In 1177 BC, Eric Cline focuses on these very questions, answering in effect:

A) the Bronze Age Collapse was a relative sudden end to a three-hundred year period of “global” economic and cultural exchange in the eastern Mediterranean. He argues that the causes remain unknown but are most likely a combination of climate change, natural disasters, famine, drought, the end of international trade, disruptions caused foreign invasions (peaceful or not), and possibly other causes.

B) Consequences: the empires that traded goods and had diplomatic ties stopped doing so, the configuration of who had power changed, and the sense of shared cultures were suspended. What it means was the end of cultural exchange for hundreds of years, not reaching the degree of globalization for many centuries; loss of population; collapse of palaces and palatial civilizations; breaking of diplomatic ties; new powers rising, generally city states rather than empires as before; old powers receding and hybridizing into new forms.

Thus the period marks a turning point in human history that led in time to entirely new and unexpected developments, including the alphabet, monotheistic religion and democracy, which counter factually may not have emerged had the collapse not occurred. That’s Cline’s argument and how he concludes the book.

u/UndercoverClassicist wrote a superb post on the Bronze Age "collapses" and why Eric Cline's view of the end of the Bronze Age is rather more apocalyptic and dramatic than was probably the case in Did people realize they were part of a civilizational collapse during the bronze age collapse?

Additionally, I touched on this with regard to the Hittite empire in How did the civilizations fall in the end of the Bronze Age?