bronze-age Greece was dominated by the
Mycenaean the city was fortified and
located between two hills in the plains
of the peloponnesian the city stood
between the 14th and the 13th century
BCE my scene was a Bronze Age city and
it would have had very similar
structures to that of other
civilizations of its time the Bronze Age
was a time of great human expansion as
some of the first large-scale cities
were built the progress was achieved by
large-scale city planning and crop
rotation mixed with irrigation centrally
planned by the governments there were a
combination of kings and priests writing
was first introduced to help facilitate
this organization in storehouses where
all produce was stored and dispersed by
the priests and later some forms of
government officials writing would start
as the shapes that represented the items
stored in a location soon it would
evolve into something more or less like
the image but with tick marks and
numbers would be created to save space
writing allowed for advances in
communications and forms of contracts
contracts were increasingly necessary as
large-scale cities occupants were less
and less connected to those around them
unlike this small our tribal situations
where contracts would relatively be held
in everyone's head this prior form a
social contract would be much more
attend to a group of friends who and one
of them forgets their wallet out that
night they all pitch in and everyone
remembers there's been some type of
retribution that needs to happen to fail
to do this and this individual will find
themselves disenfranchised from the
group the Bronze Age and its new
government and organization created
large cities that required vast
resources many were grown locally but
the key to Bronze Age being copper and
tin required long and large trade
networks because the two metals were
sourced from entirely different
locations throughout the Mediterranean
Sea these trade networks would create
inter dependency on one another at the
same time increased the standard of
living for the average individual to a
level that would not be seen until the
late Renaissance era the great
city-state of Mycenaean would sack the
city of Troy in the story of the Iliad
and the Odyssey popularized by homer in
the 8th century these tales would be
created and told long after the event
took place and became a part of the
Greek identity for the centuries to
follow the city of Troy would be
discovered by archaeologists in the late
19th
century my scenes like later Greek and
city empires BC fairing with a multitude
of products and goods it would be
offered throughout the Mediterranean in
their markets ivory from Africa copper
from the island of Cyprus glass slaves
foodstuffs metal works figures pottery
gold and silver jewellery and all other
forms of crafts trade was conducted on a
large scale ships from all over the
Mediterranean carrying very large loads
of all assortments would be a common
place on the sea routes one of the
oldest shipwrecks to ever be recovered
from this time period was off the coast
of uluburun it contained 15 tons of
cargo aboard and held one of the rarest
finds ten tons of copper ingots these
ingots were hide shaped and few have
ever survived on land because they would
have been melted down and repurposed
this is one of the great advances for
the creation of wealth in the Bronze Age
prior wealth was held primarily in land
and cattle things that were hard to swap
and not at all divisible without
devaluing them large-scale metal works
and especially metal work of higher
quality and strengths being bronze
allowed people to have wealth that could
be repurposed if a bronze statue is no
longer desired it could be melted down
and created into a sword spear or axe
this allowed wealth to be more fluid and
allowed larger sums of value to be
transported over greater distances at
much smaller densities coins were not
yet invented instead these ingots would
have been commonplace in the ports and
trading hubs of my Cina they would be
various in size and purity they would
sometimes be like a bar and other times
like the ox skin these would be weighed
out with scales and over time the ingots
would be stamped for purity greatly
improving trade efficiency mice you know
would have an abundance of goods
available to them during this time mice
you know like all other Bronze Age
civilizations was destroyed by the
overlapping events of natural calamities
such as fires earthquakes famine and
floods that took place around 13 BCE at
the same time barbarians from the sea
most likely coming from northern Europe
would swarm into these civilizations
these barbarians used mass numbers
rather than the highly specialized and
trained expensive armies of the Bronze
Age that relied heavily on chariots and
smaller forces of foot soldiers calls
for help can still be found on clay
tablets
still in their kilns has one
civilization face the barbarians and
called for help from its neighbors my
scenes like all of their civilizations
of their time would be lay low and many
of the population would seek refuge in
high mountains over the next hundred
years after these invasions from the sea
they would come back down and the next
chapter of Greece would begin join us in
our next video is Athens shifts from a
city-state
to a seafaring trade power of the
Mediterranean if you enjoyed videos
about the history of money and banking
throughout the ages don't forget to
smash that subscribe and bill icon so
that you never miss out on any future videos
 
