The Bronze Age Collapse

The Bronze Age Collapse was a period of widespread societal breakdown across the eastern Mediterranean and Near East around 1200 to 1150 BCE, in which the Hittite empire fell, Mycenaean Greek palace civilization disintegrated, Egypt survived but was permanently weakened, and numerous cities from Anatolia to the Levant were destroyed or abandoned within a few decades. Ancient Egyptian records blame raids by a loose coalition called the Sea Peoples, but historians now generally treat the collapse as the product of several compounding causes, including prolonged drought and famine, earthquakes, the breakdown of the long distance trade networks that bronze production depended on, and internal revolt against overstretched palace economies. Its aftermath opened a genuine dark age in much of the region, followed eventually by the rise of new powers, including Assyria, Phoenicia and, after several centuries, Archaic Greece.