GoKawiilNew analysis revisits causes of the Bronze Age collapse
Patrick Fitzsimmons examines the Bronze Age collapse, the abrupt decline of major eastern Mediterranean powers—including the Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians and Mycenaean Greeks—within a few centuries of the Battle of Kadesh around 1274 BC. The piece traces how these bureaucratically advanced, tax-collecting, army-raising civilizations largely vanished or shrank drastically, and questions the standard explanation involving droughts and invasions by the so-called Sea Peoples.