The Sea Peoples and the Bronze Age Collapse left a deep imprint on the human cultures that came after — imprints that can still be traced in mythology, in literature, and in the oral traditions that eventually found their way into written form.

Homer’s epics are the most obvious case.

The Iliad and the Odyssey, composed several centuries after the events they describe, preserve memories — distorted by time and poetic elaboration, but perhaps not entirely invented — of a world that had been destroyed.

The great heroes of Homer are Mycenaean heroes: Agamemnon, king of Mycenae; Achilles, from the Mycenaean realm of Phthia; Odysseus, king of Ithaca.

The world they inhabit is a Bronze Age world of palace centers, gift exchange, heroic combat, and long-distance sea voyages.