When was the Bronze Age?
The Bronze Age lasted from roughly 3300 to 1200 BCE in the Near East and Mediterranean. It began when humans learned to alloy copper with tin to create bronze, and ended with the Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BCE. The exact dates vary by region.
The Bronze Age spans roughly 3300 to 1200 BCE, though these dates apply primarily to the Near East and eastern Mediterranean. Different regions entered and exited the Bronze Age at different times — China's Bronze Age began around 2000 BCE with the Erlitou culture, while parts of sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas never had a distinct Bronze Age at all.
The era takes its name from bronze — an alloy of copper and tin that was harder and more durable than either metal alone. Bronze tools and weapons were superior to stone, and the metallurgical knowledge required to produce them created new specialist classes and trade networks.
Historians typically divide the period into sub-phases. The Early Bronze Age (c. 3300-2000 BCE) saw the rise of Sumerian city-states, the Egyptian Old Kingdom, the Indus Valley Civilization, and the Akkadian Empire. The Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000-1600 BCE) produced Hammurabi's Babylon and the Minoan civilization of Crete. The Late Bronze Age (c. 1600-1200 BCE) was the era of great interconnected powers — Egypt's New Kingdom, the Hittites, Mycenaean Greece, and the Shang Dynasty.
The Bronze Age ended catastrophically around 1200 BCE in what scholars call the Bronze Age Collapse — a cascading systems failure that destroyed or weakened multiple civilizations simultaneously. The Iron Age that followed saw the rise of entirely new powers: the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greek city-states, and eventually Rome.