The Bronze Age Collapse: A Sudden, Violent Plunge into Darkness (Part Three)
The Bronze Age Collapse was, definitively, the end of the Bronze Age. By the time the ancient civilizations had picked up the pieces and rediscovered how to write and interact with each other again they had an entirely new and exciting discovery to work with: iron.
Iron can be made into harder and more durable materials than bronze, for only a modest increase in smelting temperature. Iron-equipped armies had a decided advantage over their bronze-equipped opponents, and there is even an argument to be made that the discovery of iron might be a major cause of the collapse.
Iron can be seen as something of a great leveler, too. Unlike the scarce ingredients which make up bronze, iron ore is found pretty much everywhere. And, unlike the scarce ingredients which make up bronze, there is only a single ingredient in iron. It is known as “iron”.
Iron-equipped armies were therefore not only better armed and armored, they were larger. The limiting factor was suddenly not the raw materials, it was the forges and the foundries, and without this limitation an entirely new weapons industry could be created in a generation. Swords for everyone, and all that.
Could this sudden change be a root cause of the collapse? Given every man, woman and child in your civilization the latest in (literally) cutting edge technology and you’re going to end up with a bellicose population, despite what the NRA will tell you. Who needs trade when you can take what you want.
We were taught in school that history should be about what happened, not what could have happened. But for all that, the Hittite discovery of iron smelting was one of the great “what-ifs” of history. The Hittites (most probably) took this great leap into the future first, and they could have conquered the world with it were they not so busy destroying themselves.
As for the Assyrians, they were heavily into the “take what you want” mindset already. For them, iron must have been a driver of efficiency rather than a revolution. But they still reacted quickly enough to take over the crumbling Hittite empire with their new army.
Did the Sea Peoples, that mysterious coalition of refugees who arrived on the shores of Egypt and the Levant by the thousands, have iron? The fact that they were held off by the domestic forces in the area suggests now, but it is an intriguing hypothesis: it is possible that the Sea Peoples were nothing new, but that the Sea Peoples with iron were, and this enhanced threat was what drove all the celebratory friezes talking of hard-won Egyptian victory.
Such is purest speculation, but it ties into the last great part of this story. We have covered the great civilizations of the Late Bronze Age, we have covered these strange Sea Peoples, and now it is time to talk about what actually happened.
For those who have been following along to this series, this might be a bit of a puzzle. The Hittites imploded, to be sure, but they were doing that anyway, and the Egyptians were sore pressed to survive. But they did survive, as did the Assyrians.
There was plenty of destruction, cities levelled, populations turned into fugitives. But the only great civilization to truly fall during this “collapse” were the Greeks. Was the Bronze Age Collapse really more of a Greek collapse?
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