In the late summer I had a break in my comic about Phill as I needed to make some money on 3d modelling, and also because of my not-to-grand health condition. So while modelling in front of my computer I used some time to educate myself in a part of history that I had never really quite grasped - the so called Bronze Age Collapse.
From the historical sources and from what seemed a rather sudden change in the archaeological findings between c. 1200 and 1150 BC - it has been theorised that all the large civilisations in the Mediterranean suffered some unknown blow that entirely wiped them all, except Egypt, out. I had read a bit about the Sea People once, but it all sounded a bit fantastical and always mixed up with tales of Atlantis and the like. So I tried to find sober discussions of the phenomenon.
So to make it easy for you I have collected two interesting things:
Eric Cline, archaeologist PhD, with his hypothesis of what could be the reason for the collapse. In this video he talks about his ideas, and it is a very good introduction to the period.
The other is a BBC 4 discussion led by Melvyn Bragg. In the last part of the program the guests come up with the surprising idea that the collapse maybe didn't happen at all.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07fl5bh
The truth is that we know so very little and people are prone to guessing! So maybe Mitchell and Webb's guess is as good as anyone?