Da Lazy Scholar: Sea peoples and the late Bronze age collapse

[Armonica_Templar]

This came about because of a conversation I had earlier today

This my friends is how I will say a lot
mean little
but hide my point quiet well

Without further ado


Late Bronze Age Collapse

Late Bronze Age collapse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[/url]

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (May 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Invasions, destruction and possible population movements during the collapse of the Bronze Age, c. 1200.

Bronze Age

• v
  
• t
  
• e
  

↑ Chalcolithic
Near East (c. 3300–1200 BC)
Anatolia, Caucasus, Elam, Egypt, Levant, Mesopotamia, Sistan, CanaanLate Bronze Age collapse
South Asia (c. 3000–1200 BC)
Bronze Age South AsiaOchre Coloured PotteryCemetery H
Europe (c. 3200–600 BC)
Aegean, Caucasus, Catacomb culture, Minoan, Srubna culture, Beaker culture, Unetice culture, Tumulus culture, Urnfield culture, Hallstatt culture, Apennine culture, Canegrate culture, Golasecca culture,Atlantic Bronze Age, Bronze Age Britain, Nordic Bronze Age
China (c. 2000–700 BC)
Erlitou, Erligang

• arsenical bronze
  
• writing
  
• literature
  
• sword
  
• chariot
  

↓Iron Age
The Late Bronze Age collapse was a Dark Age transition period in the Near East, Aegean Region, North Africa, Caucasus, Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, a transition historians believe was violent, sudden, and culturally disruptive. The palace economy of the Aegean Region and Anatolia that characterised the Late Bronze Age disintegrated, transforming into the small isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages.

Between c. 1200 and 1150 BC, the cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and the Levant,[1] and the fragmentation of the New Kingdom of Egypt and the loss of its colonies in southern Canaan[2] interrupted trade routes and severely reduced literacy.[3] In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Pylos and Gaza was violently destroyed, and many abandoned: examples include Hattusa, Mycenae, and Ugarit.[4] According to Robert Drews: "Within a period of forty to fifty years at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the twelfth century almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again."[5] A very few powerful states, particularly Assyria and Elam, were largely unaffected by the Bronze Age collapse -- but by the end of the 12th century BCE Elam collapsed after its defeat by Nebuchadnezzar I and its history is obscure for the following three centuries; and upon the death of Ashur-bel-kala in 1056 BC, Assyria went into a comparative decline for the next 100 or so years, its empire shrinking significantly, and by 1020 BC Assyria appears to have controlled only areas close to Assyria itself.

Gradually, by the end of the ensuing Dark Age, the region was eventually settled by Neo-Hittite and Syro-Hittite states in Cilicia and the Levant. Beginning in the mid-10th century B.C., the Aramaean kingdoms settled in the Levant and the Philistines settled in southern Canaan. And between 911-605 B.C., there occurred the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the arrival of Phrygians, Cimmerians and Lydians in Asia Minor, Urartians and Colchians in the Caucasus and Iranian peoples such as the Persians, Medes and Parthians in Ancient Iran, and after the Orientalising period in the Aegean, of Classical Greece.

Contents
  [hide] 

• 1Regional evidence
  • 1.1Evidence of destruction
    • 1.1.1Anatolia
      
    • 1.1.2Cyprus
      
    • 1.1.3Syria
      
    • 1.1.4Southern Levant
      
    • 1.1.5Greece
      
    
    
  • 1.2Areas that marginally survived
    • 1.2.1Mesopotamia
      
    • 1.2.2Egypt
      
    
    
  • 1.3Conclusion
    
  
  
• 2Possible causes
  • 2.1Environmental
    • 2.1.1Climate change
      
    • 2.1.2Volcanoes
      
    • 2.1.3Drought
      
    
    
  • 2.2Cultural
    • 2.2.1Ironworking
      
    • 2.2.2Changes in warfare
      
    
    
  • 2.3General systems collapse
    
  
  
• 3See also
  
• 4Notes
  
• 5References
  
• 6Further reading
  
• 7External links
  

Regional evidence[edit]
Evidence of destruction[edit]
Anatolia[edit]
Before the Bronze Age collapse, Anatolia (Asia Minor) was dominated by a number of Indo-European peoples: Luwians, Hittites, Mitanni, and Mycenaean Greeks, together with the Semitic Assyrians, and Hurrians. From the 17th century BC, the Mitanni formed a ruling class over the Hurrians, an ancient indigenous Caucasian people who spoke a Hurro-Urartian language. Similarly, the Hittites absorbed the Hattians,[6] a people speaking a language that may have been of the North Caucasian group or a language isolate.

Every Anatolian site, apart from Assyrian regions in the south east, that was important during the preceding Late Bronze Age shows a destruction layer, and it appears that here civilization did not recover to the level of the Indo-European Hittites for another thousand years. Hattusas, the Hittite capital, was burned (probably by Kaskians and possibly aided by the Phrygians), abandoned, and never reoccupied.
Karaoğlan,[a] near the present day city of Ankara, was burned and the corpses left unburied.[7] Many other sites that were not destroyed were abandoned.[8] The Hittite Empirewas destroyed by the Indo-European-speaking Phrygians and by the Semitic-speaking Aramaeans. Troy was destroyed at least twice, before being abandoned until Roman times.

The Phrygians had arrived (probably over the Bosphorus)[citation needed] in the 13th century BC, and laid waste to what remained of the weakened Hittite Empire (already weakened by defeat and annexation of much of its territory by the Middle Assyrian Empire, and further defeat at the hands of Kaska[9]), before being checked by the Assyrians in the Early Iron Age of the 11th century BC. Other groups of Indo-European warriors followed into the region, most prominently the Lydians, the Cimmerians, and Scythians. The SemiticArameans, Kartvelian-speaking Colchians, and Hurro-Urartians also made an appearance in parts of the region. These sites in Anatolia show evidence of the collapse:

• Troy
  
• Miletus
  
• Hattusas[10]
  
• Mersin
  
• Tarhuntassa
  

Cyprus[edit]
The catastrophe separates Late Cypriot II (LCII) from the LCIII period, with the sacking and burning of Enkomi, Kition, and Sinda, which may have occurred twice before those sites were abandoned.[11] During the reign of the Hittite king Tudhaliya IV (reigned c. 1237–1209 BC), the island was briefly invaded by the Hittites,[12] either to secure the copperresource or as a way of preventing piracy.

Shortly afterwards, the island was reconquered by his son around 1200 BC. Some towns (Enkomi, Kition, Palaeokastro and Sinda) show traces of destruction at the end of LCII. Whether or not this is really an indication of a Mycenean invasion is contested. Originally, two waves of destruction in c. 1230 BC by the Sea Peoples and c. 1190 BC by Aegeanrefugees have been proposed.[13][who?][clarification needed]

The smaller settlements of Ayios Dhimitrios and Kokkinokremnos, as well as a number of other sites, were abandoned but do not show traces of destruction. Kokkinokremos was a short-lived settlement, where various caches concealed by smiths have been found. That no one ever returned to reclaim the treasures suggests that they were killed or enslaved. Recovery occurred only in the Early Iron Age with Phoenician and Greek settlement. These sites in Cyprus show evidence of the collapse:

• Palaeokastro
  
• Kition
  
• Sinda
  
• Enkomi
  

Syria[edit]

A map of the Bronze Age collapse

Ancient Syria had been initially dominated by a number of indigenous [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages]Semitic-speaking peoples. The East Semitic-speaking Eblaites, the Canaanite-speaking Amorites and the Ugaritic-speaking Ugarites were prominent among them. Syria during this time was known as "The land of the Amurru".

Prior to and during the Bronze Age Collapse, Syria became a battle ground between the empires of the Hittites, Assyrians, Mitanni and Egyptians, and the coastal regions came under attack from the Sea Peoples. From the 12th century BC, the Arameanscame to prominence in Syria, and the region outside of the Canaanite-speaking Phoenician coastal areas eventually spoke Aramaic and the region came to be known as Aramea and Eber Nari.

Levantine sites previously showed evidence of trade links with Mesopotamia (Assyriaand Babylonia), Egypt and the Aegean in the Late Bronze Age. Evidence, at Ugarit, shows that the destruction there occurred after the reign of Merneptah (ruled 1213–1203 BC) and even the fall of Chancellor Bay (died 1192 BC). The last Bronze Age king of the Semitic state of Ugarit, Ammurapi, was a contemporary of the Hittite king Suppiluliuma II. The exact dates of his reign are unknown.

A letter by the king is preserved on one of the clay tablets found baked in the conflagration of the destruction of the city. Ammurapi stresses the seriousness of the crisis faced by many Levantine states from invasion by the advancing Sea Peoples in a dramatic response to a plea for assistance from the king of Alasiya. Ammurapi highlights the desperate situation Ugarit faced in letter RS 18.147:

My father, behold, the enemy's ships came (here); my cities(?) were burned, and they did evil things in my country. Does not my father know that all my troops and chariots(?) are in the Land of Hatti, and all my ships are in the Land of Lukka?... Thus, the country is abandoned to itself. May my father know it: the seven ships of the enemy that came here inflicted much damage upon us.[14]

No help arrived and Ugarit was burned to the ground at the end of the Bronze Age. Its destruction levels contained Late Helladic IIIB ware, but no LH IIIC (see Mycenaean period). Therefore, the date of the destruction is important for the dating of the LH IIIC phase. Since an Egyptian sword bearing the name of Pharaoh Merneptah was found in the destruction levels, 1190 BC was taken as the date for the beginning of the LH IIIC.

A cuneiform tablet found in 1986 shows that Ugarit was destroyed after the death of Merneptah. It is generally agreed that Ugarit had already been destroyed by the 8th year of Ramesses III, 1178 BC. These letters on clay tablets found baked in the conflagration of the destruction of the city speak of attack from the sea, and a letter from Alashiya(Cyprus) speaks of cities already being destroyed by attackers who came by sea. It also speaks of the Ugarit fleet being absent, patrolling the Lycian coast.

The West Semitic Arameans eventually superseded the earlier Amorites, Canaanites and people of Ugarit. The Arameans, together with the Neo-Hittites came to dominate most of the region both politically and militarily from the late 11th century BC until the rise of the Neo Assyrian Empire in the late 10th century BC, after which the entire region fell to Assyria. These sites in Syria show evidence of the collapse:

• Ugarit
  
• Tell Sukas
  
• Kadesh
  
• Qatna
  
• Hamath
  
• Alalakh
  
• Aleppo
  
• Carchemish
  
• Emar
  

Southern Levant[edit]
Egyptian evidence shows that from the reign of Horemheb (ruled either 1319 or 1306 to 1292 BC), wandering Shasu were more problematic than the earlier Apiru. Ramesses II(ruled 1279–1213 BC) campaigned against them, pursuing them as far as Moab, where he established a fortress, after a near defeat at the Battle of Kadesh. During the reign of Merneptah, the Shasu threatened the "Way of Horus" north from Gaza. Evidence shows that Deir Alla (Succoth) was destroyed after the reign of Queen Twosret (ruled 1191–1189 BC).[15]

The destroyed site of Lachish was briefly reoccupied by squatters and an Egyptian garrison, during the reign of Ramesses III (ruled 1186–1155 BC). All centres along a coastal route from Gaza northward were destroyed, and evidence shows Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Akko, and Jaffa were burned and not reoccupied for up to thirty years. Inland Hazor, Bethel, Beit Shemesh, Eglon, Debir, and other sites were destroyed. Refugees escaping the collapse of coastal centres may have fused with incoming nomadic and Anatolian elements to begin the growth of terraced hillside hamlets in the highlands region that was associated with the later development of the Hebrews.[16]

During the reign of Rameses III, Philistines were allowed to resettle the coastal strip from Gaza to Joppa, Denyen (possibly the tribe of Dan in the Bible, or more likely the people of Adana, also known as Danuna, part of the Hittite Empire) settled from Joppa to Acre, and Tjekker in Acre. The sites quickly achieved independence as the Tale of Wenamunshows. These sites in Southern Levant show evidence of the collapse:

• Hazor
  
• Akko
  
• Megiddo
  
• Deir 'Alla (Sukkot)
  
• Bethel
  
• Beth Shemesh
  
• Lachish
  
• Ashdod
  
• Ashkelon
  

Greece[edit]
Main article: Greek Dark Ages
None of the Mycenaean palaces of the Late Bronze Age survived (with the possible exception of the Cyclopean fortifications on the Acropolis of Athens), with destruction being heaviest at palaces and fortified sites. Up to 90% of small sites in the Peloponnese were abandoned, suggesting a major depopulation.

The Bronze Age collapse marked the start of what has been called the Greek Dark Ages, which lasted roughly 400 years and ended with the establishment of Archaic Greece. Other cities like Athens continued to be occupied, but with a more local sphere of influence, limited evidence of trade and an impoverished culture, from which it took centuries to recover. These sites in Greece show evidence of the collapse:

• Teichos Dymaion (el)
  
• Pylos
  
• Nichoria
  
• The Menelaion
  
• Tiryns
  
• Mycenae
  
• Thebes
  
• Lefkandi
  
• Iolkos[17]
  
• Knossos
  
• Kydonia
  

Areas that marginally survived[edit]
Mesopotamia[edit]
The Middle Assyrian Empire (1392-1056 BC) had destroyed the Hurrian-Mitanni Empire, annexed much of the Hittite Empire and eclipsed the Egyptian Empire, and at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age collapse controlled an empire stretching from the Caucasus mountains in the north to the Arabian peninsula in the south, and from Ancient Iranin the east to Cyprus in the west. However, in the 12th century BC, Assyrian satrapies in Anatolia came under attack from the Mushki (Phrygians), and those in the Levant from Arameans, but Tiglath-Pileser I (reigned 1114–1076 BC) was able to defeat and repel these attacks. The Middle Assyrian Empire survived intact throughout much of this period, with Assyria dominating and often ruling Babylonia directly, controlling south east and south western Anatolia, north western Iran and much of northern and central Syria and Canaan, as far as the Mediterranean and Cyprus.[18]

The Arameans and Phrygians were subjected, and Assyria and its colonies were not threatened by the Sea Peoples who had ravaged Egypt and much of the East Mediterranean. However, after the death of Ashur-bel-kala in 1056 BC, Assyria withdrew to its natural borders, encompassing what is today northern Iraq, north east Syria, the fringes of north west Iran, and south eastern Turkey. Assyria retained a stable monarchy, the best army in the world, and an efficient civil administration, enabling it to survive the Bronze Age Collapse intact. From the late 10th century BC, it once more began to assert itself internationally.[19]

The situation in Babylonia was very different: after the Assyrian withdrawal, new groups of Semites, such as the Aramaeans and later Chaldeans and Suteans, spread unchecked into Babylonia from the Levant, and the power of its weak kings barely extended beyond the city limits of Babylon. Babylon was sacked by the Elamites under Shutruk-Nahhunte(c. 1185–1155 BC), and lost control of the Diyala River valley to Assyria.

