Does there exist a system modeling the late bronze-age collapse?

>and no-one knows exactly why

Wasn't it become tin became too expensive or difficult for most of the great empires to acquire?

Actually, while Egyptian records that have survived do not mention a group of slaves rebelling, they do mention a group of mercenaries leaving. Surviving Canaanite records of the time mention a cult/group of mercenaries invading.
The most likely truth behind the narrative is that the original Jews were dedicated worshipers of the Canaanite war god, who hired themselves out as mercenaries. In those times, mercs hired on in generational contracts, bringing their families with them. In Egypt and many places, mercs were legally slaves - and thus when they were not in military service, they had to take the work of a slave. Eventually, they took advantage of the general bronze age collapse to invade their homeland and remove all opposition to their favored god.
There is also the idea that they were mercs who sold out their homeland to the Egyptians, or even rebels against the Egyptian rule of portions of their homeland.
It could even be all of them combined. The Bible does show every sign of being a mytho-historical legitimization text.
Now, back to OP. Strangely enough, Exodus has some answers, especially in the original Hebrew and Aramaic. Looking at the list of plagues, it's generally consistent with major ecological disruption - frogs being picked up by winds and dropped, cattle getting the pox, crop failure, you get the point. There was a volcano going off, you had probable extensive trade, and most likely several other factors that contributed before you get into the raid response to the agricultural issues.
Any questions that I can research an answer to?

>frogs being picked up by winds and dropped
Except for that tiny phrase, I love you, user.
Tell us the real history of the collapse, researchanon: was it tin? sea peoples? merc jews? everyone tired of assyrian bullshit? what killed civilization in 1000 bc????

The east mediterranean economy simply collapsed. All those empires relied heavily on trade with each other, they could no longer survive once their trade ties were cut.

Awesome! The answer I suspected...and what did that collapse entail? Who dropped the economic ball? How/why? What the hell WAS their economy?

based

Fuck off. The jews never migrated to Israel, they had always been in Israel.

Jews are just Canaanites that removed all but one of their gods.

>The Bible does show every sign of being a mytho-historical legitimization text.
Oh yeah, I used to believe that too.

Until I realised that you need some serious suspension of disbelief and to be very creative with dating for it to work (hence why Christians and Muslims dislike carbon-dating).

Wasn't this volcanic eruption(s) or am I thinking of wrong time period?

Well you could do it with any number of systems, it also depends on how you want to play it.

I've seriously considered using something Call of Cthulhu based, and having the collapse caused by the Stars Becoming Right.

The Sea People as a mythos cult.

The demigods spoken of in the bronze age actually being from unspeakable deities.

And Egypt turning to the Dark Pharaoh for protection.

Sort of Delta Green in the Green Deltas

Other user here.

The critical point should be the collapse of Cyprus, which was the Mediterraneans main source of copper. Without copper no bronze, understandably a mayor deal in the bronze age. Aside from its obvious usefulness as tool and weapon material, ingots were possibly a pseudo currency for trade.
It is my understanding that Cyprus was invaded by the Sea Peoples who where themselves migrating because of a drought from possibly Sardinia.
Also the time correlates with a possible earthquake sequence in Asia minor. The buildings of "Troy" for example show earthquake damage.
The bronze age collapse is kind of the product of the strain cased by several events in close sequence.

Every mytho-historical text plays with dates to lend greater age-weight to their legitimacy in the eyes of the generation they're being written for. Compare the Old Testament to the Kojiki, for example. The Kojiki and many following texts add Emperors to create a longer lineage for the Yamato. Bible is no better (says the ex-jew)
>Frogs
It has actually happened before, go look it up. Small frogs can be picked up by high enough winds and carried long distances (dependent on weather system response to terrain). Several species will hibernate at that height, leading to a higher than expected survival rate when falling from the sky. Most just go splat though, which can be just as disturbing.
You are correct, the economic collapse was the primary factor in the population reduction - it's about the only thing that explains the city-sacking spree of the collapse.
There were other factors, but the economic collapse and raiding was the primary reason we call it a collapse.
As stated before, there was a volcanic eruption (The Hekla 3 is about that time, and created an ~18 year cooldown globally), a long-term drought, changes in ice sheet dynamics (called bond events, tentatively linked to some environmental changes), and that feeds a lot into what the base economy of each area was based on: Agriculture. Without food, you have nothing, and if food is hard to grow, cities die from raiders and malnutrition. That also cuts trade routes, and if someone is dependent on food imports, but you need that food for your city, and your raiders are diseased from malnutrition... We see a lot of factors feeding into each other, but I personally think its safe to say that everything that lead to the collapse was agricultural issues that triggered the collapse of trade routes and the shared economy. And with raiding, disease, and starvation. you lose people, meaning that you lose labor that you needed to grow more food and build everything else.

It really was the "perfect storm" event. Any one or two of these events were survivable and indeed the ancient world had to endure droughts, wars and plagues with some regularity. But to have ALL of these happening at once had a snowball effect.

