The Bronze Age Collapse by Amogh Joshi

 The Bronze Age Collapse

Around the year 1200 BC, the outlook for human civilization suddenly became quite bleak. Across the Mediterranean and Near East, most major human civilizations were either considerably weakened or fully collapsed, a direct result of the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Caused by internal issues, like the failing palace economy of Mycenaean Greece, to conflicts and disputes like the dramatic decline of chariot warfare and the purported Sea Peoples attacking Egypt, all the way to environmental factors such as volcanic eruptions and droughts, the Late Bronze Age Collapse is considered to be the first and possibly only real collapse of human civilization to date.

The societal collapse began as a cultural collapse, with the Mycenaean kingdoms being the first to fall, followed by supposedly the destruction of every city from Pylos, in Greece, to what is today Gaza, in the southern Levant. The Kassites, who had taken over after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire, in the southern Levant, also collapsed and were soon followed by the Hittite Empire, a previously formidable Anatolian (modern-day Turkey) civilization. Only the most powerful civilizations survived, including the New Kingdom of Egypt, though weakened tremendously, alongside Phonecian city-states, and the then-most-powerful empire, the Middle Assyrian Empire.

But the damage was done, as can be seen from the below map of the destruction of city-states and civilizations:

Of course, as with most of human history, the surviving civilizations showed tremendous resilience and within less than a century, they began to build themselves up again. The Middle Assyrian Empire would begin to expand around 900 B.C. and eventually evolve into the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Soon after, the displaced settlers of the Levant, specifically the Caanites, would coalesce and form the ancient Kingdom of Israel. On the other side of the Arabian Peninsula, ancient Iranian peoples would begin to emerge, soon evolving into the Persian, Median, and Parthian empires. And of course, this would trigger the start of Western civilization when the Greek civilization re-emerged around 800 B.C.

There are still a number of unsolved mysteries pertaining to this collapse, however, one of the most pertinent being the Sea Peoples of Egypt. We’ll take a look at those in the next article.