[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.

[Nikas777]

The tin trade may have had Bronze age man discover the Americas and it was kept secret (by the Phoenicians kept their valuable tin ore mines a secret. So when the tin trade collapsed so did this globe spanning culture. So maybe “Atlantis” was the memory of tis bronze age era that collapsed?

[rahbert]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Age

Seems like a tin shortage precipitated the move to iron.

Suprisingly, iron seems to have been known long before it became common, cf India.