Egypt[edit]
Main article: Third Intermediate Period of Egypt
After apparently surviving for a while, the Egyptian Empire collapsed in the mid twelfth century BC (during the reign of Ramesses VI, 1145 to 1137 BC). Previously, the Merneptah Stele (c. 1200 BC) spoke of attacks from Putrians (from modern Libya), with associated people of Ekwesh, Shekelesh, Lukka, Shardana and Tursha or Teresh (possibly Troas), and a Canaanite revolt, in the cities of Ashkelon, Yenoam and among the people of Israel. A second attack during the reign of Ramesses III (1186–1155 BC) involved Peleset, Tjeker, Shardana and Denyen.

Conclusion[edit]
Robert Drews describes the collapse as "the worst disaster in ancient history, even more calamitous than the collapse of the Western Roman Empire."[20] Cultural memories of the disaster told of a "lost golden age": for example, Hesiod spoke of Ages of Gold, Silver, and Bronze, separated from the cruel modern Age of Iron by the Age of Heroes. Rodney Castledon suggests that memories of the Bronze Age collapse influenced Plato's story of Atlantis[21] in Timaeus and the Critias.

Possible causes[edit]
Various theories have been put forward as possible contributors to the collapse, many of them mutually compatible.
Environmental[edit]
Climate change[edit]

Main article: Bond event
Changes in climate similar to the Younger Dryas period or the Little Ice Age punctuate human history. The local effects of these changes may cause crop failures in multiple consecutive years, leading to warfare as a last-ditch effort at survival. The triggers for climate change are still debated, but ancient peoples could not have predicted or coped with substantial climate changes.

Volcanoes[edit]
The Hekla 3 eruption approximately coincides with this period, and while the exact date is under considerable dispute, one group calculated the date to be specifically 1159 BC, implicating the eruption in the collapse in Egypt.[22]

Drought[edit]
Using the Palmer Drought Index for 35 Greek, Turkish and Middle Eastern weather stations, it was shown that a drought of the kind that persisted from January AD 1972 would have affected all of the sites associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse.[23][24] Drought could have easily precipitated or hastened socioeconomic problems and led to wars.

More recently, it has been shown how the diversion of midwinter storms from the Atlantic to north of the Pyrenees and the Alps, bringing wetter conditions to Central Europe but drought to the Eastern Mediterranean, was associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse.[25]
Pollen in sediment cores from the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee show that there was a period of severe drought at the start of the collapse.[26][27]

Cultural[edit]
Ironworking[edit]
The Bronze Age collapse may be seen in the context of a technological history that saw the slow, comparatively continuous spread of ironworking technology in the region, beginning with precocious iron-working in the present Bulgaria and Romania in the 13th and 12th centuries BC.[28]

Leonard R. Palmer suggested that iron, superior to bronze for weapons manufacture, was in more plentiful supply and so allowed larger armies of iron users to overwhelm the smaller armies of maryannu chariotry, which used bronze.[29]

Changes in warfare[edit]
Robert Drews argues[30] for the appearance of massed infantry, using newly developed weapons and armor, such as cast rather than forged spearheads and long swords, a revolutionising cut-and-thrust weapon,[31] and javelins. The appearance of bronze foundries suggests "that mass production of bronze artifacts was suddenly important in the Aegean". For example, Homer uses "spears" as a virtual synonym for "warriors".
Such new weaponry, in the hands of large numbers of "running skirmishers", who could swarm and cut down a chariot army, would destabilize states that were based upon the use of chariots by the ruling class. That would precipitate an abrupt social collapse as raiders began to conquer, loot and burn cities.[32][33][34]

General systems collapse[edit]
A general systems collapse has been put forward as an explanation for the reversals in culture that occurred between the Urnfield culture of the 12th and 13th centuries BC and the rise of the Celtic Hallstatt culture in the 9th and 10th centuries BC.[35] General systems collapse theory, pioneered by Joseph Tainter,[36] hypothesises how social declines in response to complexity may lead to a collapse resulting in simpler forms of society.

In the specific context of the Middle East, a variety of factors, including population growth, soil degradation, drought, cast bronze weapon and iron production technologies, could have combined to push the relative price of weaponry (compared to arable land) to a level unsustainable for traditional warrior aristocracies. In complex societies that were increasingly fragile and less resilient, the combination of factors may have contributed to the collapse.

The growing complexity and specialization of the Late Bronze Age political, economic, and social organization in Carol Thomas and Craig Conant's phrase[37] together made the organization of civilization too intricate to reestablish piecewise when disrupted. That could explain why the collapse was so widespread and able to render the Bronze Age civilizations incapable of recovery. The critical flaws of the Late Bronze Age are its centralisation, specialisation, complexity, and top-heavy political structure. These flaws then were exposed by sociopolitical events (revolt of peasantry and defection of mercenaries), fragility of all kingdoms (Mycenaean, Hittite, Ugaritic, and Egyptian), demographic crises (overpopulation), and wars between states. Other factors that could have placed increasing pressure on the fragile kingdoms include interruption of maritime trade by piracy by the Sea Peoples, as well as drought, crop failure, famine, or the Dorian migration or invasion.[38]

There is a reason I am posting the whole article.. I might need a post or two to get to here

But this is the footnotes

[Armonica_Templar]

Interesting details

[Armonica_Templar]

Longer version

[Armonica_Templar]

Sea Peoples

Sea Peoples
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[/url]
For other uses, see Sea People (disambiguation).

This famous scene from the north wall of Medinet Habu is often used to illustrate the Egyptian campaign against the Sea Peoples in what has come to be known as the Battle of the Delta. Whilst accompanying hieroglyphs do not name Egypt's enemies, describing them simply as being from "northern countries", early scholars noted the similarities between the hairstyles and accessories worn by the combatants and other reliefs in which such groups are named.

The Sea Peoples are a purported seafaring confederation that attacked ancient Egypt and other regions of the East Mediterranean prior to and during the Late Bronze Age collapse (1200–900 BC).[1][2] Following the creation of the concept in the nineteenth century, it became one of the most famous chapters of Egyptian history, given its connection with, in the words of Wilhelm Max Müller: "the most important questions of ethnography and the primitive history of classic nations".[3][4] Their origins uncertain, the various Sea Peoples have been proposed to have originated from places that include western Asia Minor, the Aegean, the Mediterranean islands and Southern Europe.[5] Although the archaeological inscriptions do not include reference to a migration,[2] the Sea Peoples are conjectured to have sailed around the eastern Mediterraneanand invaded Anatolia, Syria, Canaan, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Egypt toward the end of the Bronze Age.[6]

French Egyptologist Emmanuel de Rougé first used the term peuples de la mer (literally "peoples of the sea") in 1855 in a description of reliefs on the Second Pylon at Medinet Habu documenting Year 8 of Ramesses III.[7][8] Gaston Maspero, de Rougé's successor at the Collège de France, subsequently popularized the term "Sea Peoples"—and an associated migration-theory—in the late 19th century.[9] Since the early 1990s, the theory has been brought into question by a number of scholars.[1][2][10][11]

The Sea Peoples remain unidentified in the eyes of most modern scholars, and hypotheses regarding the origin of the various groups are the source of much speculation.[12][13] Existing theories variously propose equating them with several Aegean tribes, raiders from Central Europe, scattered soldiers who turned to piracy or who had become refugees, and links with natural disasters such as earthquakes or climatic shifts.[2][14]

Contents
  [hide] 

• 1History of the concept
  
• 2Primary documentary records
  • 2.1Reign of Ramesses II
    
  • 2.2Reign of Merneptah
    
  • 2.3Reign of Ramesses III
    
  • 2.4Onomasticon of Amenope
    
  
  
• 3Other documentary records
  • 3.1Early Amarna age
    
  • 3.2Carchemish
    
  • 3.3Byblos obelisk
    
  • 3.4Letters at Ugarit
    
  
  
• 4Hypotheses about identity
  • 4.1Regional migration historical context
    
  • 4.2Philistine hypothesis
    
  • 4.3Minoan hypothesis
    
  • 4.4Greek migrational hypothesis
    
  • 4.5Trojan hypothesis
    
  • 4.6Mycenaean warfare hypothesis
    
  • 4.7Italian peoples hypotheses
    
  • 4.8Anatolian famine hypothesis
    
  • 4.9Invader hypothesis
    
  
  
• 5See also
  
• 6Notes
  
• 7Sources
  • 7.1Primary sources: Early publications of the theory
    
  • 7.2Secondary sources
    
  
  
• 8External links
  

History of the concept[edit]

A partial description of the hieroglyphic text at Medinet Habu on the right tower of Second Pylon (left), and an illustration of the prisoners depicted at the base of the Fortified East Gate (right), were first provided by Jean-François Champollionfollowing his 1828–29 travels to Egypt and published posthumously.[15] Although Champollion did not label them, decades later the hieroglyphs labelled 4 to 8 (left) were translated as Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh, and the hieroglyphs next to prisoners 4 and 6 (right) translated as Sherden and Teresh.[16]

The concept of the Sea Peoples was first described by Emmanuel de Rougé in 1855, then curator of the Louvre, in his work Note on Some Hieroglyphic Texts Recently Published by Mr. Greene,[17]describing the battles of Ramesses III described on the Second Pylon at Medinet Habu, and based upon recent photographs of the temple by John Beasley Greene.[18][19][20] De Rougé noted that "in the crests of the conquered peoples the Sherden and the Teresh bear the designation of the 'peuples de la mer'", in a reference to the prisoners depicted at the base of the Fortified East Gate.[8]In 1867, de Rougé published his Excerpts of a mémoire on the attacks directed against Egypt by the peoples of the Mediterranean in the 14th century BCE, which focused primarily on the battles of Ramesses II and Merneptah, and which proposed translations for many of the geographic names included in the hieroglyphic inscriptions.[21][22] De Rougé later became chair of Egyptology at the Collège de France, and was succeeded by Gaston Maspero. Maspero built upon de Rougé's work, and published The Struggle of the Nations,[23] in which he described the theory of the seaborne migrations in detail in 1895–6 for a wider audience,[9] at a time when the idea of population migrations would have felt familiar to the general population.[24]

The theory was taken up by other scholars such as Eduard Meyer, and became the generally accepted theory amongst Egyptologists and orientalists.[9]

Since the early 1990s, the theory has been brought into question by a number of scholars.[1][2][10][11]

The historical narrative stems primarily from seven Ancient Egyptian sources,[25] and although in these inscriptions the designation "of the sea" does not appear in relation to all of these peoples,[1][11] the term "Sea Peoples" is commonly used to refer to the following nine peoples, in alphabetical order:[26][27]

Egyptian name
Original identification
Other theories
People
Trans-
literation
Connection to the sea
Year
Author
Theory

Denyen
d3jnjw
"in their isles"[28]
1872
Chabas[29]
Greek (Danaoi)[30]
Israelite tribe of Dan[30]
Ekwesh
jḳ3w3š3
"of the countries of the sea"[31]
1867
de Rougé[29]
Greeks(Achaeans)[32][30][33]

Lukka
row

1867
de Rougé[29]
Lycians[33][32]

Peleset
prwsṯ

1846
William Osborn Jr. and Edward Hincks[34][35]
Philistines

1872
Chabas[36][37]
Pelasgians
Shekelesh
š3krš3
"of the countries of the sea"[38](disputed)[31]
1867
de Rougé[29]
Siculi[33][32]

Sherden
š3rdn
"of the sea"[39]
"of the countries of the sea"[38](disputed)[31]
1867
de Rougé[29]
Sardinians[32][33][40][41]

Teresh
twrš3
"of the sea"[39]
1867
de Rougé[29]
Tyrrhenians[32][33][42]

Tjeker
ṯ3k3r

1872
Chabas[29]
Teucrians[43]

Weshesh
w3š3š3
"of the sea"[28]
1872
Chabas[29]
Oscans[29]

The Israelite tribe of Asher.[44][45] Considered by others to remain unidentified.[36]

Primary documentary records[edit]
Whilst the Medinet Habu inscriptions from which the Sea Peoples concept was first described remain the primary source and "the basis of virtually all significant discussions of them",[46] there are three primary narratives from Egyptian records which refer to more than one of the nine peoples, found in six sources. A seventh source referring to more than one of the nine peoples is a list (Onomasticon) of 610 entities, rather than a narrative:[25]
Date
Narrative
Source(s)
Peoples named
Connection to the sea
c. 1210 BCE
Ramesses IInarrative
Kadesh Inscriptions
Karkisha, Lukka, Sherden
none

c. 1200 BCE
Merneptahnarrative
Great Karnak Inscription
Eqwesh, Lukka, Shekelesh, Sherden, Teresh
Eqwesh (of the countries of the sea),[31] possibly also Sherden and Sheklesh[38]
Athribis Stele
Eqwesh, Shekelesh, Sherden, Teresh
Eqwesh (of the countries of the sea)[31][38]

c. 1150 BCE
Ramesses IIInarrative
Medinet Habu
Denyen, Peleset, Shekelesh, Sherden, Teresh, Tjekker, Weshesh
Teresh (of the sea), Sherden (of the sea)[39]
Papyrus Harris I
Denyen, Peleset, Sherden, Tjekker, Weshesh
Denyen (in their isles), Weshesh (of the sea)[28]
Rhetorical Stela
Peleset, Teresh
none

c. 1100 BCE
List (no narrative)
Onomasticon of Amenope
Denyen, Lukka, Peleset, Sherden, Tjekker
none

