Bronze Age Trade Networks
Learn how ancient trade networks connected Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Mediterranean in one of history's first globalized economies.
The Late Bronze Age (c. 1600–1200 BCE) witnessed the emergence of history's first truly international trade system. Egyptian gold flowed to the Hittites. Cypriot copper reached Mesopotamia. Afghan lapis lazuli adorned tombs in Egypt. Tin from as far as Cornwall in Britain may have reached the eastern Mediterranean. Diplomatic correspondence — like the Amarna Letters between Egypt and its allies — reveals a world of sophisticated diplomacy, gift exchange, and commercial interdependence.
The trade networks operated at multiple levels. Royal courts exchanged luxury goods and diplomatic gifts. Merchant caravans moved staple commodities overland. Phoenician and Mycenaean ships carried cargoes across the Mediterranean. The Uluburun shipwreck, discovered off the coast of Turkey, contained goods from at least seven different cultures — a snapshot of Bronze Age globalization preserved on the seafloor.
This interconnectedness created prosperity but also vulnerability. When the system collapsed around 1200 BCE — through a combination of climate change, invasion, and internal instability — the cascading failures destroyed multiple civilizations simultaneously. The Bronze Age trade networks demonstrate both the power of economic integration and the risks of over-dependence on complex, fragile systems.