What Caused the Late Bronze Age Collapse?

# Stuff You Should Know: Bronze Age Collapse

Josh and Chuck dive deep into one of history's most fascinating mysteries: how an advanced, interconnected Bronze Age civilization spanning the entire Mediterranean suddenly collapsed around 1200 BCE. The episode explores how the discovery of bronze metallurgy sparked humanity's first real civilization—creating trade networks, governments, and the division of labor that allowed art, writing, and science to flourish. But then, in just 50 years, almost everything fell apart, and historians still debate whether it was caused by the mysterious "Sea People" raiders, catastrophic droughts, devastating earthquakes, climate refugees, or some perfect storm combination of all these disasters hitting at once.