Other Egyptian sources refer to one of the individual groups without reference to any of the other groups:[25] the Amarna letters (EA 151 refers to the Denyen, EA 38 to the Lukka, and EA 81, EA 122 and EA 133 to the Sherden), Padiiset's Statue refers to the Peleset, the Cairo Column[47] refers to the Shekelesh, the Story of Wenamun refers to the Tjekker, and 13 further Egyptian sources refer to the Sherden.[48]
Reign of Ramesses II[edit]

The Nile Delta, 2006

Records or possible records of sea peoples generally or in particular date to two campaigns of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_II]Ramesses II, a pharaoh of the militant 19th Dynasty: operations in or near the delta in Year 2 of his reign and the major confrontation with the Hittite Empire and allies at the Battle of Kadesh in his Year 5. The years of this long-lived pharaoh's reign are not known exactly, but they must have comprised nearly all of the first half of the 13th century BCE.[49]

In his Second Year, an attack of the Sherden, or Shardana, on the Nile Delta was repulsed and defeated by Ramesses, who captured some of the pirates. The event is recorded on Tanis Stele II.[50] An inscription by Ramesses II on the stela from Tanis which recorded the Sherden raiders' raid and subsequent capture speaks of the continuous threat they posed to Egypt's Mediterranean coasts:

"the unruly Sherden whom no one had ever known how to combat, they came boldly sailing in their warships from the midst of the sea, none being able to withstand them."[51]

The Sherden prisoners were subsequently incorporated into the Egyptian army for service on the Hittite frontier by Ramesses, and were involved as Egyptian soldiers in the Battle of Kadesh. Another stele usually cited in conjunction with this one is the "Aswan Stele" (there were other stelae at Aswan), which mentions the king's operations to defeat a number of peoples including those of the "Great Green (the Egyptian name for the Mediterranean)". It is plausible to assume that the Tanis and Aswan Stelae refer to the same event, in which case they reinforce each other.[citation needed]

The Battle of Kadesh was the outcome of a campaign against the Hittites and allies in the Levant in the pharaoh's Year 5. The imminent collision of the Egyptian and Hittite empires became obvious to both, and they both prepared campaigns against the strategic midpoint of Kadesh for the next year. Ramesses divided his Egyptian forces, which were then ambushed piecemeal by the Hittite army and nearly defeated. However, some Egyptian forces made it through to Kadesh, and the arrival of the last of the Egyptians provided enough military cover to allow the pharaoh to escape and his army to withdraw in defeat; leaving Kadesh in Hittite hands.[52]

At home, Ramesses had his scribes formulate an official description, which has been called "the Bulletin" because it was widely published by inscription. Ten copies survive today on the temples at Abydos, Karnak, Luxor and Abu Simbel, with reliefs depicting the battle. The "Poem of Pentaur", describing the battle survived also.[53]

The poem relates that the previously captured Sherden were not only working for the Pharaoh, but were also formulating a plan of battle for him; i.e. it was their idea to divide Egyptian forces into four columns. There is no evidence of any collaboration with the Hittites or malicious intent on their part, and if Ramesses considered it, he never left any record of that consideration.[citation needed]

The poem lists the peoples which went to Kadesh as allies of the Hittites. Amongst them are some of the sea peoples spoken of in the Egyptian inscriptions previously mentioned, and many of the peoples who would later take part in the great migrations of the 12th century BCE (see Appendix A to the Battle of Kadesh).[citation needed]

Reign of Merneptah[edit]



 









"the foreign-peoples of the sea" (n3 ḫ3s.wt n<.t> p3 ym)
in line 52 of the Great Karnak Inscription[38]
in hieroglyphs

Athribis stele (showing all 19 lines and 14 lines on each face. The reference to "foreigners of the sea" is on line 13 out of 19)

Great Karnak Inscription (lines 1-20 out of 79; the reference to "foreign countries of the sea" is on line 52)

The major event of the reign of the Pharaoh Merneptah (1213 BCE–1203 BCE),[54] 4th king of the 19th Dynasty, was his battle against a confederacy termed "the Nine Bows" at Perire in the western delta in the 5th and 6th years of his reign. Depredations of this confederacy had been so severe that the region was "forsaken as pasturage for cattle, it was left waste from the time of the ancestors."[55]

The pharaoh's action against them is attested in a single narrative found in three sources. The most detailed source describing the battle is the Great Karnak Inscription, and two shorter versions of the same narrative are found in the "Athribis Stele" and the "Cairo Column"[56] The "Cairo column" is a section of a granite column now in the Cairo Museum, which was first published by Maspero in 1881 with just two readable sentences – the first confirming the date of Year 5 and the second stating: "The wretched [chief] of Libya has invaded with ——, being men and women, Shekelesh (S'-k-rw-s) ——".[57][58] The "Athribis stela" is a granite stela found in Athribis and inscribed on both sides, which, like the Cairo column was first published by Maspero, two years later in 1883.[59] The Merneptah Stele from Thebes describes the reign of peace resulting from the victory, but does not include any reference to the Sea Peoples.[60]

The Nine Bows were acting under the leadership of the king of Libya and an associated near-concurrent revolt in Canaan involving Gaza, Ashkelon, Yenoam and the people of Israel. Exactly which peoples were consistently in the Nine Bows is not clear, but present at the battle were the Libyans, some neighboring Meshwesh, and possibly a separate revolt in the following year involving peoples from the eastern Mediterranean, including the Kheta (or Hittites), or Syrians, and (in the Israel Stele) for the first time in history, the Israelites. In addition to them, the first lines of the Karnak inscription include some sea peoples,[61] which must have arrived in the Western Delta or
from Cyrene by ship:

[Beginning of the victory that his majesty achieved in the land of Libya] -i, Ekwesh, Teresh, Lukka, Sherden, Shekelesh, Northerners coming from all lands.

Later in the inscription Merneptah receives news of the attack:

... the third season, saying: 'The wretched, fallen chief of Libya, Meryey, son of Ded, has fallen upon the country of Tehenu with his bowmen – Sherden, Shekelesh, Ekwesh, Lukka, Teresh, Taking the best of every warrior and every man of war of his country. He has brought his wife and his children – leaders of the camp, and he has reached the western boundary in the fields of Perire'

"His majesty was enraged at their report, like a lion", assembled his court and gave a rousing speech. Later, he dreamed he saw Ptah handing him a sword and saying, "Take thou (it) and banish thou the fearful heart from thee." When the bowmen went forth, says the inscription, "Amun was with them as a shield." After six hours, the surviving Nine Bows threw down their weapons, abandoned their baggage and dependents, and ran for their lives. Merneptah states that he defeated the invasion, killing 6,000 soldiers and taking 9,000 prisoners. To be sure of the numbers, among other things, he took the penises of all uncircumcised enemy dead and the hands of all the circumcised, from which history learns that the Ekwesh were circumcised, a fact causing some to doubt they were Greek.[62]

Reign of Ramesses III[edit]
Further information: Battle of the Delta, Battle of Djahy, and Bronze Age collapse

Medinet Habu northeast outside wall, showing wide view and a close up sketch of the right hand side relief. Behind the king (out of scene) is a chariot, above which the text describes a battle in Year 8 as follows:

"Now the northern countries, which were in their isles, were quivering in their bodies. They penetrated the channels of the Nile mouths. Their nostrils have ceased (to function, so that) their desire is <to> breathe the breath. His majesty is gone forth like a whirlwind against them, fighting on the battle field like a runner. The dread of him and the terror of him have entered in their bodies; (they are) capsized and overwhelmed in their places. Their hearts are taken away; their soul is flown away. Their weapons are scattered in the sea. His arrow pierces him whom he has wished among them, while the fugitive is become one fallen into the water. His majesty is like an en- raged lion, attacking his assailant with his pawns; plundering on his right hand and powerful on his left hand, like Set[h] destroying the serpent ‘Evil of Character’. It is Amon-Re who has overthrown for him the lands and has crushed for him every land un- der his feet; King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands: Usermare-Meriamon.[63]

Medinet Habu Second Pylon, showing wide view and a close up sketch of the left hand side relief in which Amon, with Mut behind him, extends a sword to Rameses III who is leading three lines of prisoners. The text before the King includes the following:

Thou puttest great terror of me in the hearts of their chiefs; the fear and dread of me before them; that I may carry off their warriors (phrr), bound in my grasp, to lead them to thy ka, O my august father, - - - - -. Come, to [take] them, being: Peleset (Pw-r'-s'-t), Denyen (D'-y-n-yw-n'), Shekelesh (S'-k-rw-s). Thy strength it was which was before me, overthrowing their seed, - thy might, O lord of gods.[64]

On the right hand side of the Pylon is the "Great Inscription on the Second Pylon", which includes the following text:

The foreign countries made a conspiracy in their islands, All at once the lands were removed and scattered in the fray. No land could stand before their arms: from Hatti, Qode, Carchemish, Arzawa and Alashiya on, being cut off [ie. destroyed] at one time. A camp was set up in Amurru. They desolated its people, and its land was like that which has never come into being. They were coming forward toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared before them. Their confederationwas the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh, lands united. They laid their hands upon the land as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting: "Our plans will succeed!"[65]

Ramesses III, the second king of the Egyptian 20th Dynasty, who reigned for most of the first half of the 12th century BCE, was forced to deal with a later wave of invasions of the Sea Peoples—the best-recorded of these in his eighth year. This was recorded in two long inscriptions from his Medinet Habu mortuary temple, which are physically separate and somewhat different from one another.[66]
The fact that several civilizations collapsed around 1175 BCE, has led to the suggestion that the Sea Peoples may have been involved in the end of the Hittite, Mycenaean and Mitanni kingdoms. The American Hittitologist Gary Beckman writes, on page 23 of Akkadica 120 (2000):[67]

A terminus ante quem for the destruction of the Hittite empire has been recognised in an inscription carved at Medinet Habu in Egypt in the eighth year of Ramesses III (1175 BCE). This text narrates a contemporary great movement of peoples in the eastern Mediterranean, as a result of which "the lands were removed and scattered to the fray. No land could stand before their arms, from Hatti, Kode, Carchemish, Arzawa, Alashiya on being cut off. [ie: cut down]"

Ramesses' comments about the scale of the Sea Peoples' onslaught in the eastern Mediterranean are confirmed by the destruction of the states of Hatti, Ugarit, Ashkelon and Hazor around this time. As the Hittitologist Trevor Bryce observes:[68]

It should be stressed that the invasions were not merely military operations, but involved the movements of large populations, by land and sea, seeking new lands to settle.

This situation is confirmed by the Medinet Habu temple reliefs of Ramesses III which show that:[68]

the Peleset and Tjekker warriors who fought in the land battle [against Ramesses III] are accompanied in the reliefs by women and children loaded in ox-carts.

The inscriptions of Ramesses III at his Medinet Habu mortuary temple in Thebes record three victorious campaigns against the Sea Peoples considered bona fide, in Years 5, 8 and 12, as well as three considered spurious, against the Nubians and Libyans in Year 5 and the Libyans with Asiatics in Year 11. During Year 8 some Hittites were operating with the Sea Peoples.[69]

The inner west wall of the second court describes the invasion of Year 5. Only the Peleset and Tjeker are mentioned, but the list is lost in a lacuna. The attack was two-pronged, one by sea and one by land; that is, the Sea Peoples divided their forces. Ramsesses was waiting in the Nile mouths and trapped the enemy fleet there. The land forces were defeated separately.

The Sea Peoples did not learn any lessons from this defeat, as they repeated their mistake in Year 8 with a similar result. The campaign is recorded more extensively on the inner northwest panel of the first court. It is possible, but not generally believed, that the dates are only those of the inscriptions and both refer to the same campaign.

In Ramesses' Year 8, the Nine Bows appear again as a "conspiracy in their isles". This time, they are revealed unquestionably as Sea Peoples: the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh, which are classified as "foreign countries" in the inscription. They camped in Amor and sent a fleet to the Nile.

The pharaoh was once more waiting for them. He had built a fleet especially for the occasion, hid it in the Nile mouths and posted coast watchers. The enemy fleet was ambushed there, their ships overturned, and the men dragged up on shore and executed ad hoc.
The land army was also routed within Egyptian controlled territory. Additional information is given in the relief on the outer side of the east wall. This land battle occurred in the vicinity of Djahy against "the northern countries". When it was over, several chiefs were captive: of Hatti, Amor and Shasu among the "land peoples" and the Tjeker, "Sherden of the sea", "Teresh of the sea" and Peleset or Philistines (in whose name some have seen the ancient Greek name for sea people; Pelasgians).

The campaign of Year 12 is attested by the Südstele found on the south side of the temple. It mentions the Tjeker, Peleset, Denyen, Weshesh and Shekelesh.

Papyrus Harris I of the period, found behind the temple, suggests a wider campaign against the Sea Peoples but does not mention the date. In it, the persona of Ramses III says, "I slew the Denyen (D'-yn-yw-n) in their isles" and "burned" the Tjeker and Peleset, implying a maritime raid of his own. He also captured some Sherden and Weshesh "of the sea" and settled them in Egypt.[70] As he is called the "Ruler of Nine Bows" in the relief of the east side, these events probably happened in Year 8; i.e. the Pharaoh would have used the victorious fleet for some punitive expeditions elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

The Rhetorical Stela to Ramesses III, Chapel C, Deir el-Medina records a similar narrative.[71]
Onomasticon of Amenope[edit]

The Onomasticon of Amenope, or Amenemipit (amen-em-apt), gives a slight credence to the idea that the Ramesside kings settled the Sea Peoples in Canaan. Dated to about 1100 BCE, at the end of the 21st dynasty (which had numerous short-reigned pharaohs), this document simply lists names. After six place names, four of which were in Philistia, the scribe lists the Sherden (Line 268), the Tjeker (Line 269) and the Peleset (Line 270), who might be presumed to occupy those cities.[72] The Story of Wenamun on a papyrus of the same cache also places the Tjeker in Dor at that time. The fact that the Biblical maritime Tribe of Dan was initially located between the Philistines and the Tjekker, has prompted some to suggest that they may originally have been Denyen. Sherden seem to have been settled around Megiddo and in the Jordan Valley, and Weshwesh (Biblical Asher) may have been settled further north.[citation needed]

Other documentary records[edit]
[size=small]Early Amarna age[[url=https://en

[Armonica_Templar]

I linked this thread to my Mirror Gazing on Facebook

Now why would I do this?

