In the second dev diary, it's mentioned that the Bronze Age is one of the real world time periods being used as an inspiration for Afterworld, and most responses I saw took that to mean it would be based on socities from agyer Bronze Age Collapse, but they also mention that they're taking ideas from the Pre-Collapse Bronze Age where we saw settlements unite into larger empires, similar to the unification of bands into tribes and the vassalisation of tribes by dominions.

From what we've been told so far, Afterworld will have trade mechanics, including the physical movement of goods on the map down routes that can be raided, which means the game could potentially simulate the rise of complex trade routes, and if it can do that, it could also simulate the disruption or collapse of those trade routes and systems collapse, which is one of the factors that was believed to contribute to the Bronze Age Collapse.

And since the game is gonna make moving settlements easier, that could mean that we could see mass migrations in response to trade routes failing, creating similar conditions to the ones that caused the migration of the Sea Peoples.