Ofterdingen and Kropotkin

Imagine a sophisticated, economically interdependent world, with complex alliances and international treaties, where imperialist rulers wage wars of aggression for scarce resources, ruin trade and prosperity, and make civilization collapse so badly that even the art of writing is lost. So once it was - in about 1200 BC, when the Bronze Age of the Eastern Mediterranean came to a catastrophic and largely unexplained end.
Richard Janko, TLS, April 15, 2005