Bronze Is a Conspiracy
Bronze is copper plus tin, and that recipe governs the era. Copper is common in Cyprus and Anatolia, but tin is rare, mostly coming from far away like Afghanistan or Cornwall.
Making a sword in Mycenae requires a supply chain crossing multiple political systems. Palaces were structurally dependent on long-distance trade for basic military technology, not just luxuries.
| Metal | Typical Source | Strategic Role |
|---|---|---|
| Copper | Cyprus, Anatolia | Common base |
| Tin | Afghanistan, Cornwall | Rare import |
Every palace was a node in a vast, fragile network. Interconnection is what made them rich, and what killed them, because networks do not fail gracefully—they fail all at once.
Palaces and Collapse
Linear B tablets, deciphered in 1952 as Greek, reveal an obsessive redistributive bureaucracy. The palace was not just a home or fortress; it was a warehouse with a scribal department tracking everything.
Around 1200 BCE, over fifty years, the palaces burn. Monocausal explanations fail—earthquakes, drought, and Sea Peoples (symptoms of displaced populations from the collapse) interacted.
The systems argument: Break enough supply links through drought or raids, and the network cannot re-form. No single palace could reach Afghanistan alone.
When the palaces fell, Linear B vanished completely because it was only a palace accounting tool. Greece stayed illiterate for four centuries until adopting the Phoenician alphabet.