What seems most likely to me, therefore, is that the combination of all these individual factors created a perfect storm of calamities, with both multiplier and domino effects. This is what would have led to the rapid disintegration of one society after another, in part because of the fragmentation of the global economy and the breakdown of the interconnections upon which each civilization was dependent. In short, the flourishing cultures and peoples of the Bronze Age—from the Mycenaeans and Minoans to the Hittites, Assyrians, Kassites/Babylonians, Cypriots, Mitannians, Canaanites, and even
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