“Our civilization is collapsing,” Penelope says to her son, Telemachus, at one point in Christopher Nolan’s movie The Odyssey. Much later, near the end of the movie, Odysseus himself similarly says to Penelope, “Our age of bronze is collapsing.”
The dialogue in both cases is far too self-aware, as others have already pointed out, but nevertheless they were both quite correct. The Bronze Age world as they had known it until then was certainly on the verge of collapse or had already passed the tipping point. Most archaeologists and historians who study this period would agree, cautiously in some cases, that the Bronze Age world of the globalized Mediterranean was more fragile, and vulnerable, than it had appeared.
Their interconnected world—which was far more than just Mycenaean Greece and Troy—actually covered an area from what is now Italy on the west to Iran at the east and from Türkiye down to Egypt. It had flourished for more than three hundred years by that point, during what we now call the Late Bronze Age, from ca. 1500 to 1200 BC. A commercial and diplomatic network linked the greater and lesser powers of that era, ranging from Mycenaeans and Minoans in the Aegean; Hittites and Trojans in Anatolia (modern Türkiye); Canaanites up and down the Levant; Egyptians and Cypriots in their respective countries; and Assyrians and Babylonians in Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq and northern Syria). Connections between them included trading and commerce in raw materials, particularly metals, as well as finished goods, and included also diplomatic embassies and dynastic marriages. All of this we know from texts discovered within several different archives from that period as well as artifacts recovered in archaeological excavations.
It is no surprise that Nolan set the timing of the Trojan War, and its aftermath, towards the end of this period, at approximately 1200 BC, for that is when the war is most likely to have taken place. It also most likely took place for the reasons that he implies—if Helen even existed, she was most likely an excuse for a war that would have taken place anyway, as the Mycenaeans attempted to seize control of the Hellespont and the way to the Black Sea, which would have been controlled by Troy (much as Iran similarly controls the Straits of Hormuz today).
Obviously, we have Homer’s legendary tale (and the rest of the Epic Cycle) telling us of the Mycenaean siege of the city and its aftermath. There are also, however, historical Hittite records, inscribed on clay tablets found at the capital city of Hattusa, which describe not one, not two, not three, but four wars fought for control of Troy during the Late Bronze Age, with the last one taking place at about 1200 BC. The question, at least for me, is not whether the Trojan War took place, but which of the four wars recorded by the Hittites is the one also told by the Greek bards during the centuries after it occurred.
But the Mycenaeans alone were not responsible for the collapse of civilization, regardless of how often Nolan’s characters agonize over their perceived role, and even if individual Mycenaeans and Minoans were within the ranks of the so-called Sea Peoples. This menacing force, which is never actually shown but simply referred to on numerous occasions in the movie, are in fact named, group by group, in various Egyptian inscriptions from this time period, by Pharaoh Merneptah in 1207 BC and Pharaoh Ramses III in 1177 BC. We now collectively call them the Sea Peoples, but among the nine groups specifically named by the Egyptians were the Peleset, Shardana, Shekelesh, Ekwesh, Teresh, Lukka, and Denyen—some of whom we can identify and others who remain more of a mystery.
Contrary to comments made by other reviewers, the Sea Peoples have not been debunked by recent scholarship. Instead, they have simply been better contextualized into the grand scheme of the events at the end of the Late Bronze Age, for at that time the Mediterranean and ancient Near East regions were wracked by a perfect storm of calamities, ranging from drought and famine to disease, earthquakes, and these migrants/invaders.
Resistance was futile in the face of all these combined calamities, as Jean Luc Picard might have said when referring to the Borg in a Star Trek: Next Generation episode, and the globalized network was quickly plunged into chaos. Individual societies were left to fend for themselves, with varying degrees of success. The Mycenaeans and the Hittites, for example, not to mention the Trojans as well, did not survive the societal collapse, leaving individuals to attempt to rebuild in the aftermath, with some more successful than others. It would take up to four centuries for the globalized Mediterranean network to be re-established, though it was once again in place by the time of the first Olympics, traditionally dated to 776 BC.
But, contrary to Nolan’s screenplay, we don’t actually know if the various entities or individuals back then realized that they were in the middle of a societal, or civilizational, collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age. We certainly don’t see any organized efforts or have any indications in the archaeological remains or textual records that anyone at the time was aware of the larger picture, as Penelope, Odysseus, and Telemachus seem to be in Nolan’s movie.
Several commentators have recently suggested that Nolan meant for his movie to be a reflection of what is going on in our world today. Whether that is correct or not will have to await his own answer, but in the meantime, it is clear, and has been for some time, that many of the troubles and complications that were part and parcel of the Late Bronze Age Collapse are here again with us today, including drought, famine, migrations, disease, earthquakes, and other catastrophic situations.
In short, we have the same problems now that they did more than three thousand years ago…and their globalized network of commerce and diplomacy collapsed. To say that we (writ large) are too big to fail is simply hubristic; we aren’t. I have argued for some years now that there might be lessons which can be learned from the events which took place at the end of the Late Bronze Age and which might well be once again appropriate for us today, given the numerous problems currently present in our own globalized world.
But how will we know when we have reached a tipping point, so that we can act before it is too late to recover? The answer is that we may not know, or deign to recognize that fact, until it is too late, if we continue along our own self-made path towards civilizational collapse and/or destruction. And will there be any bards left to sing epic poems of what has been lost if and when we go the same way as the Mycenaeans, Trojans, and Hittites? Will they be able to forget our mistakes?
Eric H. Cline is professor of Classics and Anthropology at the George Washington University and the author of 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed and After 1177 BC: The Survival of Civilizations (both żěÉ«Ö±˛Ą).