In the thirteenth century infantrymen were mainly recruited among the barbarians.
Only in barbarian and often mountainous regions, where chariots could not operate, infantries waged battle. They played, according to him, merely a supporting part as «runners». Hereafter he devotes a chapter to the footsoldiers in the Late Bronze Age. The chariots were firing-platforms for archers using the composite bow, a conclusion which he himself calls unorthodox. Large armies therefore disposed of great numbers of chariots, huge costs being the only limiting factor. Later chariots attacked chariots, and it became important to have more chariots than the opponent. In his eyes the first chariots transported bowmen, who attacked the infantry of the enemy at a safe distance. Drews first pays attention to the chariot warfare in the Late Bronze Age : the beginnings of chariot warfare, the numbers and the costs of the chariots, and the use of chariots in battle, with special attention to the battles at Megiddo and Kadesh. His thesis is that a radical innovation in warfare gave barbarians the military advantage over the kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean, that raiders and city-sackers found a way to defeat the greatest chariot armies of their time.
The third and largest part is Drews' own theory, giving a military explanation to the Catastrophe. In the second part he discusses the various explanations of these destructions : earthquakes, migrations, iron working, drought, system collapse and raiders. Drews surveys these destructions in Anatolia, Cyprus, Syria and the southern Levant, Greece, the Aegean islands and Crete he also reviews the situation in Mesopotamia and Egypt. In this part he explains what exactly he calls the «Catastrophe» and confines his subject to the physical destruction of cities and palaces. The first part is simply called «Introduction», a modest heading for a highly useful survey. Robert Drews recently supplied us with a new survey of the historical facts and explanations to which he adds his own interpretation. On the other hand our knowledge is insufficient to understand the exact course of things and most important the origin of what happened. The events that put an end to most palace civilizations and eventually to the eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age itself are much debated by archaeologists and historians for an obvious reason : This is the first essential event in history about which we have some real information and a few written documents. 1200 B.C., Princeton N.J., Princeton University The End of the Bronze Age : Another Hypothesis
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