The near-simultaneous destruction of every major civilization in the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BCE — the Mycenaeans, the Hittites, the Egyptians, the Ugaritic trading city — ending the first great age of international trade and complex palace economies, and remaining one of history's most studied and least explained catastrophes.
Within fifty years around 1200 BCE, almost every major civilization in the eastern Mediterranean ceased to exist. Palaces burned. Writing systems disappeared. Trade networks collapsed. Cities that had stood for centuries were abandoned. The cause remains genuinely unknown. The collapse is history's most complete example of systemic failure — and the closest historical analog to the complex, interconnected vulnerabilities of the modern world.