The Bronze Age: An Exploration Of The Etymology & Trade Systems Of Eurasia

1177 BCE was the year the advanced civilizations of the Bronze Age collapsed. The previous 2,000 years mapped an ancient time, full of mysterious advancements that required complex coordinations, money transfers, and inventory delegation, misinterpreted by present day scholars due to lack of archaeological evidence. 

The Bronze Age was a mythical time, full of stories with flying serpent chariots, crowded with humanoid characters depicted with animal faces. This was a biblical time full of war and an ultimate flood. This makes drawing logical conclusions from the information on the time period up for interpretation. Many credible scholars have different theories about this time, contrasts and comparisons in between these theories will be presented.

Two elements widely confirmed to have been the on-goings of human society around the time of 2500 BCE to 1177 BCE were: International trade and the use of tin.

 The Bronze Age did require one thing as metallurgic discoveries made there way across the globe. Iron initially yielded a new alloy with different properties, creating new tools used in the beginning of the alloy smelting age, but the addition of tin to copper, is the focal point of this blog.

c. 4500–2000 B.C.: Movements of Indo-European peoples into Europe?

c. 3000–2500 B.C.: Bronze metallurgy under way in the Balkans and on the island of Crete.

c. 3000–2000 B.C.: Development of Mediterranean polyculture.

c. 2200 B.C.: Earliest Cretan palaces of Minoan civilization.

c. 2000 B.C.: Violent destruction of many European sites.

c. 1700 B.C.: Earthquakes destroy early Cretan palaces.

c. 1600–1500 B.C.: Shaft graves at Mycenae on Greek mainland.

c. 1500–1450 B.C.: Earliest Mycenaean tholos tombs.

c. 1400 B.C.: Earliest Mycenaean palaces.

c. 1370 B.C.: Palace of Knossos on Crete destroyed.

c. 1300–1200 B.C.: Highpoint of Mycenaean palace culture.

c. 1200–1000 B.C.: Violent disturbances across the Aegean region in the era of the Sea Peoples.

c. 1000 B.C.: Mycenaean palace society no longer functions.

One factor the Eurasian bronze Age cultures have in common; Is the majority of langues used at the time, remain untranslated. The other common factor is that;  International trade of tin was required to make the alloys found in countries spanning from Western Europe, all the way through the Eastern Asian continents. To gain further understanding of the time period, we will investigate the entomology used for the wording of commonly traded metals and goods. We will study the aspect of advanced trade in the Bronze age, and hopefully make some new discoveries , uncovering some of the mystery of the mythical time lost in the story.

While copper was readily available to many civilizations around the Aegean Sea,  Tin had to be imported from Eastern Afghanistan via the Indus valley and other routes.The thought process for this investigation into the bronze age will consist of etymological comparisons of metals and other traded goods, as well as international trade information, to decipher some of the currently unreadable dead languages of Eurasia.

Firstly, Tin, being the essential metal needed for the alloy of the latter bronze age Introductory information on the use of tin is as follows:

The deliberate addition of tin (though presumably in the form of an ore, not metallic tin) to copper had occurred in some parts of the Near East by 3000 BC. Tin levels of over I percent have been found in several Early Dynastic objects with the highest reported levels to date being 7 per cent and 9 per cent respectively in a ewer and basin from the tomb of the Second-Dynasty king Khasekhemwy

Egyptian metal words:

Copper    hemt, hemet

Bronze    hesmen

    Since the original language had disappeared by evolving into its different descendant languages well before the invention of writing, its only traces survive in the words of the later languages derived from it. Early Indo-European, for example, had a single word for night, which passed down as Greek nux (nuktos in the genitive case), Latin nox or noctis, Vedic (the type of Sanskrit used in the ancient epic poetry of India) nakt-, English night, Spanish noche, French nuit, German Nacht, Russiannoch, and so on.

Egyptian sound "Kah" and "Khas" is easily relatable to the Mycenaean  sound "Ka". We know these languages, so the journey begins! There are hundreds of dialects and dozens of alphabets to compare and theorize, maybe possible, we can match them up to some Minoan or Indus valley scripts to find these common words hiding in plain site!