It may have also been a class/cultural thing. A man on horseback is actively riding the horse, a man in a 2+ person chariot is having someone else do the hard work.
If you don't have chariots and they do, just fight where the chariots can't.
yes, I know the stories of the amazing accuracy of horseback archers (mongol, native american, ...). Just saying that the 2-man thing may be more efficient than you give it credit for.
Kind of like how George Lucas made the empire look like the Nazis so you know who's good and who's bad in the first minute before you even know what else is going on or how in most artwork about the American revolution it's obvious which side is and isn't a professional army.
True. But wasn't the reality complicated (as usual)? There were French regulars on the American side and various militias fighting on the British side. And Indians fighting on both sides.
Yes.
Which further underlies the point that you shouldn't take the artistic depiction too literally.
As I recall, both Drews and Cline go into this theory in more detail and dismiss it.
There could be additional contributing causes of course.
Missing evidence of iron weapons among the sea people is more of a concern. But we still don't know why people became "sea people", but as I understand it a common theory is that it was due to an economic collapse which had already happened. So, the hypothesis is that the economic collapse could be (at least partly) related to the emergence of iron and its impact on the bronze cartels. Whatever the cause, the bronze age collapse as well as the origin of the sea people is very interesting.
My intuition on the "Sea People" issue is that there was both push and pull. A people change their way of life when the old way becomes less attractive (the push) and a new way becomes more attractive (the pull). The first effect could be due to environmental conditions and failure of trade, the second could be due to exposed vulnerability of the existing order of things to exploitation (the Drews theory). Positive feedback could occur on both.
what prevents bronze from being "worked nearly everywhere by nearly everyone" or to put it another way what make iron easier to work?
If you had asked me I would have said the opposite. bronze is nice and easy to work while iron requires much hotter fires and harder implements.
But yeah, one can just cast bronze much more easily than one can cast iron. The melting point of bronze is about 200 to 300 C lower (and 500 C lower than cast steel.)
Cause and effect are very difficult to differentiate, and combined with the fact that this a) produced a profound cultural change in the region (e.g. the rise of Judaism, the writing of the Iliad, the language shifts that occurred over the ensuing centuries) and b) distinguishing migrations from invasions from cultural trends in the archaeological record is nearly impossible, I highly recommend against such reductive narratives. Other possibly confounding variables include the spread of horse technology, trade technology (i.e. writing), climate and agricultural pressures, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria
> Tukulti-Ninurta I's assassination c. 1207 BC was followed by inter-dynastic conflict and a significant drop in Assyrian power.[62] Tukulti-Ninurta I's successors were unable to maintain Assyrian power and Assyria became increasingly restricted to just the Assyrian heartland,[62] a period of decline broadly coinciding with the Late Bronze Age collapse.[62] Though some kings in this period of decline, such as Ashur-dan I (r. c. 1178–1133 BC), Ashur-resh-ishi I (r. 1132–1115 BC) and Tiglath-Pileser I (r. 1114–1076 BC) worked to reverse the decline and made significant conquests,[63] their conquests were ephemeral and shaky, quickly lost again.[64] From the time of Eriba-Adad II (r. 1056–1054 BC) onward, Assyrian decline intensified.[65]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Assyrian_Empire
>Though Assyria was left largely unscathed by the direct effects of the Late Bronze Age collapse of the 12th century BC, the Middle Assyrian Empire began to experience a significant period of decline roughly at the same time. The assassination of Tukulti-Ninurta I c. 1207 BC led to inter-dynastic conflict and a significant drop in Assyrian power. Even during its period of decline, Middle Assyrian kings continued to be assertive geopolitically; both Ashur-dan I (r. c. 1178–1133 BC) and Ashur-resh-ishi I (r. 1132–1115 BC) campaigned against Babylonia. Under Ashur-resh-ishi I's son and successor Tiglath-Pileser I (r. 1114–1076 BC), the Middle Assyrian Empire experienced a period of resurgence, owing to wide-ranging campaigns and conquests.