Welcome to the greatest mystery of the ancient world. In the 12 Century BCE, the greatest civilizations of the ancient world were suddenly and violently either eradicated or weakened so badly that they never recovered.  Almost every city of importance was demolished, most of them never inhabited again.  The Late Bronze Age was a dynamic, intriguing, optimistic time with vast nations and empires trading, writing letters, building and creating, traveling, intermarrying, and making war. And all of it, incomprehensibly, would end in a period of a few decades.  This episode is an introduction to the Empires and Kingdoms of North Africa, the Aegean, Levant, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia -- the worlds original (semi) global society