Red Sea: Did you mean...?

A late-18th century map of the South China Sea. Drawn by Rigobert Bonne and G. Raynal

A Qing Dynasty (1636-1912) illustration showing pirates attacking merchant ships in the South China Sea. From the Qing Scroll. (Maritime Museum, Hong Kong)

The War Scroll, part of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Quram, Israel which were composed between the 3rd century BCE and the 1st century CE.

Sherman's March to the Sea in 1864, part of the American Civil War, original illustration by Felix Octavius Carr Darley and engraved by Alexander Hay Ritchie, c. 1868. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

A 1941 photograph of a flight of Sea Hurricanes, the naval equivalent of the RAF Hawker Hurricane fighter plane. (Imperial War Museums)

Limestone grave-stela of a Greek woman from the Black Sea. Cape Tuzla (Taman, Russia), c. 100 BCE-100 CE. (Pushkin Museum, Moscow)

A memorial carved from limestone of an ancient Black Sea warrior with his spear and shield. The Bosphorus region of present-day Turkey, c. 125-50 BCE. (Pushkin Museum, Moscow.)

Painting by Vasily Polenov, 1899.

Brown grass on a body of water at Norden, Germany.

The decline of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Mediterranean and Near East has puzzled historians and archaeologists for centuries. While many have ascribed the collapse of several civilizations to the enigmatic Sea Peoples, Professor...