Collapse in the Mid - 2nd Millennium
Introduction
1. Between 1700 and 1500 widescale collapse and transformation
occurred throughout the entire Middle East.
2. While it is impossible to definitively connect the various
events, there are strong possibilities that at least some were connected.
3. Various environmental collapse theories do not satisfactorily
explain the extinction of the Central Asian (BMAC/Oxus) and Indus Valley
Civilizations and the contemporaneous transformations of the Mesopotamia and
Egypt.
4. A combination of historical references, religious writings (Rig-Veda - Sacred book of the Hindus), and archaeology suggests other factors.
5. The broader Middle Eastern transformations of this period include
the following:
- BMAC/Oxus Civilization collapsed and all of its Qala-like settlements
were abandoned in the century or so in the century 1700-1600 but concurrently
BMAC/ Oxus materials occur throughout Iran and parts of the Indus Valley
regions.
- Indus Valley Civilization
disappears by 1600 BC and many of its settlements were abandoned. There was no major integrated urban society
with a well-defined civilization in this region again until the period
approximately dating to 1200-1000 BC.
- In Mesopotamia the period
leading up to 1600 BC saw the final end of the dominance of southern
Mesopotamia with the destruction of the Old Babylonian Dynasty by Hittites from
the north and Kassites who were originally nomadic peoples from the Zagros
Mountains and western Iran.
- In Egypt the Middle Kingdom
ended in internal breakdown and external conquest around 1600 BC. External factors played a major role in this
breakdown with Asiatic Palestinian or Hyksos invaders coming from the northeast
and Nubians invading from the south.
6. During the following period the entire region was transformed
from its earlier situation with expansionist empires created in New Kingdom
Egypt, Mitanni in Syria, Assyria in northern Mesopotamia and the total collapse
of urban complex society further east.
Factors
in the Collapse
1. Historical Documents for the eastern regions:
Much later Hindu writings
(Rig-Veda and Vedic Hymns) talk of the conquest of India by Aryans over darker
skinned people of a different language.
Linguistic analysis indicates that this diffusion may have happened in
first half of the 2nd millennium. The
texts also mention that the invaders were a warlike race of nomadic peoples.
2. Archaeology in the eastern regions:
- Recent archaeology reveals that the BMAC/Oxus civilization comes
to an end around 1600 and people from the Oxus spread across the Iranian
plateau as seen in their intrusive grave goods and tombs. Evidently people from
the area north of the Kopet Dagh Mountains were migrating to the east, west and
south at this time in the period 1700-1600 BC.
- Archaeological work in Central Asia and elsewhere shows that
these Oxus civilization peoples prior to their migrations were bordered to the
north by nomadic steppe dwellers of the so-called Andronovo culture. The
sharing of Andronovo and BMAC/Oxus ceramic traits indicate that at times the
nomads and urbanites were in close proximity and may well have shared kinship
ties in a characteristic Middle Eastern kinship pattern that transcended the
urban-nomad dichotomy. The nomads
brought the horse (domesticated around 4000) and horse-drawn chariot with them
into the southern region occupied by the BMAC/Oxus civilization as a formidable
weapon previously not used by the river-valley and oasis civilizations.
- In the Oxus region the long-standing structural tension between
town dweller and nomad probably culminated around 1700 BC in conflict in which
some of the actual subjects of the BMAC/Oxus rulers participated on behalf of
their nomadic kin. It appears that as a
result of this conflict the BMAC/Oxus cities were abandoned and the displaced
farmers spread south across the Iranian Plateau.
- Given the flexibility between settled and pastoralist lifeways,
some of the displaced agriculturalists probably adopted a nomadic existence
together with the horse of their conquerors.
During the following century these migrant populations spread across the
entire Iranian Plateau, the horse giving them the advantage over the sedentary
occupants of towns like Tepe Yahya, Khurab, Shadad and others where intrusive
cemetery components of purely BMAC/Oxus culture have been found. However, there is little evidence for
destruction in the indigenous towns and the archaeological impression is one of
an irresistible conqueror gaining overall dominance by the threat of conflict
rather than by violent conquest. In any
case the eastern part of the Middle East (eastern part of the Iranian Plateau,
Oxus region, Indus Valley) was overrun and its various manifestations of
hierarchical organizational superstructure destroyed. Less complex settled communities and nomadic peoples moved in, no
longer living in broadly-unified political and social units.
3. Archaeology of the western regions:
- Seals and figurines show the presence of horse drawn chariots in the upstart Mitanni state in the northern Syria and eastern Anatolia. Here, in the areas on the western borders of the Iranian Plateau, the Mitanni to the north and the Kassites to the south may well have been part of the migrations seen further east. The Mitanni may have moved into the north of the region from further east. The Kassites, on the other hand were more probably an in-place nomadic group of the western Iranian Plateau and Zagros who, like the Oxus people, were pressured into their own migrations westward, subduing the Old Babylonian state in so doing. Following this disruption the southern area (Babylonia) ceased to be an important player in Mesopotamian political activity and many of the Sumerian towns were abandoned. For much of the rest of Mesopotamian history the centers of power were in the north (Assyria) or east (Persia).
- Finally in Egypt
Asiatics from Palestine using horse-drawn war chariots entered the northern
areas from Palestine setting up a century of foreign Hyksos rule. They, however, became
acculturated by Egyptian civilization and soon portrayed
themselves as pharaohs. Possibly this
intrusion was caused by Mitanni pressure and was thus the far western component
of the pan-Middle Eastern process of migration and diffusion of warfare
technology originated in the Oxus area.
4. Interpretation
- Combining the historical and archaeological record, it seems that
the Aryans of early Indian writing were part of the migration of nomadic
peoples across the Iranian Plateau in the mid 2nd millennium. These people may have submerged the Oxus
civilization and acquired some of their cultural trappings before moving across
the Plateau. They ultimately reached
India where they confronted the Indus Valley Civilization. The existing civilization could not absorb
them within its system, as it was an exclusive caste-like society. While picking up some of the cultural traits
from the Indus (importance of ritual ablution, some religious imagery, maybe
the rudiments of a caste structure) the two systems were incompatible and the
Indus Valley pattern of social organization and urban complexity collapsed for
hundreds of years.
- Further west this great migration of which the Mitanni were the
westernmost migrants, placed pressure on existing nomadic people who moved into
the river-valleys, taking over their government and, at least in the Kassite
and Hyksos cases, becoming acculturated by their civilized subject
societies.
5. Thus the early 2nd millennium is a convenient breaking point in
ancient Middle Eastern history. It
marks the end of the pristine systems of early urban civilization that had
emerged from the Neolithic in the various areas and marks their transformation
into successor states with various degrees of disruption (as in the east) and
continuity (in Mesopotamia and Egypt).