[Larry Lucido]

Peak bronze?

[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.