The palace centers that administered this world were sophisticated bureaucratic operations.

The Linear B tablets from Mycenaean sites like Pylos in Greece — the writing system that was deciphered only in 1952 — show detailed inventories of goods and workers, elaborate administrative systems for managing agricultural production, and records of craftsmen and their specializations that suggest a command economy of considerable complexity.

And then it all collapsed.

Within roughly a generation, between about 1200 and 1150 BCE, the following occurred: The Hittite capital Hattusa was burned and abandoned.

The Mycenaean palace centers at Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, and other sites were destroyed.