What caused the Bronze Age Collapse?
The Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BCE was likely caused by a perfect storm of interconnected factors: climate change and drought, earthquake damage, internal rebellions, disruption of trade routes, and invasions by the mysterious Sea Peoples. No single cause explains the catastrophe — it was a cascading systems failure.
The Bronze Age Collapse is one of the most dramatic catastrophes in human history. Within a span of just a few decades around 1200 BCE, nearly every major civilization in the eastern Mediterranean collapsed or was severely weakened. The Hittite Empire was destroyed. Mycenaean Greece fell into a dark age. Egypt survived but was permanently diminished. Cities across the Levant were burned and abandoned.
For decades, historians pointed to the Sea Peoples — mysterious maritime raiders mentioned in Egyptian records — as the primary cause. But modern scholarship has moved toward a more complex explanation. The Late Bronze Age civilizations were highly interconnected through trade networks that moved essential resources like tin, copper, grain, and luxury goods across vast distances. This interconnection created prosperity but also systemic fragility.
Climate scientists have confirmed a significant drought affecting the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BCE. This would have stressed agricultural production and triggered famines. Archaeological evidence shows earthquake damage at several sites. Internal social tensions — visible in the destruction of palaces but not surrounding towns — suggest popular uprisings against elites. The Sea Peoples may have been both cause and symptom: displaced populations set in motion by the same forces that were destabilizing established states.
The lesson of the Bronze Age Collapse resonates today: highly interconnected, specialized systems are efficient under stable conditions but catastrophically fragile under stress. When one node in the network failed, the cascading effects brought down the entire system. The parallels to modern globalization have not been lost on contemporary historians.