Bronze Age Collapse

Beneath the coastal soil of northern Syria, ten kilometers north of modern Latakia, lies the accumulated debris of some seven thousand years of continuous human habitation.

High on a hill rising 274 meters above the Argive plain, the ruins of Mycenae command the strategic routes leading to the Isthmus of Corinth.

Before the Greeks named them, the people of the eastern Mediterranean coast called themselves Canaanites.

Centuries before the philosophers of Athens debated in the agora, a warrior elite ruled the Greek mainland from monumental palace-states like Pylos, Tiryns, and Mycenae itself.

Between 1200 and 1150 BCE, a sudden and violent rupture fractured the ancient world, shattering the great, interconnected powers of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East.