Well its the hard look part..

What we have

Several civilizations collapsed at around 12000 BC

Egyptians last empire in the region left standing

Ruins found in mountains, hard to reach

So lets review the so called potential sources of issues that could have lead to this as Lazy scholars

[Armonica_Templar]

From the op

Environmental[edit]
Climate change[edit]
Main article: Bond event
Changes in climate similar to the Younger Dryas period or the Little Ice Age punctuate human history. The local effects of these changes may cause crop failures in multiple consecutive years, leading to warfare as a last-ditch effort at survival. The triggers for climate change are still debated, but ancient peoples could not have predicted or coped with substantial climate changes.

This carries non info..

It leads towards conclusions that are hinted but are false

Triggers for climate change are still debated

No..
They are not debated

Science is the scientific method

What changes climate is known

Science researches before politicizing of the issue outlined what the environment is
What factors go in
What factors go our

GIGO

As for part B of this claim

Ancient people could not have coped or dealt with substantial climate change

FALSE

History is littered with examples of kingdoms dealing with changes in the environment
And ancient civilizations marined it (adapted and over came)

Also our ancestors survived it
so no dice

The bible itself points out to a story
Remember joeseph and his idiotic coat

Famine
proper preplanning
Egypt survived the famine
from change in rain

So I am left shaking my head when the exact statements are total bullS#$%

But we are Lazy scholars so why bother interupting liberal pigs editing history
Let them wallow in their mud

Ohhh.. Conservative ijuts can argue with them to satisfy their own pig stys

We are not here to discuss modern powergames (yet)

Now the LS system of looking at this claim
do we have a different incident in history where a change in environment affected crops
A civilization survived

Right now the parameters are way to broad in this claim
And the answer to this very question comes in response to a different part

So for now..

I will just point to several interesting points in history
Migration across land bridge ice age

Egyptian history dealing with dessertifacation
next

[Armonica_Templar]

mental break

[Armonica_Templar]

Volcanoes[edit]

The Hekla 3 eruption approximately coincides with this period, and while the exact date is under considerable dispute, one group calculated the date to be specifically 1159 BC, implicating the eruption in the collapse in Egypt.[22]

Volcanoes

Helka 3 Eruption

Hekla 3 eruption

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[/url][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hekla_3_eruption#p-search]
Hekla 3 eruption
Volcano
Hekla
Date
Circa 1000 BC
Type
Plinian
Location
Iceland
63°59′N 19°42′W

Coordinates: 63°59′N 19°42′W

VEI
5
Impact
Caused worldwide temperatures to drop for 18 years

Hekla

Hekla on the map of Iceland
The Hekla 3 eruption (H-3) circa 1000 BC is considered the most severe eruption of Hekla during the Holocene.[1] It threw about 7.3 km3 of volcanic rock into the atmosphere,[2] placing its Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) at 5. This would have cooled temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere for several years afterwards.

An eighteen-year span of global cooling that is recorded in Irish bog oaks has been attributed to H-3.[3][4] The eruption is detectable in Greenland ice-cores, the bristlecone pine sequence, and the Irish oak sequence of extremely narrow growth rings. Andy Baker's team of researchers dated it to 1021 BC ±130–100.[5]

A "high chronology" (earlier) interpretation of the above results is preferred by Baker, based also on growth of stalagmites. In Sutherland, northwest Scotland, a spurt of four years of doubled annual luminescent growth banding of calcite in a stalagmite is datable to 1135 BC ±130.[6]
A rival, "low-chronology" interpretation of the eruption has been made by Andrew Dugmore: 2879 BP (929 BC ±34).[7] In 1999, Dugmore suggested a non-volcanic explanation for the Scottish results.[8] In 2000 skepticism concerning conclusions about connecting Hekla 3 and Hekla 4 (probably 2310 BC ±20) with paleoenvironmental events and archaeologically attested abandonment of settlement sites in northern Scotland was expressed by John P. Grattan and David D. Gilbertson.[9] Some Egyptologists have firmly dated the eruption to 1159 BC, and blamed it for famines under Ramesses III during the wider Bronze Age collapse.[10] Dugmore has rebutted this dating.[11] Other scholars have held off on this dispute, preferring the neutral and vague "3000 BP".[12]

So volcanoes.. Volcanoes

Well why am I do this this way

LAZY SCHOLAR

We need not worry about looking through the notes of history one this page..

Instead we have something modern for our studies

Mt. Saint Helen went off


???? LS Armonica???

Wes' studing late bronze age collapse

No.. We in the sam buziness as McD's

Hamburgers?

Nope.. Real estate

You see we like real estate can find historical incidents of simliar price (like real estate) and get a good estimate

???

You see when St Helen went boom we have exact time

we also have numbers

S#$% tons

Of key note

Affected area's and how economics changed


?????

Whispers
Later on we can use similar percentages to study another point of history

Other volcanoes went poof
effects

then take our baseline and compare it to hostorical poofs
like pompey

we can assey the damages by category

Economic should be primary focus..

You see we can test this idea

and see what is its batting average

[Armonica_Templar]

[Armonica_Templar]

Drought[edit]
Using the Palmer Drought Index for 35 Greek, Turkish and Middle Eastern weather stations, it was shown that a drought of the kind that persisted from January AD 1972 would have affected all of the sites associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse.[23][24] Drought could have easily precipitated or hastened socioeconomic problems and led to wars.

More recently, it has been shown how the diversion of midwinter storms from the Atlantic to north of the Pyrenees and the Alps, bringing wetter conditions to Central Europe but drought to the Eastern Mediterranean, was associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse.[25]
Pollen in sediment cores from the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee show that there was a period of severe drought at the start of the collapse.[26][27][/url]

From op



[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_drought_index]Palmer Drought index

The Palmer drought index, sometimes called the Palmer drought severity index and often abbreviated PDSI, is a measurement of dryness based on recent precipitation and temperature.[1] It was developed by meteorologist Wayne Palmer, who first published his method in the 1965 paper Meteorological Drought[2] for the Office of Climatology of the U.S. Weather Bureau.

The Palmer Drought Index is based on a supply-and-demand model of soil moisture. Supply is comparatively straightforward to calculate, but demand is more complicated as it depends on many factors, not just temperature and the amount of moisture in the soil but also hard-to-calibrate factors including evapotranspiration and recharge rates. Palmer tried to overcome these difficulties by developing an algorithm that approximated them based on the most readily available data, precipitation and temperature.

The index has proven most effective in determining long-term drought, a matter of several months, but it is not as good with conditions over a matter of weeks. It uses a 0 as normal, and drought is shown in terms of negative numbers; for example, negative 2 is moderate drought, negative 3 is severe drought, and negative 4 is extreme drought. Palmer's algorithm also is used to describe wet spells, using corresponding positive numbers. Palmer also developed a formula for standardizing drought calculations for each individual location based on the variability of precipitation and temperature at that location. The Palmer index can therefore be applied to any site for which sufficient precipitation and temperature data is available.

Critics have complained that the utility of the Palmer index is weakened by the arbitrary nature of Palmer's algorithms, including the technique used for standardization. The Palmer index's inability to account for snow and frozen ground also is cited as a weakness.[3]

The Palmer index is widely used operationally, with Palmer maps published weekly by the United States Government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It also has been used by climatologists to standardize global long-term drought analysis. Global Palmer data sets have been developed based on instrumental records beginning in the 19th century.[4] In addition, dendrochronology has been used to generate estimated Palmer index values for North America for the past 2000 years, allowing analysis of long term drought trends.[5] It has also been used as a means of explaining the late Bronze Age collapse.

In the US, regional Palmer maps are featured on the cable channel Weatherscan.

good idea for a toll but we have that problem
It is being misused by the climate debate

I would have to recommend construction and testing of a new algorithm

As for drought again we have numbers we can use

The Dust Bowl -us history

Has ton of economic data and crop issues all present


Not to mention we have hundreds of countries and cities out in desserts


Plus recent events in California
Its little drought it had and the measurable effects on the mrket

More then suffecient data for

Construction of  formulas

Areas to test from history


Before we even get to Late bronze age collapse

Once tested and kept out of Liberal and conservative hands we can then use on the situation in history
We know

A + b =C

We have A

and we have C

Allows us to test B

[guohua]

Great Thread, i do hope others contribute.

I agree, there did appear to be a decline in sea power for many years.

Right about the time China discovered the America's on the west coast.

[Armonica_Templar]

Great Thread, i do hope others contribute.

I agree, there did appear to be a decline in sea power for many years.

Right about the time China discovered the America's on the west coast.

thank you


It will be added if my insane A$$ can remember


It is an important part of about the LBAC
China's history will have to be covered

[Armonica_Templar]

long one

[Armonica_Templar]

Mapping Drought with Satillite remote sensing and land surface modelling

its a PDF of a slide

Pretty much outlines using modern tools to get data

What is of note

tools for calculating data exist

Substitutions for info sources can be estimated
Estimations can be quietly tested against other historical data..

[DuckforcoveR]

WOW

What a PHENOMENAL thread @"Armonica_Templar"  

There is enough material here to keep a person busy for DAYS. And GOOD material, not just crappy links and videos. It's absolutely amazing how the collapse of something that doesn't seem to be that important (in the grand scheme of things) can be the literal linchpin of society and civilization as we know it. 

Incredible read, I'm going to be busy soaking all of this up!

Thank you!

[Armonica_Templar]

WOW

What a PHENOMENAL thread @"Armonica_Templar"  

There is enough material here to keep a person busy for DAYS. And GOOD material, not just crappy links and videos. It's absolutely amazing how the collapse of something that doesn't seem to be that important (in the grand scheme of things) can be the literal linchpin of society and civilization as we know it. 

Incredible read, I'm going to be busy soaking all of this up!

Thank you!

Thank you

This all came from a side conversation I cant remember the details over from yesterday

[727Sky]

I am a big fan of Graham Hancock's theory on the comet impact which up ended any and all civilizations progress around the times  of the thread.

[Armonica_Templar]

from the OP First post

Cultural[edit]
Ironworking[edit]
The Bronze Age collapse may be seen in the context of a technological history that saw the slow, comparatively continuous spread of ironworking technology in the region, beginning with precocious iron-working in the present Bulgaria and Romania in the 13th and 12th centuries BC.[28]

Leonard R. Palmer suggested that iron, superior to bronze for weapons manufacture, was in more plentiful supply and so allowed larger armies of iron users to overwhelm the smaller armies of maryannu chariotry, which used bronze.[29]

This one is misapplied into Cultural

Lets walks through with a lazy scroll

Ever played Civilization Series

Good your qualified for this conversation

Ever served in the US military 

Good your qualified for this conversation

Ever work in Retail

Good your qualified for this conversation

to be blunt the logic is quiet clear to any blue collar worker in the world
Management and officers are trained directly so they are qualified..

UnCommon sense here

iron working technology is the same as every other technology

It has prerequisites
defined as, you got to have other s$%^ for it to exist

got to have means to transport the S#$%
got to have people to process the S#$%
got to have people smart enough to make S#$%

on and on
(retail chains, resturants, and amazon are perfect modern examples for this comparison)

What this is trying to say is a group of people spent the time and resources to arm this?

Egyptian records describe two mass attacks
Several civilizations fell, as in poof bye!

Yet they cant find the group
 two fully armed deady armies, armed to the teeth
unstoppable ect..

Egyptians pull a washington in effect..

