Member-only story
What the Bronze Age Collapse Can Tell Us About Today
Interdependence, systems collapse, and the perfect storm on the horizon
3200 years ago, the world ended. Now, many are saying it just might end again. How, then, did it happen the first time, and how might we learn from past mistakes today?
The late Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamian regions operated with an eerily similar economic system to today. Yes, they were hyper-religious monarchies a couple of metals away from the Stone Age. And yet, the Mycenaeans, Minoans, Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians and Babylonians traded so heavily with one another that an economic disruption in one would severely impact all the others.
Fast forward to the 21st century, and the world often sinks into recession and catastrophe in sync. The world wars. The market crashes. The pandemics. And even natural catastrophes in one country can sometimes disrupt the entire world’s trade system.
In their day, the Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hittite and Mittani empires were so intricately economically and diplomatically (their royalty often intermarried, and even when they didn’t still referred to each other as family in letters) linked that their collective regional order is now dubbed the “club of great powers”. All that trade made them…
