Aryans and the Sea Peoples: Migration and Invasion, Responses to the Climatic Stress in the Second Millennium BC

Document Type : Original Research Article

Author

Department of History and Archaeology, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

The consequences of climate change could be so severe and extensive that the issue has prompted human societies to change their subsistence system and adopt strategies to deal with those challenges. In the past, droughts and the reduction in water resources caused serious problems for human societies and made it difficult for water-dependent communities to continue living in a specific region and area. In order to get out of the crisis, many communities either migrated to favorable areas or attacked other communities. In the second millennium BC, Central and West Asia witnessed large-scale human migrations and violent invasions, which apparently overlapped with climatic stresses. The extensive migration of Aryan tribes and predatory invasions of the Sea Peoples in Egypt, Levant, Anatolia, and Greece during the second half of the second millennium BC coincided with the 3.2 ka BP mega drought event. This research, with an environmental archeology approach, actually tries to warn about the unfortunate consequences of global warming, i.e. climate migrations and social tensions. Here, the reason for population displacements and attacks on civilizations in the second millennium BC has been investigated from the climatic perspective. The Paleoclimate research indicates frequent climatic events in the early Late Holocene in Central and West Asia, which probably triggered many socio-political events.

Keywords

Main Subjects

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  • Receive Date: 04 January 2023
  • Revise Date: 05 February 2023
  • Accept Date: 25 February 2023

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