The main problem is this little theory of tech advances points to something they do not want to say
mining operations and smelting

who had it at the time and who did not

Iron represent an advancement yes, but it takes effort to arm the people
Where did the arming come from

The egyptians mentioned a confederation of nation/states

where is the evidence of the manufacturing

At the time period to put together these waves requires oddly enough pyramid level devotion of resources




Iron age

Iron Age
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from Iron age)
[/url]
This article is about the historical/archaeological period known as the Iron Age. For the mythological Iron Age, see Ages of Man.
The Iron Age is an archaeological era, referring to a period of time in the prehistory and protohistory of the Old World (Afro-Eurasia) when the dominant toolmaking material was iron. It is commonly preceded by the Bronze Age in Europe and Asia and the Stone Age in Africa, with exceptions. Meteoric iron has been used by humans since at least 3200 BC. Ancient iron production did not become widespread until the ability to smelt iron ore, remove impurities and regulate the amount of carbon in the alloy were developed. The start of the Iron Age proper is considered by many to fall between around 1200 BC and 600 BC, depending on the region.
Iron Age
This box: 

• view
  
• talk
  
• edit
  

↑ Bronze Age
Late Bronze Age collapse
Ancient Near East (1200 BC – 500 BC)
Anatolia Assyria, Caucasus, Cyprus, Egypt, Levant (Israel and Judah), Neo-Babylonian Empire, Persia
India (1200 BC – 200 BC)
Painted Grey WareNorthern Black Polished WareMaurya EmpireAnuradhapura Kingdom
Europe (1200 BC – 1 BC)
AegeanNovocherkasskHallstatt CLa Tène CVillanovan CBritish Iron AgeThraciansDacia, Transylvania, Southeastern EuropeGreece, RomeScandinavia (600 BC - Germanic Iron Age (800 AD))
China (600 BC – 200 BC)
Spring and Autumn period and Warring States period
Korea (400 BC – 400 AD)
Late Gojoseon periodProto-Three Kingdoms period
Japan (100 BC – 300 AD)
Yayoi period
Philippines (1000 BC – 200 AD)
Jade CultureSa Huyun culture
Vietnam (1000 BC – 630 AD)
Sa Huỳnh cultureÓc Eo culture
Sub-Saharan Africa (1000 BC – 800 AD)
NokDjenné-DjennoIgbo-Ukwu
Axial Age
Classical antiquity
Zhou dynasty
Vedic period
Ancient barangays
Alphabetic writing
Metallurgy
↓ Ancient history
HistoriographyGreek, Roman, Chinese, Islamic


Contents
  [hide] 

• 1Chronology
  
• 2History
  • 2.1Near East
    • 2.1.1Near East timeline
      
    • 2.1.2Ancient Near East
      
    
    
  • 2.2Europe
    
  • 2.3Asia
    • 2.3.1Central Asia
      
    • 2.3.2North Asia
      
    • 2.3.3Indian subcontinent
      • 2.3.3.1India timeline
        
      • 2.3.3.2Sri Lanka
        
      
      
    • 2.3.4Southeast Asia
      
    • 2.3.5East Asia
      • 2.3.5.1East Asia timeline
        
      • 2.3.5.2China
        
      • 2.3.5.3Korea
        
      • 2.3.5.4Japan
        
    
    
  • 2.4Africa
    • 2.4.1Africa timeline
      
    • 2.4.2Ancient Egypt
      
    • 2.4.3Sub-Saharan
      
  
  
• 3Image gallery
  
• 4See also
  
• 5Further reading
  
• 6References
  
• 7External links
  

Chronology[edit]

Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details
The earliest known iron artifacts are nine small beads dated to 3200 BC, which were found in burials at Gerzeh, Lower Egypt. They have been identified as meteoric iron shaped by careful hammering.[1] Meteoric iron, a characteristic iron–nickel alloy, was used by various ancient peoples thousands of years before the Iron Age. Such iron, being in its native metallic state, required no smelting of ores.[2][3]

Smelted iron appears sporadically in the archeological record from the middle Bronze Age. While terrestrial iron is naturally abundant, its high melting point of 1,538 °C (2,800 °F) placed it out of reach of common use until the end of the second millennium BC. Tin's low melting point of 231.9 °C (449.4 °F) and copper's relatively moderate melting point of 1,085 °C (1,985 °F) placed them within the capabilities of the Neolithic pottery kilns, which date back to 6000 BC and were able to produce temperatures greater than 900 °C (1,650 °F).[4] In addition to specially designed furnaces, ancient iron production needed to develop complex procedures for the removal of impurities, for regulating the admixture of carbon in combination with hot-working to achieve a useful balance of hardness and strength (steel), and for adding alloys to prevent rust; see Ferrous metallurgy.

The earliest tentative evidence for iron-making is a small number of iron fragments with the appropriate amounts of carbon admixture, found in the Proto-Hittite layers at Kaman-Kalehöyük and dated to 2200–2000 BC. Akanuma (2008) concludes that "The combination of carbon dating, archaeological context, and archaeometallurgical examination indicates that it is likely that the use of ironware made of steel had already begun in the third millennium BC in Central Anatolia".[5] Souckova-Siegolová (2001) shows that iron implements were made in Central Anatolia in very limited quantities around 1800 BC and were in general use by elites, though not by commoners, during the New Hittite Empire (∼1400–1200 BC).[6]

Similarly, recent archaeological remains of iron working in the Ganges Valley in India have been tentatively dated to 1800 BC. Tewari (2003) concludes that "knowledge of iron smelting and manufacturing of iron artifacts was well known in the Eastern Vindhyas and iron had been in use in the Central Ganga Plain, at least from the early second millennium BC".[7] By the Middle Bronze Age, increasing numbers of smelted iron objects (distinguishable from meteoric iron by the lack of nickel in the product) appeared in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. African sites are turning up dates as early as 1200 BC.[8][9][10]

Modern archaeological evidence identifies the start of large-scale iron production in around 1200 BC, marking the end of the Bronze Age. Between 1200 BC and 1000 BC, diffusion in the understanding of iron metallurgy and use of iron objects was fast and far-flung. Anthony Snodgrass[11][12] suggests that a shortage of tin, as a part of the Bronze Age Collapse and trade disruptions in the Mediterranean around 1300 BC, forced metalworkers to seek an alternative to bronze. As evidence, many bronze implements were recycled into weapons during this time. More widespread use of iron led to improved steel-making technology at lower cost. Thus, even when tin became available again, iron was cheaper, stronger, and lighter, and forged iron implements superseded cast bronze tools permanently.[13]

Maiden Castle in England. There are over 2,000 Iron Age hillforts known in Britain.

Increasingly, the Iron Age in Europe is being seen as a part of the Bronze Age collapse in the ancient Near East, in ancient India (with the post-Rigvedic Vedic civilization), ancient Iran, and ancient Greece (with the Greek Dark Ages). In other regions of Europe, the Iron Age began in the 8th century BC in Central Europe and the 6th century BC in Northern Europe. The Near Eastern Iron Age is divided into two subsections, Iron I and Iron II. Iron I (1200–1000 BC) illustrates both continuity and discontinuity with the previous Late Bronze Age. There is no definitive cultural break between the 13th and 12th century BC throughout the entire region, although certain new features in the hill country, Transjordan, and coastal region may suggest the appearance of the Aramaean and Sea People groups. There is evidence, however, that shows strong continuity with Bronze Age culture, although as one moves later into Iron I the culture begins to diverge more significantly from that of the late 2nd millennium.

History[edit]

During the Iron Age, the best tools and weapons were made from steel, particularly alloys which were produced with a carbon content between approximately 0.30% and 1.2% by weight.[citation needed] Alloys with less carbon than this, such as wrought iron, cannot be heat treated to a significant degree and will consequently be of low hardness, while a higher carbon content creates an extremely hard but brittle material that cannot be annealed, tempered, or otherwise softened. Steel weapons and tools were nearly the same weight as those of bronze, but stronger. However, steel was difficult to produce with the methods available, and alloys that were easier to make, such as wrought iron, were more common in lower-priced goods. Many techniques have been used to create steel; Mediterranean ones differ dramatically from African ones, for example. Sometimes the final product is all steel, sometimes techniques like case-hardening or forge welding were used to make cutting edges stronger.

Near East[edit]

Main article: Ancient Near East
In the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, the initial use of iron reaches far back, to perhaps 3000 BC.[14] One of the earliest smelted iron artifacts known was a dagger with an iron blade found in a Hattic tomb in Anatolia, dating from 2500 BC.[15] The widespread use of iron weapons which replaced bronze weapons rapidly disseminated throughout the Near East (North Africa, southwest Asia) by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC.

Finds of Iron

Early examples and distribution of non-precious metal finds.[16]
Date
Crete
Aegean
Greece
Cyprus
Total
Anatolia
Grand total
1300–1200 BC
5
2
9
0
16
33
49
1200–1100 BC
1
2
8
26
37
N.A.
37
1100–1000 BC
13
3
31
33
80
N.A.
80
1000–900 BC
37+
30
115
29
211
N.A.
211
Total Bronze Age
5
2
9
0
16
33
49
Total Iron Age
51
35
163
88
328
N.A.
328
 
 
Near East timeline[edit]

Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details         Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age      Historic Iron Age
Ancient Near East[edit]

Main article: Ancient Near East
The Iron Age in the Ancient Near East is believed to have begun with the discovery of iron smelting and smithing techniques in Anatolia or the Caucasus and Balkans in the late 2nd millennium BC (c. 1300 BC).[17] However, this theory has been challenged by the emergence of those placing the transition in price and availability issues rather than the development of technology on its own. The earliest bloomery smelting of iron is found at Tell Hammeh, Jordan around 930 BC (14C dating).

The development of iron smelting was once attributed to the Hittites of Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age. It was believed that they maintained a monopoly on ironworking, and that their empire had been based on that advantage.[18] Accordingly, the invading Sea Peoples were responsible for spreading the knowledge through that region. This theory is no longer held in the common current thought of the majority of scholarship,[18] since there is no archaeological evidence of the alleged Hittite monopoly. While there are some iron objects from Bronze Age Anatolia, the number is comparable to iron objects found in Egypt and other places of the same time period; and only a small number of these objects are weapons.[19] As part of the Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age, the Bronze Age collapse saw the slow, comparatively continuous spread of iron-working technology in the region.

Europe[edit]
Main article: Iron Age Europe
In Europe, the use of iron covers the last years of the prehistoric period and the early years of the historic period.[14] The regional Iron Age may be defined as including the last stages of the prehistoric period and the first of the proto-historic periods.[20] Iron working was introduced to Europe in the late 11th century BC,[21] probably from the Caucasus, and slowly spread northwards and westwards over the succeeding 500 years. The widespread use of the technology of iron was implemented in Europe simultaneously with Asia.[22]

• 
  Archaeological artifact from the work developed in the area of Citânia de Briteiros
   
  
• 
  Cross or cruzado in Citânia de Briteiros
   
  
• 
  Informative plaque of the proto-historic settlement of Citânia de Briteiros
   
  
• 
  Another artifact from Citânia de Briteiros
   
  
• 
  A pedra formosa
  

The Iron Age in Europe is characterized by an elaboration of designs in weapons, implements, and utensils.[14] These are no longer cast but hammered into shape, and decoration is elaborate curvilinear rather than simple rectilinear; the forms and character of the ornamentation of the northern European weapons resembles in some respects Roman arms, while in other respects they are peculiar and evidently representative of northern art.

Asia[edit]
The widespread use of the technology of iron was implemented in Asia simultaneously with Europe.[22]

Central Asia[edit]
The Iron Age in Central Asia began when iron objects appear among the Indo-European Saka in present-day Xinjiang between the 10th century BC and the 7th century BC, such as those found at the cemetery site of Chawuhukou.[23]

North Asia[edit]
The Pazyryk culture is an Iron Age archaeological culture (ca. 6th to 3rd centuries BC) identified by excavated artifacts and mummified humans found in the Siberian permafrostin the Altay Mountains.
Indian subcontinent[edit]

Main article: Iron Age India
The history of metallurgy in the Indian subcontinent began during the 2nd millennium BC. Archaeological sites in India, such as Malhar, Dadupur, Raja Nala Ka Tila and Lahuradewa in present-day Uttar Pradesh show iron implements in the period 1800–1200 BC.[7] Archaeological excavations in Hyderabad show an Iron Age burial site.[24] Rakesh Tewari[25] believes that around the beginning of the Indian Iron Age (13th century BC), iron smelting was widely practiced in India. Such use suggests that the date of the technology's inception may be around the 16th century BC.[7]

The beginning of the 1st millennium BC saw extensive developments in iron metallurgy in India. Technological advancement and mastery of iron metallurgy was achieved during this period of peaceful settlements. One iron working centre in east India has been dated to the first millennium BC.[26] In Southern India (present day Mysore) iron appeared as early as 12th to 11th centuries BC; these developments were too early for any significant close contact with the northwest of the country.[26] The Indian Upanishads mention metallurgy.[27] and the Indian Mauryan period saw advances in metallurgy.[28] As early as 300 BC, certainly by AD 200, high quality steel was produced in southern India, by what would later be called the crucible technique. In this system, high-purity wrought iron, charcoal, and glass were mixed in a crucible and heated until the iron melted and absorbed the carbon.[29]

India timeline[edit]

Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details         Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age      Historic Iron Age

Sri Lanka[edit]
The protohistoric Early Iron Age in Sri Lanka lasted from 1000 BC to 600 BC. how ever evidence of Iron usage was found in Excavation of a Protohistoric Canoe burial Site in Haldummulla[30] and has been dated to 2400 BCE. Radiocarbon evidence has been collected from Anuradhapura and Aligala shelter in Sigiriya.[31][32][33][34] The Anuradhapura settlement is recorded to extend 10 ha (25 acres) by 800 BC and grew to 50 ha (120 acres) by 700–600 BC to become a town.[35] The skeletal remains of an Early Iron Age chief were excavated in Anaikoddai, Jaffna. The name 'Ko Veta' is engraved in Brahmi script on a seal buried with the skeleton and is assigned by the excavators to the 3rd century BC. Ko, meaning "King" in Tamil, is comparable to such names as Ko Atan and Ko Putivira occurring in contemporary Brahmi inscriptions in south India.[36] It is also speculated that Early Iron Age sites may exist in Kandarodai, Matota, Pilapitiya and Tissamaharama.[37]

Southeast Asia[edit]

lingling-o earrings from Luzon, Philippines

Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details     Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age      Historic Iron Age
Archaeology in Thailand at sites Ban Don Ta Phet and Khao Sam Kaeo yielding metallic, stone, and glass artifacts stylistically associated with the Indian subcontinent suggest Indianization of Southeast Asia beginning in the 4th to 2nd centuries BC during the late Iron Age.[38]
In Philippines and Vietnam the Sa Huyun culture showed evidence of an extensive trade network. Sa Huynh beads were made from glass, carnelian, agate, olivine, zircon, gold and garnet; most of these materials were not local to the region, and were most likely imported. Han-Dynasty-style bronze mirrors were also found in Sa Huynh sites. Conversely, Sa Huynh produced ear ornaments have been found in archaeological sites in Central Thailand, Taiwan (Orchid Island).[39]:211–217

East Asia[edit]
East Asia timeline[edit]

Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details         Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age      Historic Iron Age
China[edit]

Main article: Iron Age China
In China, Chinese bronze inscriptions are found around 1200 BC. The development of iron metallurgy was known by the 9th century BC.[40][41] The large seal script is identified with a group of characters from a book entitled Shĭ Zhoù Piān (c. 800 BC). Iron metallurgy reached the Yangzi Valley toward the end of the 6th century BC.[42] The few objects were found at Changsha and Nanjing. The mortuary evidence suggests that the initial use of iron in Lingnan belongs to the mid-to-late Warring States period (from about 350 BC). Important non-precious husi style metal finds include Iron tools found at the tomb at Guwei-cun of the 4th century BC.[43]

The techniques used in Lingnan are a combination of bivalve moulds of distinct southern tradition and the incorporation of piece mould technology from the Zhongyuan. The products of the combination of these two periods are bells, vessels, weapons and ornaments and the sophisticated cast.

