Bronze Age
The world in 1274 BC
10 powers on the map
The first great bureaucracies are born along the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow River. Cuneiform writing, hieroglyphs, Linear A/B, Chinese ideograms. Bronze metallurgy, wheels, plows. The Near Eastern 'world-system' collapses around 1177 BC amid invasions by the Sea Peoples and droughts.
Battles this year
Empires and states
Active trade routes
- Amber Road — Baltic amber to the Mediterranean