Editing Bronze Age (section)

==The Fertile Crescent==
The Earliest agrarian societies on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea and what is now Iraq, which saw the emergence of the first and the most successful bronze age civilizations.

===Mesopotamia===
Located in the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys, Mesopotamia is often called the Birthplace of Civilization. It was the site of the first agrarian communities in the neolithic period and latter saw the emergence of city states as we would understand them. Numerous cities would rise along the banks of these rivers, using it for transport and more importantly irrigation. This was a place with little rain and the rivers were rather unreliable. To make it productive, a lot of channels and ditches were required and you'd also want reserves of food set aside in granaries and water in reservoirs. Doing so was both labor intensive and required a lot of coordination. That said, properly managed it could support cities with tens of thousands of people. Possibly more than a hundred thousand.

There were numerous city states in Mesopotamia, which would wax and wane in power. In particular there was Uruk, Akkad and most famous Babylon. Power would shift between Priest Kings to more military monarchs. In particular, this gave rise to the notion of The Rule of Law with legal codes such as that of Hammurabi, which was set in stone in steles in public places for all to see. While it was rather brutal ("An Eye for an Eye") it laid out the notion that there is one set of laws for everyone, even (in theory at least) to the King. It was filled with double and triple standards of course, but it was certainly better than the near literal no standards from before.

There were several cultures which neighbored Mesopotamia. To the east in what was now Iran there various bronze age cultures emerging shortly after Mesopotamia and following it's lead. It was home to overland trade-routes with India. To the west in what is now Turkey was a set of similar cultures, most notable of which were the Hittites that rose towards the end of the Bronze Age.

===Egypt===
Ancient Egypt is probably the most famous archetypal Bronze Age civilization. Modern Egyptology started with [[Industrial Revolution|Napoleon]], who took an interest in the pyramids such and hired artists, reporters and scholars to study the ruins (most notably finding the Rosetta Stone that let them decode their written language) and report back to France and has been going strong ever since. It helps that Egypt is a very desiccated place and we have a lot of records buried in the sand.

Like Mesopotamia, Egypt is based around a river which ran through a desert. Unlike Mesopotamia, the River was easy to work with. Between May and August the Nile would flood. Once it receded, the flood plain was both wet and fertile from freshly deposited sediment. In practical terms this meant that Egyptian Agriculture was on easy mode. High yields with little work and during inundation people had a lot of free time on their hands, which they often spent building Pyramids.  There was little point for Egypt in making war; all the surrounding lands were barren desert, and most of their neighbors depended on trade with Egypt for food anyway.  This meant the Pharaohs could easily afford enough men, horses, and chariots to keep anyone else from getting ideas (at least until the Greeks and Romans showed up).

A really outstanding fact about Egypt is that it was remarkably stable. From roughly 3150 BCE to 525 BCE Egypt existed as a political entity without much internal societal upheaval. There were periods of disruption and instability, but they were always fairly brief with people returning to the status quo with Pharaohs, priesthoods, nomearchs and so forth. Similarly there was a lot of continuity of culture. A few new technologies were introduced (Bronzeworking and chariots) but the overall impact on people's day to day lives was highly limited. It's easy to identify what dynasty an Imperial Chinese porcelain plate was made in based on it's style or what century a picture of a medieval knight was made in based on his armor. In contrast you would be hard pressed to find the stylistic difference between an Egyptian statue of a Pharaoh from 2600 BCE and one from 26 BCE of Caesar. Hell, Augustus's Pharaonic statues from around 10 CE look barely different from Narmer's palettes from around 3000 BCE.

===Canaan/Israel===
Of particular note because of how much of the legends and histories of this particular region has shaped Western culture and fantasy, Canaan/Israel is probably the second-most famous Bronze Age civilization after Egypt. While debate continues as to whether the legends passed down in the Hebrew Bible date from the Bronze or Iron Age, it is nonetheless some of the earliest documented history, if such a term be applicable, of the Fertile Crescent available to modern audiences. Modern conceptions of angels, sin, sacrifices, and other theological practices as well as the ideas of ancient progenitor bloodlines and the manner of Bronze Age customs, especially before the archeological renaissance of the 1800s, can be traced to the ancient Isrealite/Canaanite culture and lore.