The most recent edition[1] of the Long Now Monthly Seminar series[2] focuses on this:<p><pre><code>  Eric Cline: 1177 B.C.: When Civilization Collapsed
  Released: Jan 12, 2016

  Consider this, optimists. All the societies in the world can 
  collapse simultaneously. It has happened before. In the 12th 
  century BCE the great Bronze Age civilizations of the 
  Mediterranean —all of them— suddenly fell apart. Their 
  empires evaporated, their cities emptied out, their 
  technologies disappeared, and famine ruled. Mycenae, Minos, 
  Assyria, Hittites, Canaan, Cyprus — all gone. Even Egypt fell 
  into a steep decline. The Bronze Age was over. The event 
  should live in history as one of the great cautionary tales, 
  but it hasn’t because its causes were considered a mystery. 
  How can we know what to be cautious of? Eric Cline has taken 
  on on the mystery. An archaeologist-historian at George 
  Washington University, he is the author of 1177 B.C.: The 
  Year Civilization Collapsed. The failure, he suggests, was 
  systemic. The highly complex, richly interconnected system of 
  the world tipped all at once into chaos.
</code></pre>
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