[scared_together]

The article mentions bronze production (thus indirectly mentioning copper and tin) not as a root cause, but rather a factor that spread the crisis from one region to another:

> What is clear is that once the collapse started, it was contagious, likely for two reasons: first that collapsing areas produced invading forces and refugee flows that destabilized their neighbors and second because as you will recall above, these states are interlinked and their rulers rely on trade to furnish the key military resource (bronze) as well as to acquire key prestige goods necessary to maintain the loyalty of the aristocracy.

[whall6]

Yep, agree. I was mostly focused on the cause, but supply chain disruption certainly seems to have exacerbated the collapse.

I think the supply chain was probably disrupted mostly because as the empires contracted inwards, there may have been a lack of policing throughout the hinterlands. So, getting from state to state would have been more dangerous.

In today’s terms, this might have implications for the policing of the world’s physical trade corridors: the oceans. What might happen if the world’s global oceanic police force (the United States) decides to no longer spend the trillions of dollars required to police these vast stretches of ocean?