#history #system-failure #collapse

idea

The bronze age civilizations were highly successful civilizations around the easter mediterranean (Egypt, Mycenaeans - ie meso Greece, Hittites, and Assyrians), from ~ 1500BC to ~1000BC.

Civilizations were highly organized around bronze, which is made of tin and copper. While copper is highly available, tin is rare and mainly available in Assyria. Egypt was extremely fertile, Mycenaeans were building sought after art. This rendered world trade both desireable and necessary for those civilizations at the scale they had.

Government grew to a highly hierarchical system, with state controlling mining and agricultural operations, pertaining to highly efficient crop cultures, and extraction.

The cause for the sudden and total decline of these civilizations is not certain, theories range from natural disasters to famine and war. However what is certain is that their system collapsed: food production might have dropped, which made it impossible to sustain the large number of non-producer of society. World trade ceased, making it more complex to build machinery and weapons necessary for society to function.

links

references

Extra History (Youtube) / Bronze Age Collapse discussed the collapse.