Bronzepocalypse

An entire world once collapsed under its own complexity. History tells us what happened and shows us how quickly everything can change.

By James Asbury

Read Time: 9 minutes

History. Let’s be honest, many of us have heard enough history to last a lifetime. From mind-numbing high school lectures and textbooks that read like the inside of a prison cell. Mention history, and some of us either fall asleep instantly or run to the hills. So when we hear a history nerd get excited about something that happened thousands of years ago, we may roll our eyes and politely nod as they drone on about how exciting it is.

However, the Bronze Age Collapse is not just a footnote from an old textbook. It really matters, and it has so much to teach us. This period encompassed the world when much of the Old Testament was written. A world of wars and rumors of wars. Of earthquakes, famine, and disease. Of cities burning and kingdoms breaking apart. During this time, the world did not simply change; it was obliterated. And in the middle of the ruin, when it looked like everything was lost, God’s hands were still at work in history. The Age of Bronze is far closer to home than you may realize. Let’s dive in.

So what was the Bronze Age?

The Bronze Age spanned from around 3300 BC and came crashing down around 1200 BC.¹ This era is often remembered through desolate temples, abandoned ruins, lost civilizations, and, of course, the metal from which it gets its name. If we’re not careful when we think of this time period, we’ll only see the broken monuments as graves standing over the vanished people they now entomb. And if we do that, we’ll miss the lessons they and their era have to teach us.

The Bronze Age depended on bronze in much the same way as our world depends on oil. Take it away, and the systems that keep it going will fail. In this era, a kingdom without bronze could not arm its soldiers or defend its borders. Bronze is an alloy traditionally composed of copper and tin. But bronze was more than metal; it was the foundation of a very fragile and interconnected civilization. Perhaps the most important thing to realize is that today’s civilization is built on the very same fault lines as the one that fell over 3400 years ago.² From tin routes, copper mines, and letters that passed from kingdom to kingdom, we see a complex web of interdependency, diplomacy, and trade. Pull one thread of the web, and the whole thing is at risk. Pull three, four, or twelve of them; they collapse altogether.³

Like the present age, trade routes and supply lines held the whole thing together. To illustrate how interconnected and complex the systems were in this ancient world, we’ll consider the Uluburun Shipwreck. This merchant ship hailed with great promise from a Canaanite port but never reached safe harbor. It sank off the coast of modern-day Turkey, around 1330-1300 BC.⁴ There it lay hidden deep beneath the waves.

Three millennia passed until a sponge diver spotted it in 1982. In the years that followed, a team from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology affiliated with Texas A&M University embarked on an 11-year excavation. It took over 22,000 dives to recover more than 20 metric tons of artifacts from the murky depths.⁵

What they found was a time capsule of the Bronze Age. On the ship were ten tons of copper ingots and a single ton of tin. Not coincidentally, that is the precise 10:1 ratio smiths used to smelt bronze in that era. The copper likely came from Cyprus, and the tin possibly from as far as Afghanistan.

The copper and tin, however, only tell one part of this ship’s story. The rest of the cargo whispers further tales. Ebony logs from deep Africa were found alongside artifacts from Egypt, such as glass beads and gold scarabs. Bronze swords from Canaan rested near blades made in Italy.⁴ Stone jars that once held olive oil and pomegranates were scattered in the wreckage with more than seven hundred pounds of blue, purple, turquoise, and yellow glass disks for bead making, as well as tens of thousands of completed glass beads.

From somewhere in the distant north, the Baltic coast had provided rare amber that had journeyed over 1,700 miles. Amethyst gemstones were also recovered along with jewelry made of silver, gold, bronze, tin, and glass, all in different styles and makes. Dyes that were intended for the wealthy and resins for rituals all sank together, preserved in the long memory of the sea.

Among the wealth and destruction on the sea floor were scattered merchant balances of Canaanite origin. The balances themselves remain silent witnesses of their long-dead master’s passion and life’s purpose, profit. The Uluburun Shipwreck is a striking beacon from the ancient world that screams of Bronze Age opulence, interconnectedness and how, like our world, everything is smooth sailing, until it isn’t.⁶

The Bronze Age was the first “globalized” or international era in history.⁷ What it teaches us is that the more interconnected the world becomes, the more fragile it is, and the more sensitive it grows to even minor shocks.⁸ These systems were both strong and brittle, just like iron and clay. The complex networks created a dependency on peaceful trade and constant supply. As prosperity swelled, pride, idleness, and fullness of bread metastasized. The pattern is eerily familiar, and if we are honest, all too personal.

Imagine a drought of Biblical scale that is so deep and so merciless that hunger becomes a child’s first lesson. Across the eastern Mediterranean, climate conditions shifted in the years leading up to the collapse. Cave stalactites from the Peloponnese to the Soreq Cave in Israel preserve evidence of extremely arid conditions.⁹

Additionally, sediment core samples and pollen records from the Dead Sea region show a decline in tree pollen across the Late Bronze Age, replaced by hardier drought-resistant species.¹⁰ Even tree rings in Anatolia suggest acute climate stress in the years near the end of the 13th century BC.¹¹

This drought and famine that followed was but one catastrophe that fueled social unrest to a fever pitch as civil society disintegrated before their very eyes. As hunger deepened, immune systems weakened, and disease spread.

