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  A combination of historical references, religious writings (Rig-Veda - Sacred book of the Hindus), and archaeology suggests other factors.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  Historical Documents for the eastern regions: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).