[Nikas777]

I read a theory whose originator I can't remember that stated that when they figured out how to use iron suddenly the demand for tin to make bronze collapsed and the bronze age economies which had been built to sustain the trade also collapsed.

It is not that they ran out of bronze or tin (peak bronze) but bronze was supplanted.

It happened before with the Islamic civilization and the Chinese - when the Europeans went around the Muslims to trade direct with India and China the Muslim world collapsed in power. The same thing happened to the Chinese when the industrial revolution made China's civilization collapse.

[AnAmericanMother]

Something like that ties in with something I heard in one of my archaeology courses -- bronze was much scarcer and more difficult to work than iron, and bronze weapons were limited in availability to a small army of nobility. When the Bronze Age armies of nobles met up with the far larger armies of the Dorian Greeks armed with iron blades (never mind that they had to stop and hammer them back flat after they clocked somebody) they were overwhelmed.

The volcano probably didn't help either.

[Noumenon]

The Chinese didn’t help themselves by buring their libraries over and over again. Imagine the loss of Alexandria repeated with the transition of virtually every dynasty.