An Iron Age culture of the Tibetan Plateau has tentatively been associated with the Zhang Zhung culture described in early Tibetan writings.

Korea[edit]
Main article: Proto–Three Kingdoms of Korea

Silla chest and neck armour from National Museum of Korea

Iron objects were introduced to the Korean peninsula through trade with chiefdoms and state-level societies in the Yellow Sea area in the 4th century BC, just at the end of the Warring States Period but before the Western Han Dynasty began.[44][45] Yoon proposes that iron was first introduced to chiefdoms located along North Korean river valleys that flow into the Yellow Sea such as the Cheongcheon and Taedong Rivers.[46] Iron production quickly followed in the 2nd century BC, and iron implements came to be used by farmers by the 1st century in southern Korea.[44] The earliest known cast-iron axes in southern Korea are found in the Geum River basin. The time that iron production begins is the same time that complex chiefdoms of Proto-historic Korea emerged. The complex chiefdoms were the precursors of early states such as Silla, Baekje, Goguryeo, and Gaya[45][47] Iron ingots were an important mortuary item and indicated the wealth or prestige of the deceased in this period.[48]

Japan[edit]
Main articles: Yayoi period and Kofun period

Iron items, such as tools, weapons, and decorative objects, are postulated to have entered Japan during the late Yayoi period (c. 300 BC–AD 300)[49] or the succeeding Kofun period (c. AD 250–538), most likely through contacts with the Korean Peninsula and China.

Distinguishing characteristics of the Yayoi period include the appearance of new pottery styles and the start of intensive rice agriculture in paddy fields. Yayoi culture flourished in a geographic area from southern Kyūshū to northern Honshū. The Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes referred to collectively as the Yamato period; The word kofun is Japanese for the type of burial moundsdating from that era.

Africa[edit]
In Africa, where there was no continent-wide universal Bronze Age, the use of iron succeeded immediately the use of stone.[14] Metallurgy was characterized by the absence of a Bronze Age, and the transition from "stone to steel" in tool substances. Early evidence for iron technology in Sub-Saharan Africa can be found at sites such as KM2 and KM3 in northwest Tanzania. Nubia was one of the relatively few places in Africa to have a sustained Bronze Age along with Egypt and much of the rest of North Africa.

Africa timeline[edit]

Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details         Prehistoric (or Proto-historic) Iron Age      Historic Iron Age

Ancient Egypt[edit]
In the Black Pyramid of Abusir, dating before 2000 BC, Gaston Maspero found some pieces of iron. In the funeral text of Pepi I, the metal is mentioned.[14] A sword bearing the name of pharaoh Merneptah as well as a battle axe with an iron blade and gold-decorated bronze shaft were both found in the excavation of Ugarit.[50] A dagger with an iron blade found in Tutankhamun's tomb, 13th century BC, was recently examined and found to be of meteoric origin.[51][52][53]

Iron metal is singularly scarce in collections of Egyptian antiquities. Bronze remained the primary material there until the conquest by Assyria. The explanation of this would seem to lie in the fact that the relics are in most cases the paraphernalia of tombs, the funeral vessels and vases, and iron being considered an impure metal by the ancient Egyptians it was never used in their manufacture of these or for any religious purposes. It was attributed to Seth, the spirit of evil who according to Egyptian tradition governed the central deserts of Africa.[14]

Sub-Saharan[edit]
See also: Nok culture, Urewe, and Bantu expansion

Iron Age finds in East and Southern Africa, corresponding to the early 1st millennium Bantu expansion

Very early copper and bronze working sites in [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger]Niger may date to as early as 1500 BC. There is also evidence of iron metallurgy in Termit, Niger from around this period.[8][54] In Central Africa, iron working may have been practiced as early as the 3rd millennium BC.[55] It was once believed that iron and copper working in Sub-Saharan Africa spread in conjunction with the Bantu expansion, from the Cameroon region to the African Great Lakes in the 3rd century BC, reaching the Cape around AD 400.[8]

Sub-Saharan Africa has produced very early instances of carbon steel found to be in production around the 1st century AD in northwest Tanzania, based on complex preheating principles. These discoveries, according to Schmidt and Avery (archaeologists credited with the discovery) are significant for the history of metallurgy.[size=x-small][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron

TBC

[Armonica_Templar]

Continued....

Well the mining may be more modern but the techniques

Are measurable in cost of labor



To answer this part..

The history department needs to go over to the accounting department.. And request an audit of the various kingdoms finances based on surviving data..

Financial Audit

Financial audit

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[/url]

[hide]

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. (May 2011)
The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (December 2010)
Accounting

• Historical cost
  
• Constant purchasing power
  
• Management
  
• Tax
  

Major types[show]
Key concepts[show]
Selected accounts[show]
Accounting standards[show]
Financial statements[show]
Bookkeeping[show]
Auditing[show]
People and organizations[show]
Development[show]
 Business portal

• v
  
• t
  
• e
  

A financial audit is conducted to provide an opinion whether "financial statements" (the information being verified) are stated in accordance with specified criteria. Normally, the criteria are international accounting standards, although auditors may conduct audits of financial statements prepared using the cash basis or some other basis of accounting appropriate for the organisation. In providing an opinion whether financial statements are fairly stated in accordance with accounting standards, the auditor gathers evidence to determine whether the statements contain material errors or other misstatements.[1]

The audit opinion is intended to provide reasonable assurance, but not absolute assurance, that the financial statements are presented fairly, in all material respects, and/or give a true and fair view in accordance with the financial reporting framework. The purpose of an audit is to provide an objective independent examination of the financial statements, which increases the value and credibility of the financial statements produced by management, thus increase user confidence in the financial statement, reduce investor risk and consequently reduce the cost of capital of the preparer of the financial statements.[2]

In accordance with the US GAAP, auditors must release an opinion of the overall financial statements in the auditor's report. Auditors can release three types of statements other than an unqualified/unmodified opinion. The unqualified auditor's opinion is the opinion that the financial statements are presented fairly. A qualified opinion is that the financial statements are presented fairly in all material respects in accordance with US GAAP, except for a material misstatement that does not however pervasively affect the user's ability to rely on the financial statements. A qualified opinion can also be issued for a scope limitation that is of limited significance. Further the auditor can instead issue a disclaimer, because there is insufficient and appropriate evidence to form an opinion or because of lack of independence. In a disclaimer the auditor explains the reasons for withholding an opinion and explicitly indicates that no opinion is expressed. Finally, an adverse audit opinion is issued when the financial statements do not present fairly due to departure from US GAAP and the departure materially affects the financial statements overall. In an adverse auditor's report the auditor must explain the nature and size of the misstatement and must state the opinion that the financial statements do not present fairly in accordance with US GAAP.[3]

Financial audits are typically performed by firms of practicing accountants who are experts in financial reporting. The financial audit is one of many assurance functions provided by accounting firms. Many organizations separately employ or hire internal auditors, who do not attest to financial reports but focus mainly on the internal controls of the organization. External auditors may choose to place limited reliance on the work of internal auditors. Auditing promotes transparency and accuracy in the financial disclosures made by an organization, therefore would likely reduce such corporations concealmeant of unscrupulous dealings.[4]

Internationally, the International Standards on Auditing (ISA) issued by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) is considered as the benchmark for audit process. Almost all jurisdictions require auditors to follow the ISA or a local variation of the ISA.

Contents
  [hide] 

• 1Audit overview
  
• 2The Big Four
  
• 3Costs
  
• 4History
  • 4.1Audit of government expenditure
    
• 5Governance and oversight
  
• 6Stages of an audit
  • 6.1Phase I Plan and Design an Audit Approach
    
  • 6.2Phase II Perform Test of Controls and Substantive Test of Transactions
    
  • 6.3Phase III Perform Analytical Procedures and Tests of Details of Balances
    
  • 6.4Phase IV Complete the Audit and Issue an Audit Report
    
• 7Responsibilities of an Auditor
  
• 8Commercial relationships versus objectivity
  
• 9Related qualifications
  
• 10See also
  
• 11References
  

Audit overview[edit]
Financial audits exist to add credibility to the implied assertion by an organisation's management that its financial statements fairly represent the organisation's position and performance to the firm's stakeholders. The principal stakeholders of a company are typically its shareholders, but other parties such as tax authorities, banks, regulators, suppliers, customers and employees may also have an interest in knowing that the financial statements are presented fairly, in all material aspects. An audit is not designed to provide absolute assurance, being based on sampling and not the testing of all transactions and balances; rather it is designed to reduce the risk of a material financial statement misstatement whether caused by fraud or error. A misstatement is defined in ISA 450 as an error, omitted disclosure or inappropriate accounting policy. "Material" is an error or omission that would affect the users decision. Audits exist because they add value through easing the cost of information asymmetry and reducing information risk, not because they are required by law (note: audits are obligatory in many EU-member states and in many jurisdictions are obligatory for companies listed on public stock exchanges). For collection and accumulation of audit evidence, certain methods and means generally adopted by auditors are:[5]

1. Posting checking
   
2. Testing the existence and effectiveness of management controls that prevent financial statement misstatement
   
3. Casting checking
   
4. Physical examination and count
   
5. Confirmation
   
6. Inquiry
   
7. Observation
   
8. inspection
   
9. Year-end scrutiny
   
10. Re-computation
    
11. Tracing in subsequent period
    
12. Bank reconciliation
    
13. Vouching
    
14. Verification of existence, ownership, title and value of assets and determination of the extent and nature of liabilities
    

The Big Four[edit]
The Big Four are the four largest international professional services networks, offering audit, assurance, tax, consulting, advisory, actuarial, corporate finance, and legal services. They handle the vast majority of audits for publicly traded companies as well as many private companies, creating an oligopoly in auditing large companies. It is reported that the Big Four audit 99% of the companies in the FTSE 100, and 96% of the companies in the FTSE 250 Index, an index of the leading mid-cap listing companies.[6] The Big Four firms are shown below, with their latest publicly available data. None of the Big Four firms is a single firm; rather, they are professional services networks. Each is a network of firms, owned and managed independently, which have entered into agreements with other member firms in the network to share a common name, brand and quality standards. Each network has established an entity to co-ordinate the activities of the network. In one case (KPMG), the co-ordinating entity is Swiss, and in three cases (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young) the co-ordinating entity is a UK limited company. Those entities do not themselves perform external professional services, and do not own or control the member firms. They are similar to law firm networks found in the legal profession. In many cases each member firm practises in a single country, and is structured to comply with the regulatory environment in that country. In 2007 KPMG announced a merger of four member firms (in the United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein) to form a single firm. Ernst & Young also includes separate legal entities which manage three of its four areas: Americas, EMEIA (Europe, The Middle East, India and Africa), and Asia-Pacific. (Note: the Japan area does not have a separate area management entity). These firms coordinate services performed by local firms within their respective areas but do not perform services or hold ownership in the local entities.[7] This group was once known as the "Big Eight", and was reduced to the "Big Six" and then "Big Five" by a series of mergers. The Big Five became the Big Four after the demise of Arthur Andersen in 2002, following its involvement in the Enron scandal.

Costs[edit]
Costs of audit services can vary greatly dependent upon the nature of the entity, its transactions, industry, the condition of the financial records and financial statements, and the fee rates of the CPA firm.[8][9] A commercial decision such as the setting of audit fees is handled by companies and their auditors. Directors are responsible for setting the overall fee as well as the audit committee. The fees are set at a level that could not lead to audit quality being compromised.[10]

History[edit]
Audit of government expenditure[edit]

National Audit Office Logo (United Kingdom)[11]

The earliest surviving mention of a public official charged with auditing government expenditure is a reference to the Auditor of the Exchequer in England in 1314. The Auditors of the Imprest were established under Queen Elizabeth I in 1559 with formal responsibility for auditing Exchequer payments. This system gradually lapsed and in 1780, Commissioners for Auditing the Public Accounts were appointed by statute. From 1834, the Commissioners worked in tandem with the Comptroller of the Exchequer, who was charged with controlling the issuance of funds to the government.

As Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Ewart Gladstone initiated major reforms of public finance and Parliamentary accountability. His 1866 Exchequer and Audit Departments Act required all departments, for the first time, to produce annual accounts, known as appropriation accounts. The Act also established the position of Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) and an Exchequer and Audit Department (E&AD) to provide supporting staff from within the civil service. The C&AG was given two main functions – to authorise the issue of public money to government from the Bank of England, having satisfied himself that this was within the limits Parliament had voted – and to audit the accounts of all Government departments and report to Parliament accordingly.

Auditing of UK government expenditure is now carried out by the National Audit Office. The Australian National Audit Office conducts all financial statement audits for entities controlled by the Australian Government.[12]
Governance and oversight[edit]

Seal of the United StatesGovernment Accountability Office[13]

In the United States, the SEC has generally deferred to the accounting industry (acting through various organisations throughout the years) as to the accounting standards for financial reporting, and the U.S. Congress has deferred to the SEC.

This is also typically the case in other developed economies. In the UK, auditing guidelines are set by the institutes (including ACCA, ICAEW, ICAS and ICAI) of which auditing firms and individual auditors are members. While in Australia, the rules and professional code of ethics are set by The Institute of Chartered Accountants Australia (ICAA), CPA Australia (CPA) and The National Institute of Accountants (NIA).[14]

Accordingly, financial auditing standards and methods have tended to change significantly only after auditing failures. The most recent and familiar case is that of Enron. The company succeeded in hiding some important facts, such as off-book liabilities, from banks and shareholders.[15] Eventually, Enron filed for bankruptcy, and (as of 2006) is in the process of being dissolved. One result of this scandal was that Arthur Andersen, then one of the five largest accountancy firms worldwide, lost their ability to audit public companies, essentially killing off the firm.
A recent trend in audits (spurred on by such accounting scandals as Enron and Worldcom) has been an increased focus on internal control procedures, which aim to ensure the completeness, accuracy and validity of items in the accounts, and restricted access to financial systems. This emphasis on the internal control environment is now a mandatory part of the audit of SEC-listed companies, under the auditing standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) set up by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Many countries have government sponsored or mandated organizations who develop and maintain auditing standards, commonly referred to generally accepted auditing standards or GAAS. These standards prescribe different aspects of auditing such as the opinion, stages of an audit, and controls over work product (i.e., working papers).

