1177 The Year Civilization Collapsed - Eric H. Cline

An attempt to get to the bottom of what happened in the early 12th c BC, which saw the collapse of every current major civilization in the eastern Mediterranean.  Cline begins with a thorough overview of the world of the late Bronze Age.  It is a fascinating picture, with every civilization built around a ruling political/religious elite that governed from a central palace temple complex.  Most of these political religious elites also ran the economy, both internally and external trade.   At least at the elite level, this was a very international, interconnected period, with lots of movement of both luxury goods and goods essential to the elites - such things as tin for weapon making, gold, as well as emergency food supplies to hand out to the populace in years of failed crops.  I picture the sailors of these ships from Crete, from Egypt, from Ugarit, from Greece sitting down for a few drinks in bars in the  big port towns of the time - that would have been really travelling!

Turns out the Sea People are a difficult group to pin down.  Their presence outside of the documented attacks on Egypt and probably Ugarit, is pretty difficult to determine.  Much of the destructions blamed on them seems to have been the result of earthquakes and local rebellions rather than warfare. It seems this area may have collapsed due to a series of natural disasters - earthquakes, prolonged droughts, climate shift - coupled with some external raiding, some migration pressures (perhaps caused by the natural disasters), some political upheaval, and a breakdown of a complex system of economic exchange.  The large political units  have evolved a complex system of interdependence and when that began to fray, it dragged most of the involved players down.  It may have been that the elites lost the wealth needed to maintain their position and either buy or enforce compliance from their subjects.

Like with the fall of the Roman Empire, the area seems to have slipped into a "Dark Age" - smaller, more local political units, loss of culture, building techniques and established art styles (and writing in the case of Mycenean Greece), falling off of trade and long-distance exchange, idealization of the preceding Golden Age.

It is so long ago, it may never be possible to determine the exact causes and sequence of events at that time.