John Carlos Baez on Nostr: Patrick Fitzsimmons argues that big Bronze Age states collapsed around 1200 BC when ...

Patrick Fitzsimmons argues that big Bronze Age states collapsed around 1200 BC when people figured out how to smelt iron instead of relying on a few far-flung tin mines to make bronze, thus democratizing weapons manufacture. I don't know, but the quotes here are pretty cool:

"The effects of iron were so stark that ancient writers in the subsequent centuries began separating human history into the bronze and iron eras. Hesiod described the age of iron as a time of suffering and strife, where no man knew a day or night free of toil or pain. Herodotus writes in his Histories that working iron was ‘the woe lying upon woe, since iron had been invented to the detriment of mankind.’ These writers associated iron with war and decline; some also alluded to the idea that iron had democratized violence. The Hebrew Bible records that the Philistines attempted to limit access to smiths as they were worried others could easily make iron weapons. Lucretius describes the Bronze Age as a time when ‘naked men gave way to well-armed foes’ but said that iron made ‘the odds of war equal as they had not been before’. With the advent of iron, the cost of warfare fell: a king could not keep others from accessing a military technology found in local soils."

https://www.worksinprogress.news/p/why-really-caused-the-bronze-age