Sometime around the year 1100 BC, right at the end of the Bronze Age, a wave of destruction washed over the Eastern Mediterranean. It wiped whole civilizations off the map, and left only ash and ruin in its wake.

This catastrophe, known as “the Late Bronze Age Collapse”, has become one of the enduring puzzles of archaeology. I want to explore how so many societies could collapse all at once, and seemingly without warning, as well as examine the lessons it might teach us in our increasingly globalised and interconnected world.