alt Hacker NewsThe Bronze Age collapsed for many reasons but the event that really kicked things off was the explosion of Santorini. The empires that died were not quickly replaced because after extensive famines and invasions they were replaced by different people with different social objectives.
The same thing happened later in Europe when Germanic and Asian tribes displaced the Roman and Celtic tribes of Western Europe.
This is only challenging to understand if you falsely believe civilization and technological advancement to be socially preferable. Historically that is not the case. Civilization tends to emerge not of preference but out of unwanted necessity to regulate resource production/distribution.
Replies
>>>The same thing happened later in Europe when Germanic and Asian tribes displaced the Roman and Celtic tribes of Western Europe.
If you are referring to Hungarians as Asian people, then by majority their genetics is very local - very local, that they are similar to rest of Slavics around them. The same applies to Western Europeans that were as you have stated "displaced by Germanic" - even in UK it is a mix of local population, when the migratory Germanic population % is high, thought nothing to do with Roman Empire, as it was rather internal migration withing Danish Kingdom(long long long time after Rome was gone) that was spanned across Northern Europe, and included England as one of their lands - for that reason we have dna from Estonia(Eastland in Danish) appearing in those ancient English lineages...
However, Dark Ages that followed invasions of German people in Rome, where concrete recipe and other modern technologies were lost and forgotten is more relatable to what happened in Bronze Age Collapse. You simply do not need any of that knowledge when busy of looting. Also, looting of villas in Rome was technically not done by foreigners, but rather by disgruntled employers that were hired to guard Rome(Goths) - the fact that Rome gave rights for Goths to loot border provinces(as a a payment, because they lacked money to pay them) that they were guarding(and where they were settled) seems stupid(because we see results of that), but also we can read about local servants joining in destruction of villas of their rulers during final days of Rome. So, just like then, also now in the case of societal collapse of modern civilization you have to be afraid that you will be robbed mainly from locals, though "foreign" robbers already are better at that, showing extreme proficiency at doing exactly that today.
Santorini may have helped cause the Minoan collapse, not the LBAC which occurred c.400 years later.
>the event that really kicked things off was the explosion of Santorini
That was centuries before. Volcanic winter(s) for sure occurred, but they would be distant memory if anything by the time of the collapse.