No single cause — not drought, not earthquakes, not the Sea Peoples, not internal political problems — was sufficient to explain the collapse on its own.

It was the combination that proved fatal to the Bronze Age system.

Who They Were: The Evidence Before DNA

For many decades, the primary evidence for the identity of the Sea Peoples came from archaeology — specifically, from the distinctive material culture associated with them at sites in the Levant and the Aegean.

The Philistines provide the most detailed case study.

After the battles with Ramesses III, the Peleset (Philistines) appear to have been settled or to have settled themselves on the southern Levantine coast, in the region of what is now the Gaza Strip and southern Israel.