Video ties Bronze Age collapse and low Cyprus output to a lost copper supply

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Key facts

• Ricardo argues that the end of the Bronze Age, the rise of Phoenician city-states and the 'Sea Peoples' followed the loss of an American copper supply, leaving thousands of shipwrights, sailors and support workers unemployed.
• He notes that from about 1200 BC the quality of bronze from southern Spain dropped abruptly, with smaller, impurity-rich objects still traded 3,000-4,000 km into Europe.
• For Cyprus, Ricardo says a draft paper claims 200,000 tons (200 million pounds) of copper extraction, while the panel states the literature records about 500 pounds actually harvested.
• The panel attributes most Cypriot mining to Roman times, saying Roman workings reused older mines and destroyed the evidence of earlier mining, which they say is why Bronze Age estimates are missing from the literature.
• Paleoenvironmental studies are cited as showing Cyprus forests were never decimated on the scale the 200,000-ton claim would require.
• The panel estimates that closing the gap between about 1,100 tons of mined copper and 100,000 tons in artifacts would require roughly 4,000 additional mines of the highest-yielding type.
• The Bronze Age collapse linkage and the Cypriot figures are the group's proposed argument, not an established archaeological conclusion.

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