must surely realise that you are out of step with almost all other historians in this?

[Dan Howard]

The chronology we are currently using is absolutely wrong. The only contention is how much revision is required. There are thousands of publications on the subject. The book I suggested does the best job at bringing all the data and arguments together in one source.

https://www.centuries.co.uk/faq.htm

Francis and Vickers have been researching this for decades.
https://www.centuries.co.uk/f&v-chronology.pdf

The so-called "Sea Peoples" is another myth that needs debunking. There is no evidence of an invasion and no evidence of mass migration. They were invented to justify the dodgy "collapse" theory. The most accurate Egyptian translation of the relevant texts suggests that they were nothing more than raiders from the Nile Delta.

[Martin Kallander]

Wait Egypt didn't control the Nile delta? How does that make sense?

[Dan Howard]

[Martin Kallander]

It seems strange to me that a major power at the time wouldn't be able to exert itself properly on such a relatively small and weak place with no outside support so close to it's main seat of power

[Dan Howard]

[Martin Kallander]

Didn't the whatever dynasty move their court to the delta while some popes or something administrated Thebes and the upper kingdom at this time?

[Dan Howard]

Egypt was controlled by the priests and their seat of power was always at Thebes. Pharoahs moved their palaces from Thebes to Akhetaten to Memphis to Pi-Rameses but the political and military power of Egypt remained at Thebes.

[David JD Johnson]

Yes, I agree that the "Sea Peoples" mentioned in letters of the time (the phrase reused since in relation to quite different areas in the same period) are now agreed to have been a whole lot of different movements of peoples. Plagues and Famine from climate changes are also blamed for the crash. Much of the abandonment of towns and settlements at that time in Cyprus is now agreed not to have been caused by attacks but the fact that the foreign trade that sustained them disappeared when the Palace cultures in other countries crashed and disappeared.

However the details of what happened are not what you centrally seem to be disagreeing with, but when they happened. it is impossible to just stretch the Bronze Age forward into periods when other things were happening. The whole sequences of chronology in the Bronze Age in the Near East and Mediterranean would have to be stretched forward from the agreed dates.

I have to admit I have never seen this argument put, or even mentioned in any archaeological conference I know of.

[Dan Howard]

All the theories for the so-called "collapse" have been comprehensively dismantled. Robert Drews' does a good of this in his "End of the Bronze Age". The reason why nobody can find a cause is because there was no collapse. When the chronology is revised and all the evidence analysed using that paradigm, we see a gradual transition into the Archaic period.