The Late Bronze Age collapse was a time of widespread societal collapse during the 12th century BC associated with environmental change, mass migration, and the destruction of cities. The collapse affected a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, in particular Egypt, eastern Libya, the Balkans, the Aegean, Anatolia, and, to a lesser degree, the Caucasus. It was sudden, violent, and culturally disruptive for many Bronze Age civilizations, and it brought a sharp economic decline to regional powers, notably ushering in the Greek Dark Ages.
The Hittite Empire around 1300 BC
View of the Megaron of the palace at Tiryns, one of the many Greek palaces destroyed during the Bronze Age Collapse
Sea Peoples in their ships during the battle with the Egyptians. Relief from the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu
The Ancient Egypt and main polities in Eurasia around 1000 BC
Societal collapse is the fall of a complex human society characterized by the loss of cultural identity and of social complexity as an adaptive system, the downfall of government, and the rise of violence. Possible causes of a societal collapse include natural catastrophe, war, pestilence, famine, economic collapse, population decline or overshoot, mass migration, incompetent leaders, and sabotage by rival civilizations. A collapsed society may revert to a more primitive state, be absorbed into a stronger society, or completely disappear.
Destruction, from The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole (1836)
Desolation, from The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole (1836)
The Thirty Years' War devastated much of Europe and was one of the many political upheavals during the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, which is causally linked to the Little Ice Age.
The angel of death striking a door during the plague of Rome; engraving by Levasseur after Jules-Elie Delaunay (1828–1891).
