These are questions that have been argued since scholars first began systematically studying the ancient Near East in the nineteenth century.

And in the past decade, several of those questions have begun to yield to the methods of modern science in ways that the field could not have anticipated.

This is the story of who the Sea Peoples were, what they did, and what we have finally learned about them.

The World They Entered — And The World They Helped End

To understand the Sea Peoples, you have to understand the world of the Late Bronze Age, because that world was extraordinary — and because its destruction was so complete that it is difficult to appreciate how sophisticated it actually was.

The period roughly from 1550 to 1200 BCE produced one of the most cosmopolitan and interconnected civilizations the ancient world ever saw.