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Podcast Transcript
Approximately 3,200 years ago, one of the most momentous events in human history took place.
Multiple major civilizations during the Bronze Age collapsed within a generation. International trade ground to a halt, almost every major city around the Mediterranean was destroyed, and much of the world entered a dark age.
Despite its significance, this event is one of the least known and understood periods in human history.
Learn more about the Late Bronze Age Collapse and its possible causes on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The Late Bronze Age collapse is a topic I have had on my list of possible episodes almost since I started the podcast.
When you look at the broad sweep of history, the Late Bronze Age Collapse is one of the most important events in the course of human civilization.
Despite being so important, it is something few people are aware of.
If it is such an important historical event, then why have I waited so long to do an episode on it?
It primarily concerns the fact that there is a lot about it that we just don’t know.
If you remember back to my episode on the three-age system, the Bronze Age corresponds to roughly 3300–1200 BC. This period corresponds to many of the events in the Old Testament to give you an idea of how far back we are talking.
Moreover, the events I’ll discuss in this episode took place in the Eastern Mediterranean. This area is an arc that primarily includes modern-day Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Egypt.
What was this world like?
Around the year 1200 BC, there were several well-established empires and kingdoms in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In modern-day Greece was the Mycenaean civilization. The Mycenaean civilization, which flourished in mainland Greece, was a powerful, palace-centered culture known for its military prowess, monumental architecture, Linear B script, and influence on later Greek mythology and culture.
In eastern Turkey and northern Syria was the Hittite Empire. The Hittite Empire was a powerful Bronze Age civilization renowned for its advanced legal system, use of chariots in warfare, extensive trade networks, and rivalry with Egypt and other Near Eastern powers.
Cyprus was part of the Hittite Empire, but only loosely so. It was more of a vassal state, but there were several invasions.
South of the Hittite Empire, where modern-day Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine were traditionally known as Canaan. However, by 1200 BC, they had been under the rule of Egypt for several centuries.
Egypt was in the middle of the period known as the New Kingdom. This was the period of Ancient Egyptian history that most people are familiar with, and it includes many of the most famous leaders, including Akhnaten, Ramses II, and Hatshepsut, as well as many of the most famous structures in Egypt, such as Karnak, Luxor, and Abu Simbel.
I should also at least mention the Babylonian Empire that existed in Mesopotamia in what is modern-day Iraq, as well as the Assyrian Empire, which was sandwiched between Babylon and the Hittites. They were not directly affected by the events of this period, but they did feel the aftershocks.
Much of what we know of this period and this region comes from archeology, such as the Uluburun shipwreck, which was discovered off the coast of southern Turkey near the town of Kas in 1982.
The Uluburun shipwreck showed that there was an enormous amount of trade in the region during this period. The ship was approximately 15 meters or 50 feet long.
What they found were ingots of copper, tin, and glass, ivory and elephant tusks, gold, and silver jewelry, as well as exotic items such as ostrich eggshells, hippopotamus teeth, and amber beads.
There were also bronze weapons, spices, olive oil, pomegranates, pottery, ceramics, and, most probably, scrolls and documents, as seals were found.
This is consistent with other evidence that shows there was a significant amount of trade between the various cities and empires along the eastern Mediterranean.
So, around the year 1200, things were pretty stable around the Eastern Mediterranean. Each of the major empires had been around for several centuries. There was active trade in the region, and early writing systems were being developed.
There were tensions between the Hittites and Egyptians, but nothing widespread.
Things were about as good as they could be for the Bronze Age.
…and then something happened.
Within the span of a single human lifespan, everything fell apart.
Major powers, including the Mycenaeans, Hittites, and New Kingdom Egypt, experienced significant decline or complete collapse. Trade networks that had linked the region’s kingdoms disintegrated, disrupting access to essential resources like tin and copper for bronze production. Writing systems were abandoned in many areas, signaling a loss of administrative and cultural continuity.
Major cities such as Mycenae, Knossos, the Hittite capital of Hattusa, and Ugarit were destroyed; these were just the largest cities. Many more were also destroyed.
The total number of deaths during the period is unknown because we have so few records, which is why we have so little information about what happened. Estimates vary widely, but it could be hundreds of thousands to several million people, and this was during an era that didn’t have high populations.
The fact that these civilizations all collapsed or declined at approximately the same time really isn’t in question. The big debate among historians and archeologists is why.
This period was centuries before Classical Greece or Rome, which we are familiar with. Writing was primitive and only known by an elite few. When things started falling apart, no one was writing down what was happening for posterity.
For the rest of the episode, I will discuss theories that have been proposed to explain the collapse. These theories are not mutually exclusive. A combination of causes could have overlapped, magnified each other, and hastened the downfall.
The current most popular theory is that the region succumbed to invasion from outside forces known as the sea peoples.
Who were the sea peoples? We don’t know exactly.
There are a few records from this period that speak of invasions from outsiders. Several come from Egypt, and another is from a cuneiform tablet found in the ruins of the city of Ugarit.
Many different names were given to these sea peoples. Some of them are Peleset, Sherden, Shekelesh, Denyen, Lukka, and Ekwesh.
