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Comment by jhonovich | Hacker News Reader

One theory I have read is that advances in producing iron (a new technology at that time) helped shift how wars were fought and the balance of power between older methods of war and newer ones using iron instruments / swords, etc.

I am not sure if this is factually correct but it was an interesting theory to explain such a fundamental shift / breakdown in the status quo.

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The best theory about combat styles I read was about the shift from chariot mounted archers to massed infantry.

Prior to the collapse the regional powers in the Levant measured might by the length of their chariot lines. The speculation was that skirmishers (possibly from the western Mediterranean basin) were employed to clean up after a volley-pass, and that these skirmishers realized that the horses would go down as easily as wild game, took that knowledge back to their homelands and returned en force.

Iron weapons aren't quite as good as bronze (or so I am told), but can be produced more readily and cheaply and thus can equip a larger force.

As I understand it, the transition to the Iron Age was largely a result of a shortage of tin (e.g. coming from Britain for the western part of the Mediterranean region). Iron weapons at the time weren't better, just more available, and no doubt steadily more as this small scale industry developed. But if you could afford it, you had a bronze sword, which is a pattern I noted a very long time ago WRT Roman legions.

I have read somewhere about a theory that the invulnerability of Achilles might have been down to iron armour being used against bronze weapons.

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