1177 B.C.

The Year Civilization Collapsed

by Eric H. Cline · 2014

In 1177 B.C., a cascade of crises—most famously the incursions of the mysterious Sea Peoples—shattered the interconnected world of the Late Bronze Age. Eric H. Cline’s *1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed* offers a bold, evidence‑based reassessment of why the great powers of the eastern Mediterranean—Egypt, the Hittites, Mycenaean Greece, the Minoans, the Babylonians and others—fell in rapid succession. Drawing on archaeological finds, the Amarna letters, Linear B tablets and the latest scholarship, Cline shows how climate stress, internal rebellions, economic disruption and external invasions combined to produce a systemic collapse. The book makes this complex, pivotal era accessible to a general audience while retaining scholarly rigor, and it situates the Bronze Age’s fall as a turning point that reshaped the course of Western civilization.