We have ancient DNA from exactly ten individuals from Ashkelon across three periods.

We have zero ancient DNA from Hattusa, from Mycenae, from Pylos, from the ships that crossed the Mediterranean.

The evidence we have is the merest sampling of the biological reality of the ancient world.

This disproportion — between the enormity of the event and the thinness of the surviving evidence — is the permanent condition of ancient history.

We know about the Bronze Age Collapse at all only because the specific combination of monumental architecture (Medinet Habu), durable writing medium (clay tablets), unusual preservation conditions (the fire at Pylos), and modern archaeological techniques have produced a fragmentary but real record.

The people who lived through the Bronze Age Collapse and left no record — who were never commemorated in temple reliefs, who wrote on perishable materials that did not survive, who died in the destruction of cities that have never been excavated — are as real as Ramesses III and as unknown as the anonymous warrior in a feathered headdress on the walls of Medinet Habu.