Some of these names aren’t associated with known groups, but historians have tenuously associated them with various Mediterranean places. Others, such as the Lukka, are associated with islands off the southwest coast of Turkey.
So the most popular belief is that the sea peoples weren’t a singular group but rather a confederation of different peoples.
They could have come from further west in the Mediterranean from islands such as Sicily or Sardinia, or another theory holds that they might have been displaced people from Mycenaea.
The attacks appear to have been systematic with the sea peoples, starting with the Mycenaean Empire, then attacking the Hittite Empire and then finally moving south to Egypt.
Their attacks seemed to be amphibious, attacking from the sea, which is where the name is derived.
The easiest analogy to make to the sea peoples would be the Vikings. They were raiders who came in by sea and ravaged the towns that they attacked. The sea people seemed to have done something similar.
The sea peoples theory was developed in the mid-19th century by Egyptologists Emmanuel de Rougé and Gaston Maspero, who were able to decipher hieroglyphics in Egypt.
While the sea peoples hypothesis has become the most widely accepted, it is not universally supported, and some researchers have come to question it, or at least the idea that they were the primary reason for the collapse.
The sea peoples are not the only theory for the Bronze Age Collapse. Even if you accept the sea peoples hypothesis, the next question is why they attacked and why they were able to defeat these powerful empires so easily.
Another theory is that a severe and prolonged drought contributed to the Bronze Age Collapse. This theory is supported by archaeological evidence and climate studies.
Around 1200 BC, regions across the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East experienced significant environmental stress. Tree-ring data, sediment cores, and pollen analysis indicate a period of reduced rainfall and lower agricultural productivity.
This drought would have led to widespread crop failures, creating food shortages and destabilizing societies reliant on surplus production to sustain their populations and complex political systems.
It isn’t known if this weakened the societies that the sea peoples attacked, thus making them easy to conquer, or if drought and famine were what forced the sea people to migrate to try and find a new home in the first place.
Regardless, all of these civilizations were highly dependent on agriculture, and any disruption would have affected the stability of the governments, the military, and trade.
Another theory was developed by historian Robert Drews in his influential work The End of the Bronze Age. He proposed that the Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BC was driven primarily by a revolutionary shift in warfare, which disrupted the dominance of the chariot-based armies that had underpinned Bronze Age governments.
According to Drews, the rise of heavily armed, mobile infantry undermined the effectiveness of chariot warfare, which had been the backbone of military strategy for centuries.
Chariots, though highly effective on flat, open terrain, were expensive to maintain and required specialized infrastructure, such as trained horses, skilled warriors, and craftsmen to build and repair them. These vehicles were also symbols of elite control, often used by aristocratic warriors to dominate battlefields and enforce the state’s authority.
However, Drews argues that a new style of warfare emerged, characterized by infantry equipped with bronze or perhaps early iron weapons, large shields, and better armor, allowing them to engage chariots directly and neutralize their advantages.
This shift likely occurred due to advancements in weaponry, including longer swords and more effective spears, which allowed infantry to counter chariots’ mobility and reach. Additionally, the decentralization of warfare allowed non-elite groups, possibly including the Sea Peoples, to challenge the established powers by overwhelming them with flexible infantry tactics.
As chariot armies became increasingly vulnerable, the military and political systems that relied on them collapsed, contributing to the fall of major civilizations like the Mycenaeans and Hittites.
One final theory that may have contributed to the collapse is earthquakes. Archeological evidence points to destruction in cities consistent with earthquakes. One or more earthquakes during this period might have devastated major cities, which would have weakened the empires in the region.
Regardless of which combination of these theories is correct, the Mycenaean and Hittite civilizations collapsed, and the Egyptians eventually stopped the invaders under Ramses III.
While Egypt didn’t fall, they were severely weakened. The golden age of Egypt was now in the past.
Likewise, while not directly affected, the Babylonian Empire in Mesopotamia and what was left of the Assyrian Empire also declined. There were also effects as far away as the Caucses, North Africa, and Northern Iran.
Much of this had to do with the collapse of trade routes. The bronze, which was core to the bronze age, required tin, which came primarily from Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, from Britain.
The result was a centuries-long “Dark Age” in many regions, during which centralized states were replaced by smaller, less complex societies, and cultural and economic recovery was slow. Systems of writing like Linear B Script used by the Mycenaeans vanished.
This collapse reshaped the ancient world and set the stage for the emergence of new Iron Age civilizations.
One theory is that the use of iron came about not because it was a better metal than bronze but rather because no one could easily make bronze anymore because the supply of tin had dried up.
The collapse of the Bronze Age was a bigger shock to the world than the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, which took much longer to play out.
It took several centuries, but out of this Bronze Age dark ages came the classical civilizations of the Iron Age that we are more familiar with: Greece, Rome, Phoenicia, Carthage, and Persian empires.
The collapse of the Late Bronze Age is simultaneously one of the most important events in human history and one of the least understood.
It reshaped the ancient world, eventually leading to the rise of new civilizations and the eventual dominance of Iron Age cultures. The period remains a subject of fascination due to its complex web of causes and its enduring impact on the trajectory of human history.
