“there was no 1200 BC collapse, no “Sea Peoples” in 1200 BC, no 1177 BC collapse”
“1200 BC” is simply a rounding - “Circa” 1200 BC, if you like.
The term “Sea Peoples” may be a modern term for a collection of peoples (Ekwesh, Teresh, Sherden, the Sheklesh, Lukka, Tursha and Akawasha) who attacked and destroyed many of the cities/societies of the region - but the term not being contemporaneous is very different from them not existing.
Starting about a hundred years before 1177 BC, three great pharaohs recorded their conflicts and victories over the “Sea Peoples” - Ramesses II (The Great, 1279-1213 BCE), his son and successor Merenptah (1213-1203 BCE), and Ramesses III (1186-1155 BCE). All three claimed great victories over their adversaries and their inscriptions provide the most detailed evidence of the Sea Peoples - including on prime real estate in Karnak, and on Pharaonic funerary steles.
“Circa” 1200 BC the Hittite State was destroyed, and cities in the region continued to be overrun and laid waste by this coalition, until their culminating defeat by Ramses III in a naval battle off of the city of Xois in 1178 BCE - which left the Egyptian treasury depleted, unable to pay their workers, and their traditional regional trading partners in ruins and political chaos.
The next year, 1177 BC, began a generations-long period of relative isolation and low trade levels around the Eastern Mediterranean, until societies and economies rebuilt themselves.
The "Sea Peoples" were non-existent, in that they have left behind no distinctive weapons, graves, written language, forts, towns or other construction, and most oddly, no shipwrecks. Anywhere. Regurgitating erroneous dates from wikipedia etc is meaningless.
Dr. Velikovsky points out (p. 35) that "in the hieroglyphic texts of the Persian era... Persia is always called P-r-s" and that in the Canopus Decree, cut in stone, in 238 B.C., the Persians are referred to as P-r-s-tt. (There were no vowels in the alphabet.) The Canopus Decree is written both in Egyptian and in Greek. In Egyptian it describes the carrying off of the sacred images of Egypt by the Pereset and in Greek it tells of them being carried off by the Persians. But Dr. Velikovsky did not limit his identification of the Pereset as Persians to this evidence, although it would have been enough for a less careful and exacting scholar. In addition, he compares the clothing, armaments and appearances of the Persian soldiers and officers, as they are depicted in the bas reliefs in Persepolis and Nakhsh-i-Rustam, with those of the Pereset as depicted in the murals of the temple at Habinet Habu. The striking similarities are unmistakable. Finally, Dr. Velikovsky compares, step by step, the events described in annals left by Ramses III of his war with the Pereset and the Peoples of the Sea, with the descriptions by Diodorus of Sicily of the details of the war of Nectanebo I against the Persians and the Greek mercenaries. This comparison is made in such meticulous detail that the only logical conclusions are that both were describing the same war; that the Pereset and the Persians were the same people and that Ramses III was the Pharaoh whom the Greeks called "Nectanebo I." Incidentally, Dr. Velikovsky, quoting E. Wallis Budge, The Book of Kings (London 1908) Vol. II p. I, points out that one of the "Horus names" of Ramses III was Nectanebo (Nekht-a-neb).
Letter to the Editor of the New York Times Book Review by E. R. Langenbac, May 2, 1977