
The enigma of bronze age tin - Hooke
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-enigma-bronze-age-tin.html
======
ummonk
This is significant because one of the hypotheses for the spectacular Late
Bronze Age Collapse is the loss of ability to source tin.

~~~
ncmncm
The Catastrophe, defined as the simultaneous destruction of almost all the
Mediterranean cities around 1190 BCE, is taken as the end of the Bronze Age.
It appears to have been the result of a military innovation. Widespread
collapse of civilization seems sufficient to cause trading networks to lapse.

If trade was falling off before that, it could be that the new iron swords
coming out of northern Italy were driving down demand, and metal from the now
useless bronze swords entering the market.

Hardly anything written for a few centuries after the Catastrophe survives, so
the prospect of resolving the question seems dim.

------
anarchyrucks
This[0] episode of the Fall of Civilizations Podcast talks about this incident
in more detail.

[0]
[https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/01/21/episode-2-...](https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/01/21/episode-2-is-
now-live/)

------
ncmncm
The astonishing nature of this revelation cannot be overstated. How did people
in Turkey and Palestine, at the time the Great Pyramid was being built in
Egypt 4500 years ago, know there was tin ore in England? How did people in
England know anybody wanted it, a thousand miles away? There were no cities in
between, no open-ocean sailing vessels. How did it even get across the
Channel?

There was clearly a hell of a lot going on all over Europe and Asia that
didn't need cities or books.

I don't know if finding cloves from the Moluccas in a middle-class house in
Syria in 2000 BCE is more, or less astonishing.

