upheaval, famine from poor harvests, epidemics, and natural catastrophes–
have all come in for a share of the blame. One factor is certain: the magnitude
of this phenomenon can be explained only by the interconnectedness of the
Bronze Age world. In the late second millenniumBCE, the domino theory
was played out with a vengeance. The result was a near total systems col-
lapse. The world as the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean and Southwest
Asia had known it simply disintegrated.
A closer look: trade and the Trojan War
The most celebrated adventure of the Mycenaean Greeks, referred to in this
context as the“Achaeans,”was the Trojan War, doubtless the most famous
war in ancient history. With over 130 years of on-and-offfieldwork on what
may be the most exhaustively worked archaeological site in the world and
detailed descriptions from the most celebrated literary work to survive the
ancient Mediterranean world, theIliad, we should know everything that was
important about Troy and the Trojan War, including the role trade may
have played. That we do not provides a cautionary lesson as to what we can
and cannot learn about the past.
The Classical Greeks knew the lands that ringed the Black Sea as a rich
region, and they sailed there to obtain grain, gold, and slaves, but the ear-
liest archaeological evidence for such trade comes only from the seventh or
possibly the eighth centuryBCE.Their predecessors, the restless Mycenaeans,
went east, west, and south, but did they also go north? The city of Troy was
located on the northwestern corner of Anatolia on the eastern side of the
Hellespont (Dardanelles), a channel 40 miles long and 1 mile wide, one of
two water passages separating the Aegean, and thus the Mediterranean, from
the Black Sea. For ships sailing northward from Troy, the current is unfa-
vorable since itflows down from the Black Sea, and much of the time the
wind blows from the north as well. Ships waiting for a favorable change in
the winds would seek shelter along the eastern coast. According to the
standard interpretation, Troy was founded to take advantage of this situa-
tion, which allowed it to control traffic going between the two seas. The
Hellespont also separated the land masses of Thrace and Anatolia, in other
words, Europe and Asia and thus east–west traffic between the two con-
tinents. Troy was a hub where both land and sea networks converged.
The Trojans, who played the role of enemy in Homer’sIliad, were not the
first people to occupy that site. Thefirst Troy was founded in the early third
millennium BCE as the fortified stronghold of a local chieftain. Foreign
materials including marble, obsidian, and pottery are evident from early
times. By the middle of the millennium, the settlement had evolved into
Troy II, a much grander place that held a magnificent treasure of gold,
silver, and bronze, including 8,750 beads of gold, which were safely buried
before the city was overwhelmed by unknown assailants inc. 2250 BCE. The
Into the Aegean and out of the Bronze Age 59