Bronze Age Collapse
The Late Bronze Age world of the Eastern Mediterranean, a rich linkage of Aegean, Egyptian, Syro-Palestinian, and Hittite civilizations, collapsed famously 3200 years ago. ~ French anthropologist David Kaniewski et al
The Bronze Age Collapse (1206–1100 bce) in the Near East was a time of violent disruption in trade and culture, including severely curtailed literacy. Almost every city – from Pylos, at the southwestern tip of Greece, to Gaza, one of the oldest cities in the world – was destroyed.
Early empires collapsed, including that of the Egyptians, the Anatolian Hittite empire, and kingdoms in Mycenaean Greece. The Egyptians exhausted themselves militarily over the Hittites. Then the Hittites succumbed to the rising power of the Assyrians, who were based in northern Mesopotamia.
Drought in the southern Levant provoked the conflicts that led to the Bronze Age Collapse. For one, the climate change foreclosed the possibility of Egypt ever getting back to the level of prosperity it once enjoyed.
