Superfact 121: Between the years 1200BCE and 1150BCE (3,200 years ago) major civilizations in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilizations vanished or collapsed completely, notably Mycenaean Greece, the Hittite Empire, the Canaanite city-states, civilizations in eastern Libya, Balkans, and Babylon suffered a severe political decline and eventual fall during the Late Bronze Age collapse. Other civilizations such as the Assyrian empire and Egypt survived the Late Bronze Age collapse but emerged severely weakened.
The Mediterranean and Near Eastern civilizations were powerful, important and wealthy, and their sudden collapse is one of the most consequential and mysterious events in history that ended in a dark age that lasted several hundred years, including the Greek Dark Ages, which lasted from c. 1200 BCE to c. 800 BCE.
The reason for the late Bronze Age collapse is being debated but climate change, droughts, and invasions by the so called Sea Peoples are considered to be major reasons. The Trojan war, which is mostly fiction occurred around 1200 BCE. If you watched the recent 2026 movie the Odyssey, you probably notice the frequent references to the Sea Peoples. One of the Sea Peoples was the Philistines. If you want to take a deep dive into the late Bronze Age collapse, click here, or here.
Most of us know about the collapse of the Roman Empire around 400-500 AD and perhaps the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 AD, but the late Bronze Age collapse may come as surprise to many despite it being so consequential, at least I was very surprised when I first learned about it. It was not just civilization collapsing but many at the same time. The collapse is also mysterious and shrouded in mythology. That is why I consider it a super fact.
The Collapse of Mycenaean Greece
The collapse of Mycenaean Greece stands out. No other part of the Eastern Mediterranean suffered a civilizational setback quite as intense as in Greece. I think most of us are aware that after the Mycenaean Greece came other periods in Greece’s history, the Greek Dark Ages, the Archaic period, and classical and Hellenistic periods, Alexander the Great, Plato, Aristotle, etc.
I learned in school that there was a Dorian invasion of Greece that displaced its original population and this led to the Greek Dark Ages before a rebirth of Greek civilization. This is most likely not true. The Mycenaean Greeks were not replaced by modern Greeks; they were the ancient Greeks. What likely happened was that climate change and drought resulted in crop failures, which in turn resulted in people movements and a range of invading peoples around the Mediterranean and the Near East. This is what may be remembered in Homer’s account of the Trojan War.
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