2584 AM · 1177 BCE · world history
The Bronze Age Collapse and the Sea Peoples
Within half a century nearly every power of the eastern Mediterranean collapses.
The Hittite empire vanishes, Mycenaean palaces burn, Ugarit is erased, and Egypt barely repels invaders its inscriptions call the Sea Peoples. Drought, earthquakes, famine, broken trade networks and migration all seem to combine. Writing is forgotten in Greece for centuries, and small new kingdoms rise from the wreckage.
Sources
Documents of the period
- documents and chronicles of the period — the Medinet Habu inscriptions on the “sea peoples” and the last letters from Ugarit
Scholarship
- general histories of the region — the debate over the causes: drought, earthquakes, the breakdown of trade
Basis: documents and evidence.