Bronze is the combination copper+tin. Copper is common in earths composition, but tin is much more scarce. The scarcity of tin necessitated the expansive trade networks to acquire the resource. To my way of thinking this correlates to our dependency on oil which while not exactly scarce, is not evenly distributed across the world. Our global supply chain for oil is fragile in the same way that the supply chain for tin was to the bronze age empires.

As for the article: I found the authors use of dating systems inconsistent and confusing. Some references are listed with the BC/AD nomenclature while others omit it entirely leaving the reader confused as which era he is referring to. Also, the use of the BC/AD has been supplanted by the use of the BCE/CE nomenclature in scientific references for 20+ years. This could simply be due to the fact that the author is a historian, but one would think a PhD would know better. All of this made me wonder if perhaps the author relies too heavily on AI.

Historian Eric H. Cline has multiple books citing this time period, specifically 1117 BCE as the inflection point for the bronze age "collapse", defined by a deterioration of international shipping routes that weakened the nation-states of the era. I've learned about it recently because YouTube began recommending videos about it.

For example: https://youtu.be/choxcHXhZhE?is=t5lDwQQpqPsE2k5M

One historical event that Cline focuses on is a severe centuries-long drought. It's something the ACOUP article seems to omit. Cline does not focus as much on destruction of bronze-age sites although there is one port city in particular which is linked to the international trade of the time. Exactly who destroyed it appears to be a mystery but it could be linked to the migration theory that ACOUP dismisses. The migration may have actually come as a result of the previously mentioned drought.

>All of those developments occurred in an orderly sequence: First farming and village life arrived; then surpluses born of human achievement that created social inequality; then hierarchies with priests and chieftains at the top; then massive monuments, cities, states, and writing to keep track of it all. Geographically, the old story of those developments centered on the Fertile Crescent of western Asia, and to a lesser extent the Nile Valley of Egypt....

>That story is wrong in some respects and incomplete in far more.

It's a constant rise and fall, with innovations and cities/civilizations that both did and didn't succeed often equally valid and appropriate paths to take. Sounds kind of bog-standard, I guess, but it's rife with examples of "Oh yeah here's a 1,500 year-old city, but it was 7,000 years ago and then disappeared so you've never heard of it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko

I was doing geological research trying to show how crustal displacement theory is incorrect, and stumbled upon a paper that elucidated the insight:

There was a localized weakening of the geomagnetic field in the Levant and in the Med (3 actual areas) starting at roughly 1200 and ongoing until about 600! Im pretty sure Im the first person to posit this theory, but the more I steelman against it the more I think I'm onto something, and the implications are huge... because it has more to do with other subjects such as the evolution of religion in the region too. My theories on that are harder to prove but will be the follow up paper, at first Im just trying to focus on the geological proof.

Essentially a localized reduction in geomagnetic shielding allowing increased cosmic ray flux and solar radiation caused destruction, migration, religious interpretations of what was being seen in the sky, and all the war and tumolt that would come along with those...