Some oversight organisations require auditors and audit firms to undergo a third-party quality review periodically to ensure the applicable GAAS is followed.

Stages of an audit[edit]
The following are the stages of a typical audit:[1]

Phase I Plan and Design an Audit Approach[edit]

• Accept Client and Perform Initial Planning.
  
• Understand the Client’s Business and Industry.
  • What should auditors understand?[16]
    • The relevant industry, regulatory, and other external factors including the applicable financial reporting framework
      
    • The nature of the entity
      
    • The entity's selection and application of accounting policies
      
    • The entity's objectives and strategies, and the related business risks that may result in material misstatement of the financial statements
      
    • The measurement and review of the entity's financial performance
      
    • Internal control relevant to the audit
      
• Assess Client’s Business Risk
  
• Set Materiality and Assess Accepted Audit Risk (AAR) and Inherent Risk (IR).
  
• Understand Internal Control and Assess Control Risk (CR).
  
• Develop Overall Audit Plan and Audit Program
  

Phase II Perform Test of Controls and Substantive Test of Transactions[edit]

• Test of Control: if the auditor plans to reduce the determined control risk, then the auditor should perform the test of control, to assess the operating effectiveness of internal controls (e.g. authorisation of transactions, account reconciliations, segregation of duties) including IT General Controls. If internal controls are assessed as effective, this will reduce (but not entirely eliminate) the amount of 'substantive' work the auditor needs to do (see below).
  
• Substantive test of transactions: evaluate the client’s recording of transactions by verifying the monetary amounts of transactions, a process called substantive tests of transactions. For example, the auditor might use computer software to compare the unit selling price on duplicate sales invoices with an electronic file of approved prices as a test of the accuracy objective for sales transactions. Like the test of control in the preceding paragraph, this test satisfies the accuracy transaction-related audit objective for sales. For the sake of efficiency, auditors often perform tests of controls and substantive tests of transactions at the same time.
  
• Assess Likelihood of Misstatement in Financial Statement.
  

Notes:

• At this stage, if the auditor accept the CR that has been set at the phase I and does not want to reduce the controls risk, then the auditor may not perform test of control. If so, then the auditor perform substantive test of transactions.
  
• This test determines the amount of work to be performed i.e. substantive testing or test of details.[17]
  

Phase III Perform Analytical Procedures and Tests of Details of Balances[edit]

• where internal controls are strong, auditors typically rely more on Substantive Analytical Procedures (the comparison of sets of financial information, and financial with non-financial information, to see if the numbers 'make sense' and that unexpected movements can be explained)
  
• where internal controls are weak, auditors typically rely more on Substantive Tests of Detail of Balance (selecting a sample of items from the major account balances, and finding hard evidence (e.g. invoices, bank statements) for those items)
  

Notes:

• Some audits involve a 'hard close' or 'fast close' whereby certain substantive procedures can be performed before year-end. For example, if the year-end is 31 December, the hard close may provide the auditors with figures as at 30 November. The auditors would audit income/expense movements between 1 January and 30 November, so that after year end, it is only necessary for them to audit the December income/expense movements and 31 December balance sheet. In some countries and accountancy firms these are known as 'rollforward' procedures.
  

Phase IV Complete the Audit and Issue an Audit Report[edit]
After the auditor has completed all procedures for each audit objective and for each financial statement account and related disclosures, it is necessary to combine the information obtained to reach an overall conclusion as to whether the financial statements are fairly presented. This highly subjective process relies heavily on the auditor’s professional judgment. When the audit is completed, the CPA must issue an audit report to accompany the client’s published financial statements.
Responsibilities of an Auditor[edit]

Corporations Act 2001 requires the auditor to:

• Gives a true and fair view about whether the financial report complies with the accounting standards
  
• Conduct their audit in accordance with auditing standards
  
• Give the directors and auditor's independence declaration and meet independence requirements
  
• Report certain suspected contraventions to ASIC[10]
  

Commercial relationships versus objectivity[edit]
One of the major issues faced by private auditing firms is the need to provide independent auditing services while maintaining a business relationship with the audited company.

The auditing firm's responsibility to check and confirm the reliability of financial statements may be limited by pressure from the audited company, who pays the auditing firm for the service. The auditing firm's need to maintain a viable business through auditing revenue may be weighed against its duty to examine and verify the accuracy, relevancy, and completeness of the company's financial statements. This is done by auditor.

Numerous proposals are made to revise the current system to provide better economic incentives to auditors to perform the auditing function without having their commercial interests compromised by client relationships. Examples are more direct incentive compensation awards and financial statement insurance approaches. See, respectively, Incentive Systems to Promote Capital Market Gatekeeper Effectiveness[18] and Financial Statement Insurance.[19]

Related qualifications[edit]

• There are several related professional qualifications in the field of financial audit including Certified Internal Auditor, Certified General Accountant, Chartered Certified Accountant, Chartered Accountant and Certified Public Accountant.
  

These tools exist and with the proper people working with the historians
you can do the one thing they cant argue

Money trail

the people need one specialty

Forensic Accounting

Forensic accounting
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_accounting#p-search]

[hide]

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
This article's lead section may be too long for the length of the article. (December 2016)
This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. (December 2016)
Part of a series on
Forensic science

Physiological
[show]
Social
[show]
Criminalistics
[hide]

• Accounting
  
• Body identification
  
• Chemistry
  
• Facial reconstruction
  
• Fingerprint analysis
  
• Firearm examination
  
• Footwear evidence
  
• Forensic arts
  
• Profiling
  
• Gloveprint analysis
  
• Palmprint analysis
  
• Questioned document examination
  
• Vein matching
  

Digital forensics
[show]
Related disciplines
[show]
Related articles
[show]

• Outline
  
• Category
  

• v
  
• t
  
• e
  

Accounting

• Historical cost
  
• Constant purchasing power
  
• Management
  
• Tax
  

Major types[show]
Key concepts[show]
Selected accounts[show]
Accounting standards[show]
Financial statements[show]
Bookkeeping[show]
Auditing[show]
People and organizations[show]
Development[show]
 Business portal

• v
  
• t
  
• e
  

Forensic accounting, forensic accountancy or financial forensics is the specialty practice area of accounting that describes engagements that result from actual or anticipated disputes or litigation. "Forensic" means "suitable for use in a court of law", and it is to that standard and potential outcome that forensic accountants generally have to work. Forensic accountants, also referred to as forensic auditors or investigative auditors, often have to give expert evidence at the eventual trial.[1] All of the larger accounting firms, as well as many medium-sized and boutique firms and various police and government agencies have specialist forensic accounting departments. Within these groups, there may be further sub-specializations: some forensic accountants may, for example, just specialize in insurance claims, personal injury claims, fraud, anti-money-laundering, construction,[2] or royalty audits.[3]

Financial forensic engagements may fall into several categories. For example:

• Economic damages calculations, whether suffered through tort or breach of contract;
  
• Post-acquisition disputes such as earnouts or breaches of warranties;
  
• Bankruptcy, insolvency, and reorganization;
  
• Securities fraud;
  
• Tax fraud;
  
• Money laundering;
  
• Business valuation; and
  
• Computer forensics/e-discovery.
  

Forensic accountants often assist in professional negligence claims where they are assessing and commenting on the work of other professionals. Forensic accountants are also engaged in marital and family law of analyzing lifestyle for spousal support purposes, determining income available for child support and equitable distribution.

Engagements relating to criminal matters typically arise in the aftermath of fraud. They frequently involve the assessment of accounting systems and accounts presentation—in essence assessing if the numbers reflect reality.

Some forensic accountants specialize in forensic analytics which is the procurement and analysis of electronic data to reconstruct, detect, or otherwise support a claim of financial fraud. The main steps in forensic analytics are (a) data collection, (b) data preparation, © data analysis, and (d) reporting. For example, forensic analytics may be used to review an employee's purchasing card activity to assess whether any of the purchases were diverted or divertible for personal use.[4]

Contents
  [hide] 

• 1Forensic accountants
  
• 2See also
  
• 3References
  
• 4External links
  

Forensic accountants[edit]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2016)(Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Main article: Forensic accountant
Forensic accountants, investigative accountants or expert accountants may be involved in recovering proceeds of crime and in relation to confiscation proceedings concerning actual or assumed proceeds of crime or money laundering. In the United Kingdom, relevant legislation is contained in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Forensic accountants typically hold the following qualifications; Certified Forensic Accounting Professional [Certified Forensic Auditors] (CFA - England & Wales) granted by the Forensic Auditors Certification Board of England and Wales (FACB), Certified Fraud Examiners (CFE - US / International),Certificate Course on Forensic Accounting and Fraud Detection (FAFD) by Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), Certified Public Accountants (CPA - US) with AICPA's [Certified in Financial Forensics est. 2008] (CFF) Credentials, Chartered Accountants (CA - Canada), Certified Management Accountants (CMA - Canada), Chartered Professional Accountants (CPA - Canada)), Chartered Certified Accountants (CCA - UK), or Certified Forensic Investigation Professionals (CFIP).

In India there is a separate breed of forensic accountants called Certified Forensic Accounting Professionals.[5]

The Certified Forensic Accountant (CRFAC) program from the American Board of Forensic Accounting assesses Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) knowledge and competence in professional forensic accounting services in a multitude of areas. Forensic accountants may be involved in both litigation support (providing assistance on a given case, primarily related to the calculation or estimation of economic damages and related issues) and investigative accounting (looking into illegal activities). The American Board of Forensic Accounting was established in 1993.

In 2016, the Forensic Auditors Certification Board (FACB) of England and Wales was established by the major forensic auditing and accounting bodies from across the world with its registered address in London. FACB is a professional bodies membership body comprising the International Institute of Certified Forensic Accountants (IICFA) of USA, Institute of Forensic Auditors of Zimbabwe (IFA), Institute of Forensic Accountants of Pakistan (IFAP), Institute of Certified Forensic Accountants (ICFA) of USA and Canada and the Institute of Forensic Accountants of Nigeria (IFA). FACB plays several roles and one the roles is standardization of the examination and certification of forensic auditors globally. Forensic auditors and accountants sit for one examination that is set by FACB and upon passing and meeting all the professional requirements, are awarded the credential, Certified Forensic Auditor (CFA) or the Registered Forensic Auditor (RFA) for practitioners who intend to go into public practice. All certification is renewed on an annual basis. Apart from practitioners certification, FACB is an oversight body which accredits prospective member organization before admission as part of quality checks. Persons with the FACB credential can practice as forensic auditors on a global scale.
Large accounting firms often have a forensic accounting department.[6]

Forensic accounting and fraud investigation methodologies are different than internal auditing. Thus forensic accounting services and practice should be handled by forensic accounting experts, not by internal auditing experts. Forensic accountants may appear on the crime scene a little later than fraud auditors, but their major contribution is in translating complex financial transactions and numerical data into terms that ordinary laypersons can understand. That is necessary because if the fraud comes to trial, the jury will be made up of ordinary laypersons. On the other hand, internal auditors move on checklists that may not surface the evidence that the jury or regulatory bodies look for. The fieldwork may carry out legal risks if internal auditing checklists are employed instead asking to a forensic accountant and may result serious consultant malpractice risks.

Forensic accountants utilize an understanding of economic theories, business information, financial reporting systems, accounting and auditing standards and procedures, data management & electronic discovery, data analysis techniques for fraud detection, evidence gathering and investigative techniques, and litigation processes and procedures to perform their work. Forensic accountants are also increasingly playing more proactive risk reduction roles by designing and performing extended procedures as part of the statutory audit, acting as advisers to audit committees, fraud deterrence engagements, and assisting in investment analyst research.

These people would be necessary to answer the question
It is a lot of work, but if applied to history

Test cases are available where outcomes and events are well known

WW2 for example



The idea is to follow history resource application

we have the technology and the funding

TBC

[Armonica_Templar]

That is just to try and lock down the technological advancement frame

It will take a joint disciplinary field

Simple combo to cross reference

_______________________________________

For the idea that technological advancement to Ironmaking caused the collapsed

It does not Feel right nor are ALL the numbers there

Feeling is based on

Industrial revolution

(note to long and I am being a Lazy scholar
read full wikipedia entry for full details)

Causes

[/url]
Regional GDP per capita changed very little for most of human history before the Industrial Revolution.

The causes of the Industrial Revolution were complicated and remain a topic for debate, with some historians believing the Revolution was an outgrowth of social and institutional changes brought by the end of feudalism in Britain after the English Civil War in the 17th century. The Enclosure movement and the British Agricultural Revolution made food production more efficient and less labour-intensive, forcing the farmers who could no longer be self-sufficient in agriculture into cottage industry, for example weaving, and in the longer term into the cities and the newly developed factories.[154] The colonial expansion of the 17th century with the accompanying development of international trade, creation of financial markets and accumulation of capital are also cited as factors, as is the scientific revolution of the 17th century.[155] A change in marrying patterns to getting married later made people able to accumulate more human capital during their youth, thereby encouraging economic development.[156]

Until the 1980s, it was universally believed by academic historians that technological innovation was the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the key enabling technology was the invention and improvement of the steam engine.[157] However, recent research into the Marketing Era has challenged the traditional, supply-oriented interpretation of the Industrial Revolution.[158]

Lewis Mumford has proposed that the Industrial Revolution had its origins in the Early Middle Ages, much earlier than most estimates.[159] He explains that the model for standardised mass production was the printing press and that "the archetypal model for the industrial era was the clock". He also cites the monastic emphasis on order and time-keeping, as well as the fact that medieval cities had at their centre a church with bell ringing at regular intervals as being necessary precursors to a greater synchronisation necessary for later, more physical, manifestations such as the steam engine.

