The Bronze Age collapse
Eight kingdoms fall within fifty years
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The Hittite empire, Mycenaean Greece, Ugarit and the trading system that bound them together vanished almost simultaneously. The Bronze Age dependence on long-distance tin trade made the system brittle: when one link broke, the whole chain fell. Climate proxies show a prolonged drought in the eastern Mediterranean, and the sources mention the "Sea Peoples" — probably a symptom rather than a cause. The collapse is one of history's clearest cases of systemic risk in tightly coupled economies.
For children
In just a few decades nearly every great kingdom around the Mediterranean collapsed. Cities burned, trade stopped, and in some regions people even forgot how to write. We do not fully know why — probably drought, famine, war and revolt all struck at once.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org