Basically, that we can't talk of Sea Peoples or even proto-Sea peoples being pushed south-eastwards, but rather populations that will form, later, more or less distinguished peoples trough the scope of palatial civilizations as Mycenaeans or Egyptians.
If I understand you right, you are saying that at this stage in history, the populations were not differentiated enough, or we don't have enough resolution in our knowledge to differentiate them properly.
What's generally held these days is climatic change around this time, similar to what happened in the IIIrd century played a role into populations movement. If it's similar to the aformentioned event, then yes, coastal populations would have known some issues with increasing rainfall and coastal changes.
I have been reading about the climate change and it is quite interesting. Bond events. I suspect that if the carrying capacity of the pre-collapse civilizations had gotten quite high, a sudden drop due to climate change could have triggered all sorts of movements over a very short time.
In relation to climate change as a motivator, it is tempting to speculate that nations and groups with different food strategies would have been affected differently. Egypt seems to mainly base itself on the flooding of the Nile river. Groups based on pastoralism or fishing might have come off differently from groups based on traditional agriculture.
That said, these changes would have been more marked not on Mediterranean basin, but on Northern Europe, possibly accompanied by a drought on eastern hinterland..
It seems the preceding period was an unusually cold one in Northern Europe. A climate change might well have meant a warmer climate as well.
http://www.bibracte.fr/fic_bdd/coll_detail_de_fichier/1143537165_Garcia_Vital_WEB.pdf
I should stand corrected once again : you do have traces of changes, while not as brutal as what happened with Terramare : pottery decoration, funeral rites, slow abandonment of some places, possibly due to a new wave of PIE peoples practicing funeral inhumation, possibly chariot-riding..
Intuitively, I feel such a PIE wave cannot have been large, or else the area must have been almost free of PIE previously. Today, the genetics of the area show a lower frequency of PIE genes than elsewhere, indeed Sardinia is almost free of them. I have not seen any samples from the area and period though.
It's worth noting, tough, that western Mediteranean populations in Gaul in the turn of the millenia was tied to Italian influence. Less than a movement of population, it could be the consequences of the end of Terramare; when Late Bronze eventually switch to continental influence.
So while there wouldn't be much structural difference, you did have a cultural change in middle Late Bronze in western mediterranean, followed by a phase of reorganization in the final Late Bronze.
As Dominique Garcia puts it : Late Bronze Age in Provence and mediterranean Gaul is marked by a decline of the meridional component due to nord-alpine influence.
Even if it seems less radical for me (I may be wrong) that First Iron Age events in the region, it's more complex than I put it in the last post. There's changes, but not really issued from western Mediterranean populations that seems to be more passive before the changes in Europe.
Any opinion?
It seems, however, that western Mediterranean populations were more on the "receiving" side, so to speak. The contradiction may be only superficial, but have to be explained.
I don't really know that much about the Bronze Age Western Mediterranean. and sources seem few. However... major sources of tin were located in the western med and northern Europe, and traded over long distances. Iron weapons were originally inferior to bronze. Did the collapses disruption of trade hasten Europe into the iron age?
If so, that would be another factor in favour of the western med during the collapse.
Since I last posted, I've had a bit of a search around the new information we are getting from the genetics of ancient remains. The results have been disappointing. About ~100 ancient people sequenced, and nothing from the western med in the time period we are looking at. Some specimens from Iberia, but much older.
Interestingly, though we have a couple of German samples from the time period or close. Not a precise overlap with the battle, but not incredibly far away. One dates to 2 200 - 1600 BC and is from the Unetice culture, and just over the Czech border. It is quite a standout, due to the very high proportion of Western European Hunter-gatherer DNA. Over 30 % It shares this characteristic with a specimen from Hungary, between 1600 - 1100 BC. This one contains much less PIE DNA though.
Then we have a sample from further north, Halberstadt. About 1100 BC. No Hunter-Gatherer DNA. More PIE than current European populations, even Norwegians, the rest is the Early Farmer DNA. Very similar to samples from a close area, which are a bit over 1000 years older.
I am afraid I really haven't found anything on the western med yet. No doubt we'll see some published eventually though. There is of course a lot on the present population, but that doesn't really tell us much.
To me, though, it does appear that there were two distinct cultural continuums at the time. The megalith builders seem to have been mainly descended form the early European farmers with some DNA absorbed from earlier European hunter-gatherers. When t he population density got high enough, they also seem to have favoured joined-up buildings without much emphasis on public buildings.
And the Indo-Europeans, or Yamnaya, who seem associated with the hillforts. Also burial mounds but this seems to be a cultural trait extending further than them.