The presence of a large domestic market should also be considered an important driver of the Industrial Revolution, particularly explaining why it occurred in Britain. In other nations, such as France, markets were split up by local regions, which often imposed tolls and tariffs on goods traded among them.[160] Internal tariffs were abolished by Henry VIII of England, they survived in Russia till 1753, 1789 in France and 1839 in Spain.

Governments' grant of limited monopolies to inventors under a developing patent system (the Statute of Monopolies in 1623) is considered an influential factor. The effects of patents, both good and ill, on the development of industrialisation are clearly illustrated in the history of the steam engine, the key enabling technology. In return for publicly revealing the workings of an invention the patent system rewarded inventors such as James Watt by allowing them to monopolise the production of the first steam engines, thereby rewarding inventors and increasing the pace of technological development. However, monopolies bring with them their own inefficiencies which may counterbalance, or even overbalance, the beneficial effects of publicising ingenuity and rewarding inventors.[161] Watt's monopoly prevented other inventors, such as Richard Trevithick, William Murdoch, or Jonathan Hornblower, whom Boulton and Watt sued, from introducing improved steam engines, thereby retarding the spread of steam power.[162][163]

Causes in Europe
Main article: Great Divergence

Interior of the London Coal Exchange, c. 1808.
European 17th century colonial expansion, international trade, and creation of financial markets produced a new legal and financial environment, one which supported and enabled 18th century industrial growth.

One question of active interest to historians is why the Industrial Revolution occurred in Europe and not in other parts of the world in the 18th century, particularly China, India, and the Middle East, or at other times like in Classical Antiquity[164] or the Middle Ages.[165]Numerous factors have been suggested, including education, technological changes[166] (see Scientific Revolution in Europe), "modern" government, "modern" work attitudes, ecology, and culture.[167]

China was the world's most technological advanced country for many centuries; however, China stagnated economically and technologically and was surpassed by Western Europe before the Age of Exploration, by which time China banned imports and denied entry to foreigners. China was also a totalitarian society.[168][169] Modern estimates of per capita income on Western Europe in the late 18th century are of roughly 1,500 dollars in purchasing power parity (and Britain had a per capita income of nearly 2,000 dollars[170]) whereas China, by comparison, had only 450 dollars. India was essentially feudal, politically fragmented and not as economically advanced as Western Europe.[171]

Historians such as David Landes and Max Weber credit the different belief systems in Asia and Europe with dictating where the revolution occurred.[172] The religion and beliefs of Europe were largely products of Judaeo-Christianity and Greek thought. Conversely, Chinese society was founded on men like Confucius, Mencius, Han Feizi (Legalism), Lao Tzu (Taoism), and Buddha (Buddhism), resulting in very different worldviews.[173] Other factors include the considerable distance of China's coal deposits, though large, from its cities as well as the then unnavigable Yellow River that connects these deposits to the sea.[174]

Regarding India, the Marxist historian Rajani Palme Dutt said: "The capital to finance the Industrial Revolution in India instead went into financing the Industrial Revolution in Britain."[175] In contrast to China, India was split up into many competing kingdoms after the decline of the Mughal Empire, with the major ones in its aftermath including the Marathas, Sikhs, Bengal Subah, and Kingdom of Mysore. In addition, the economy was highly dependent on two sectors – agriculture of subsistence and cotton, and there appears to have been little technical innovation. It is believed that the vast amounts of wealth were largely stored away in palace treasuries by totalitarian monarchs prior to the British take over.[citation needed]

Economic historian Joel Mokyr has argued that political fragmentation (the presence of a large number of European states) made it possible for heterodox ideas to thrive, as entrepreneurs, innovators, ideologues and heretics could easily flee to a neighboring state in the event that the one state would try to suppress their ideas and activities. This is what set Europe apart from the technologically advanced, large unitary empires such as China and India. China had both a printing press and movable type, and India had similar levels scientific and technological achievement as Europe in 1700, yet the industrial revolution would occur in Europe, not China or India. In Europe, political fragmentation was coupled with an "integrated market for ideas" where Europe's intellectuals used the lingua franca of Latin, had a shared intellectual basis in Europe's classical heritage and the pan-European institution of the Republic of Letters.[176]

Causes in Britain

As the Industrial Revolution developed British manufactured output surged ahead of other economies.

Great Britain provided the legal and cultural foundations that enabled entrepreneurs to pioneer the industrial revolution.[177]Key factors fostering this environment were: (1) The period of peace and stability which followed the unification of England and Scotland; (2) no trade barriers between England and Scotland;(3) the rule of law (enforcing property rights and respecting the sanctity of contracts); (4) a straightforward legal system that allowed the formation of joint-stock companies (corporations); (5) absence of tolls, which had largely disappeared from Britain by the 15th century, but were an extreme burden on goods elsewhere in the world, and (6) a free market (capitalism).[24]

"An unprecedented explosion of new ideas, and new technological inventions, transformed our use of energy, creating an increasingly industrial and urbanised country. Roads, railways and canals were built. Great cities appeared. Scores of factories and mills sprang up. Our landscape would never be the same again. It was a revolution that transformed not only the country, but the world itself."
– British historian Jeremy Black on the BBC's Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here.[105]

Geographical and natural resource advantages of Great Britain were the fact that it had extensive coast lines and many navigable rivers in an age where water was the easiest means of transportation and having the highest quality coal in Europe.[24]

There were two main values that really drove the Industrial Revolution in Britain. These values were self-interest and an entrepreneurial spirit. Because of these interests, many industrial advances were made that resulted in a huge increase in personal wealth and a consumer revolution.[105] These advancements also greatly benefitted the British society as a whole. Countries around the world started to recognise the changes and advancements in Britain and use them as an example to begin their own Industrial Revolutions.[178]

The debate about the start of the Industrial Revolution also concerns the massive lead that Great Britain had over other countries. Some have stressed the importance of natural or financial resources that Britain received from its many overseas colonies or that profits from the British slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean helped fuel industrial investment. However, it has been pointed out that slave trade and West Indian plantations provided only 5% of the British national income during the years of the Industrial Revolution.[179] Even though slavery accounted for so little, Caribbean-based demand accounted for 12% of Britain's industrial output.[180]

William Bell Scott Iron and Coal, 1855–60

Instead, the greater liberalisation of trade from a large merchant base may have allowed Britain to produce and use emerging scientific and technological developments more effectively than countries with stronger monarchies, particularly China and Russia. Britain emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as the only European nation not ravaged by financial plunder and economic collapse, and having the only merchant fleet of any useful size (European merchant fleets were destroyed during the war by the Royal Navy[181]). Britain's extensive exporting cottage industries also ensured markets were already available for many early forms of manufactured goods. The conflict resulted in most British warfare being conducted overseas, reducing the devastating effects of territorial conquest that affected much of Europe. This was further aided by Britain's geographical position – an island separated from the rest of mainland Europe.

William and Mary Presenting the Cap of Liberty to Europe, 1716, Sir James Thornhill. Enthroned in heaven with the Virtues behind them are the royals William III and Mary II who had taken the throne after the Glorious Revolution and signed the English Bill of Rights of 1689. William tramples on arbitrary power and hands the red cap of liberty to Europe where, unlike Britain, absolute monarchy stayed the normal form of power execution. Below William is the French king Louis XIV.[182]

Another theory is that Britain was able to succeed in the Industrial Revolution due to the availability of key resources it possessed. It had a dense population for its small geographical size. Enclosure of common land and the related agricultural revolution made a supply of this labour readily available. There was also a local coincidence of natural resources in the North of England, the English Midlands, South Wales and the Scottish Lowlands. Local supplies of coal, iron, lead, copper, tin, limestone and water power, resulted in excellent conditions for the development and expansion of industry. Also, the damp, mild weather conditions of the North West of England provided ideal conditions for the spinning of cotton, providing a natural starting point for the birth of the textiles industry.

The stable political situation in Britain from around 1688 following the Glorious Revolution, and British society's greater receptiveness to change (compared with other European countries) can also be said to be factors favouring the Industrial Revolution. Peasant resistance to industrialisation was largely eliminated by the Enclosure movement, and the landed upper classes developed commercial interests that made them pioneers in removing obstacles to the growth of capitalism.[183] (This point is also made in Hilaire Belloc's The Servile State.)

The French philosopher Voltaire wrote about capitalism and religious tolerance in his book on English society, Letters on the English(1733), noting why England at that time was more prosperous in comparison to the country's less religiously tolerant European neighbours. "Take a view of the Royal Exchange in London, a place more venerable than many courts of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan [Muslim], and the Christian transact together, as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of infidel to none but bankrupts. There the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends on the Quaker’s word. If one religion only were allowed in England, the Government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace."[184]

Britain's population grew 280% 1550–1820, while the rest of Western Europe grew 50–80%. Seventy percent of European urbanisation happened in Britain 1750–1800. By 1800, only the Netherlands was more urbanised than Britain. This was only possible because coal, coke, imported cotton, brick and slate had replaced wood, charcoal, flax, peat and thatch. The latter compete with land grown to feed people while mined materials do not. Yet more land would be freed when chemical fertilisers replaced manure and horse's work was mechanised. A workhorse needs 3 to 5 acres (1.21 to 2.02 ha) for fodder while even early steam engines produced four times more mechanical energy.
In 1700, 5/6 of coal mined worldwide was in Britain, while the Netherlands had none; so despite having Europe's best transport, most urbanised, well paid, literate people and lowest taxes, it failed to industrialise. In the 18th century, it was the only European country whose cities and population shrank. Without coal, Britain would have run out of suitable river sites for mills by the 1830s.[185]

Economic historian Robert Allen has argued that high wages, cheap capital and very cheap energy in Britain made it the ideal place for the industrial revolution to occur.[186]These factors made it vastly more profitable to invest in research and development, and to put technology to use in Britain than other societies.[186]

Transfer of knowledge

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Philosopher_Lecturing_on_the_Orrery]A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery (ca. 1766). Informal philosophical societies spread scientific advances

Knowledge of innovation was spread by several means. Workers who were trained in the technique might move to another employer or might be poached. A common method was for someone to make a study tour, gathering information where he could. During the whole of the Industrial Revolution and for the century before, all European countries and America engaged in study-touring; some nations, like Sweden and France, even trained civil servants or technicians to undertake it as a matter of state policy. In other countries, notably Britain and America, this practice was carried out by individual manufacturers eager to improve their own methods. Study tours were common then, as now, as was the keeping of travel diaries. Records made by industrialists and technicians of the period are an incomparable source of information about their methods.

Another means for the spread of innovation was by the network of informal philosophical societies, like the Lunar Society of Birmingham, in which members met to discuss 'natural philosophy' (i.e. science) and often its application to manufacturing. The Lunar Society flourished from 1765 to 1809, and it has been said of them, "They were, if you like, the revolutionary committee of that most far reaching of all the eighteenth century revolutions, the Industrial Revolution".[187] Other such societies published volumes of proceedings and transactions. For example, the London-based Royal Society of Arts published an illustrated volume of new inventions, as well as papers about them in its annual Transactions.

There were publications describing technology. Encyclopaedias such as Harris's Lexicon Technicum (1704) and Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia (1802–1819) contain much of value. Cyclopaedia contains an enormous amount of information about the science and technology of the first half of the Industrial Revolution, very well illustrated by fine engravings. Foreign printed sources such as the Descriptions des Arts et Métiers and Diderot's Encyclopédie explained foreign methods with fine engraved plates.

Periodical publications about manufacturing and technology began to appear in the last decade of the 18th century, and many regularly included notice of the latest patents. Foreign periodicals, such as the Annales des Mines, published accounts of travels made by French engineers who observed British methods on study tours.

Protestant work ethic
Main article: Protestant work ethic
Another theory is that the British advance was due to the presence of an entrepreneurial class which believed in progress, technology and hard work.[188] The existence of this class is often linked to the Protestant work ethic (see Max Weber) and the particular status of the Baptists and the dissenting Protestant sects, such as the Quakers and Presbyterians that had flourished with the English Civil War. Reinforcement of confidence in the rule of law, which followed establishment of the prototype of constitutional monarchy in Britain in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and the emergence of a stable financial market there based on the management of the national debt by the Bank of England, contributed to the capacity for, and interest in, private financial investment in industrial ventures.

Dissenters found themselves barred or discouraged from almost all public offices, as well as education at England's only two universities at the time (although dissenters were still free to study at Scotland's four universities). When the restoration of the monarchy took place and membership in the official Anglican Church became mandatory due to the Test Act, they thereupon became active in banking, manufacturing and education. The Unitarians, in particular, were very involved in education, by running Dissenting Academies, where, in contrast to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and schools such as Eton and Harrow, much attention was given to mathematics and the sciences – areas of scholarship vital to the development of manufacturing technologies.

Historians sometimes consider this social factor to be extremely important, along with the nature of the national economies involved. While members of these sects were excluded from certain circles of the government, they were considered fellow Protestants, to a limited extent, by many in the middle class, such as traditional financiers or other businessmen. Given this relative tolerance and the supply of capital, the natural outlet for the more enterprising members of these sects would be to seek new opportunities in the technologies created in the wake of the scientific revolution of the 17th century.

"Now D@#$ it Armonica.. This is a lot of S@#$!!"

Well we are left with this because the numbers are very important..

Every aspect of provide the numbers needed to then turn around and provide a testable equation or formula

this can be provided to test against other technological advancement
the computer age....

________________________________________

Of note BMC added a part to this in her comments to me when I told her what  was working on

The origins of the civil war was ground in the same economic principles

The north was cutting off the souths markets
it became unbearable to the south


This is an interesting point that fits perfectly
Industrialization aginst agrarian societies

We have another field added to this conversation that fits perfectly

The American Civil war origins in industrialization when used in comparison to the Late Bronze age collapse

These numbers do lend weight to the idea of tech advancement being a major source..