When it seemed the world could bear no more, there was a new terror on the horizon. An armada of ships haunted the setting sun. History simply calls this unknown confederation the Sea Peoples. They showed up soaked in violence and dressed for the end of the world. They alone didn’t cause the collapse, but they were the final deathblow of an age already coming apart at the seams.

The collapse began at the coasts, and from there it imploded. From broken oaths and ruthless invasions, the world finally collapsed. One by one, proud cities and kingdoms fell into the very graves they had once called home. When it was over, the old world lay dead with no one left to bury it.¹²

The Collapse

When the collapse finally came, and this is not hyperbole, the world that had existed ended. Not declined, not a “time to rebuild” moment. It ended. Trade routes vanished, and cities that had stood for centuries turned to ash and rubble, never to return.

The ancient city of Troy was once believed to be a myth. It remained lost under a blanket of ash, bones and broken weapons until 1871. Then, archeology discovered its collapsed walls, like shattered stone and broken pottery from 1190 BC. Its stone walls were scorched, the mud brick reduced to red ash layers.¹³

Ugarit was a major international port city located on the coast of modern Syria. It was an independent city-state and operated under Hittite protection as a vassal in this interconnected world. Despite its connections, its power and glory, Ugarit fell suddenly, violently, and completely. In the ruins, scholars unearthed a final letter, written on a clay tablet by Ugarit’s last king, Ammurapi. It was a last-ditch plea for reinforcements as ships swallowed the horizon. The message was addressed to the king of Alashiya (Cyprus).

Below is a more conventional paraphrase of the letter that was never sent. It was found in Ugarit, buried with the city.

My father, the enemy’s ships are upon us. They burned my cities to the ground, tore through the land, and left nothing but ruin. My armies are distant in Hatti, my ships lost in Lukka. The country is alone and abandoned, exposed, and helpless. Seven enemy ships reached our shores and left devastation in their wake. Ugarit stands empty of protection, its streets silent except for smoke and despair.¹⁴

The cities of the Bronze Age didn’t just suffer defeat; they lost the ability to respond. When the calls for help were attempted, the world was already dead or dying. Further inland, the Hittite capital of Hattusa fell like the others before it. The Hittites once stretched across all of Anatolia through Syria and even to the Euphrates. This once superpower was reduced to a scattering of Neo-Hittite city-states.¹⁵

The Mycenaeans fared no better. The original Greek culture had built a highly sophisticated society. Their engineers, artists, and artisans were respected throughout the ancient world. However, they too would feel the hammer of destruction. Palaces of Pylos, Mycenae, and Tiryns fell one after another.¹⁶ Thousands of years later, we know what they feared: ships on the horizon. Administrative records show that troops and watchers were called up to brace for impact along the coast. By 1200 BC, the records ended.

When the smoke cleared, language itself lay dead in the ruins. In Greece, Linear A had already died with the legendary King Minos and the Minoan palaces, never to be read again. Linear B, the administrative script of Mycenaean kings, perished as the world burned. It would not be understood again until the middle of the twentieth century.¹⁷ The Dark Age of Greece began. It would be centuries before they learned to read and write again.¹⁸ This was no decline of civilization. It was annihilation.

Across the Levant, the collapse unfolded much as it did everywhere else. Cities fell, and the webs of interdependent systems unraveled. Emar, Hazor, and Megiddo show unmistakable layers of violent devastation. Coastal cities like Ashkelon and Gaza reveal disruption followed by resettlement. Like a crime scene, the silent witnesses include burned structures, collapsed walls, and streets buried in rubble.¹⁹

The world that was simply could not exist. Everything was just too interconnected. It was their strength, and it was their undoing.

The Aftermath

The Bronze Age Collapse didn’t end the world; it ended the globalized nature of the world. The systems in which civilization placed its trust were gone. Survival was harsh but possible. Fear lingered as bands of thieves and marauders roamed the lawless lands in this post-apocalyptic landscape.

The story of the Bronze Age Collapse lies buried beneath layers of black and red ash horizons scattered across the ancient world. Beneath the fragments of destiny, the scars of a thousand arrows still tell the story, while splintered skeletons are all that remains of the cries and prayers to gods that did not exist. The ones they made for themselves. The gods who had eyes but couldn’t see and mouths but could not speak. The gods that couldn’t save. Ultimately, they, and we, will become like what we worship.

And at long last, the time had come. The iniquity of the Amorites was full, and the Promise God had made to Abraham so long ago was about to be realized. His children had been tucked away in the one kingdom that withstood the invasion of the Sea Peoples and the disasters of that time. Joshua would eventually lead them across the Jordan into a world still smoldering from its collapse. The kingdom of Israel and the throne of David would be established amid a ruined world.²⁰

But that is a story for another day…

James Asbury,
Portage Ecclesia, IN