What caused the Late Bronze Age collapse?

Around 1200 BCE, the palace-based civilisations of the Eastern Mediterranean — Mycenaean Greece, the Hittite Empire, Ugarit and others — collapsed within a few decades. Cities were destroyed, writing systems lost, and long-distance trade networks severed.

Proposed causes include drought, earthquakes, internal revolt, Sea Peoples' raids, and systems failure of an over-connected trade network. Most scholars now favour a multi-cause explanation, but the relative weights remain debated.