Or the Sea Peoples which are painted so negatively are actually non degenerate yet half barbaric humans who are sick and tired of the Mythos worshipping Near East that they launch a massive expedition to destroy the mythos cults before they can doom the world.

Using drought, climate change and earth quakes the various Near Eastern City States attempted to summon their eldritch City Lords into existence.

The Sea Peoples successfully stopped many of these but were slaughtered enmass by the Crawling Darkness Pharoah,

Yeah, we see a hell of a lot of crap happening at once (see what I said in ), which is why we also see some religious upheavals in the same time frame (see the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah becoming a thing), as most cultures would've taken the entire thing as a religious sign of something.
We also see the beginning of the spread of Iron-working, and iron is a lot more common than copper. It's also superior to bronze for weapon and tool materials (but not art, see the Japanese Jomon period and the practical/ritual split in their uses of iron and bronze), so combining the two makes mass warfare and equipping armies a lot easier to perform.

That could also work.

I was just thinking it would be good to fulfil "The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return."

This is a good thread. I like it.

W-what happened to Cyprus, Other user?

yeah, just play runescape

Raided and invaded by the Sea Peoples. Archeologic record shows that many coastal settlements were abandoned in favor of most unpleasant and logistically cumbersome mountain retreats for better defensibility and early warning. They stayed there year round.

I think you meant Runequest because Runescape is not bronze age.

>It has actually happened before, go look it up. Small frogs can be picked up by high enough winds and carried long distances (dependent on weather system response to terrain).
I thought it was frog eggs somehow getting up into the clouds, like when it rains Fish.

Stayed hidden even during the Mediterranean winter, when sea travel was hazardous? The sea folk attacked year-round? And what became of these raiders?
Oh, and thanx by the way...

Erm, raining frogs and raining fish are metaphors, anons...

Well all I can say is that the habitations were build as permanent settlements. So maybe they did. I believe you are not inclined to take chances when your life is at stake. After all what if an attack comes earlier or later than expected?

They have happened IRL though.

Not that user (It's Research user!), but everything that I'm seeing from a cursory search was that the Hittites invaded to secure the copper sources. Then there was also the Sea People's raids.
Mostly, it looks like it goes back to agriculture. That's most of your problems in ancient cultures, even when it's hidden behind religious style recording.

science.howstuffworks.com/nature/climate-weather/storms/rain-frog.htm
The same basic principles apply to fish as well.
Rest assured, many fantastic things from ancient records have at least a portion of their roots in scientifically possible events.
Rivers of blood can be an earthquake releasing massive amounts of iron oxide into the water, or an algae bloom.

Thank you Research user (and Other user, too!) You gents have been very courteous and forthcoming, and edumacational.
So, Cyprus was source of copper. Presumably a kingdom or colony. Shit starts going 'wonky' all over tha earth. Folk start robbing Cyprus, fucking up trade even more. Cyprus invaded by biggest baddest neighbor. More pirates 'n shit. Collapse. Perhaps some protogreek or not!jew mercs as the pirates. Anything I've missed or gotten wrong?

>Rivers of blood can be an earthquake releasing massive amounts of iron oxide into the water, or an algae bloom.
O-or a METAPHOR!!!!
Fucking literalist shits.
(See what I did with pic related? Who King Croesus here?)

Quite possible, but starting about Exodus the Bible gets more into semi-historical religious legitimization than mythic origins, meaning extraordinary events become mythologized and turned to their political needs.
I grew up Jewish and started really looking into the sociopolitical context of the original oral traditions, so I'm used to looking at the Bible as political tool.
Did the Merc leader call it down? No. Did the descendants of his followers make into religious propaganda and claim he did? Most probably.
About the only thing of the plagues than can be considered actual proto-jewish action is the death of the first born, which would've been assassins who were later mythologized into a single harbinger of their god. The first born is important, because they were drafted into the Egyptian military and priesthood, so the death of them was basically a terrorist act intended to cripple their religio-political and military personnel infrastructure. It most likely did not effect the entire Egyptian area, just the local area that the proto-jewish mercs were living in, but was later mythologized to have such an expansive area.
At the end of the New Kingdom Era, leading into the 3rd Intermediate Period (Which was cocurrent with the Late Bronze Age Collapse), there are records of major civil unrest, which usually include lots of rebels striking against such targets.

>About the only thing of the plagues than can be considered actual proto-jewish action is the death of the first born, which would've been assassins who were later mythologized into a single harbinger of their god
Or, y'know, a less literalist eye might see, umm, a metaphor! The first born, in judaic thought, belongs to God; only natural for them to then make up a rousing tale about how almighty God took back His own (egyptian firstborns) to protect His own (speshul people). No assassins, no killing, just the story we tell ourselves to feel better than those dirty egyptian bastards.
And quit derailing a history thread with Bible talk.