Migration does not preserve cultural traditions unchanged; it transforms them.

The Weight Of What Was Lost

The Bronze Age Collapse is one of the most dramatic examples of civilizational regression in human history.

To appreciate its full significance, it is worth considering not just what was destroyed but what was not rebuilt.

The Mycenaean palace system — the administrative complex that maintained the Linear B bureaucracy and coordinated the economic and military activities of the Mycenaean world — was never rebuilt after its destruction.

The Greeks of the subsequent centuries had no writing, no palace administration, no long-distance trade of comparable complexity.