Who Were the Sea Peoples?

One-book-itis is a malady that strikes amateurs in an academic field (e..g. history) when their reading in that field, on a particular topic, is largely restricted to one strong defense of a controversial position about that topic. The amateur simply doesn't know the field (e.g. history) well enough to realize that: 1) Of course any competent professional historian can marshall a strong case for any position he puts forward: he wouldn't put a case forward unless he could marshall strong evidence for it, and his entire professional life has been spent learning how to make the historical case for proposition X strong. In particular, what the amateur overlooks here is that their champion for this controversial position is in a dialogue with other professional historians . And whatever view he is disputing, those others themselves put forward good cases for the view he is disputing: if they hadn't, he wouldn't even bother disputing it ! 2) The professional discussion...

Here is something to wrap your head around: German barbarians beyond the edge of the Roman Empire, who were living in what were essentially stateless societies, used stealth, pleading, and even warfare in their efforts to try to move across the border and settle inside the Empire. Now, if the benefits of living under a state where that clear to illiterate barbarians in 200 A.D., why are there very smart people in 2014 who can't see them? Well, as I was once one of them, I can answer that: ideology. It takes a whole lot of training in an ideological mode of looking before you can render yourself unable to see what those ancient barbarians saw clearly.