I've just started listening to the Fall of Civilizations podcast (https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/ https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/), and their se

I've just started listening to the Fall of Civilizations podcast (https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/ https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/), and their second episode is on the Late Bronze Age collapse. The theory they put forward as to one of the reasons the big successful Bronze age civilizations got out-competed is that bronze is very expensive / hard to acquire, primarily because of the need for tin. (Copper is very common but unsuitable for weaponry without turning it into bronze.) Iron is extremely common and cheap, but requires much much higher temperatures to work with than bronze. Once the furnace technology was out there to make smelting iron and creation of steel feasible, poorer / less complicated civilizations were able to make iron weaponry and go up against their richer neighbors.