What happened to the Hittites?

The textual evidence from the period is fragmentary, but there are references in Hittite texts from the final years of the empire to grain shortages, military threats from multiple directions, and desperate requests for food supplies.

The same combination of drought stress and external pressure that affected the Levant appears to have affected Anatolia as well.

Archaeological evidence shows that multiple sites in western and southern Anatolia — the coastal zone that includes the areas associated with the Lukka and possibly the Teresh — were destroyed or abandoned during the Bronze Age Collapse.

The populations of these areas were presumably dispersed, and the displaced people of western Anatolia would have been natural recruits for the Sea Peoples movement.