The Late Bronze Age collapse

The Late Bronze Age collapse. Every palace state in the eastern Mediterranean goes dark inside about fifty years, and Linear B — Uruk's instrument again, a script that existed to count what the palace owned — stops being written for four centuries.

In plain words

Within about fifty years every palace kingdom of the eastern Mediterranean falls, and Linear B, a script kept to count what the palace owned, is not written again. What rises in the gap is small and tribal, writing with an alphabet nobody licenses.

The mechanism

BOARD CLEARED — the ledger-states that held writing are gone, and what comes up in the gap is small, tribal and carrying an alphabet nobody had to license

How it was checked

• EvidenceT6 PHYSICAL / MANUSCRIPT; Status: COMMITTED; a capture
• Letter eraTHE ENCLOSURE AT THE BIRTH OF WRITING c. 3500 to c. 1150 BC
• Plate — Linear B clay tablet from Pylos, National Archaeological Museum, Athens · CC BY-SA 4.0 · source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Linear_B_tablet_Clay_from_Pylos_end_of_13th_century_BCE_NAM_Athens_01.jpg
• SourcesARCHAEOLOGY — destruction layers, the cessation of Linear B