1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

by Eric H. Cline

Moreover, while we do not know for certain the cause, or all the causes, of the collapse of the Bronze Age world in Greece, Egypt, and the Near East, the weight of contemporary evidence suggests that it was probably not the Sea Peoples alone who were to blame. It now seems likely that they were as much the victims as they were the aggressors in the collapse of civilizations.28 One hypothesis suggests that they were forced out of their homes by a series of unfortunate events and migrated eastward where they encountered kingdoms and empires already in decline. It is also quite possible that they were able to attack and ultimately vanquish many of the kingdoms of the region precisely because those monarchies were already in decline and in a weakened state. In this context, the Sea Peoples might perhaps be considered simply opportunistic, as one scholar has called them, and might have settled down in the Eastern Mediterranean much more peacefully than has previously been assumed. We shall consider these possibilities in greater detail below.

What were the primary causes for the sea peoples advance on the late bronze age civilizations? Nobody knows for certain, but they may have been victims of circumstances (pushed out by other invaders, climate change) and oppotunisticaly taken advantage of already weakened kingdoms