Editing Bronze Age (section)

==The appeal of the Bronze Age==
The Bronze Age is the earliest period that we have accounts of, even if they are scant, fragmentary and incomplete. It is in this time that the earliest forms of civilization are gradually taking shape, and we know more of the shapes it took in those formative years than about the specifics of any particular band or tribe of stone age people. From big things like the Codes of Hammurabi to the fact that some fellow in Mesopotamia around 5,200 years ago was named Iry-Hor. 

To the eye of the romantic, priest-kings reign over populations of devoted followers who demand that their legacy be set in stone with great monuments and by fire and blood as they clash for power and prominence. Ranks of spearmen and bowmen march into battle led by charioteers which clash on burning sands with the winners taking the losers as spoils of war. The heroes might be favored faithful servants to their city and their king and the new world that is rising or barbarian warriors seeking glory, freedom and plunder on the frontiers. Their deeds to be remembered in epic poetry, or inscribed into clay tablets by scribes.

If we want to get more fantastic, this period has produced complex mythologies with pantheons of squabbling gods and epic tales such as the story of Gilgamesh and the Trojan Wars. All of which are ripe material for a fantasy writer to mine. This is the time period for the [[Sword and Sorcery]] genre, as most of the myths that we know of from the classical period take place in this epoch. This gives the Bronze Age an air of mystique and grand adventure, where larger-than-life heroes fought against monsters and gods. Something that’s generally not possible with the even earlier Stone Age as the culture of that time period is too primitive to tell such grandiose stories, and where survival is really all that’s possible.

In addition to the above, the Bronze Age is also one of the main influences that gave us the "Lost Ancient Ruins"-trope. We have only very vague ideas of why the Bronze Age ended, and what followed was a long, barbaric time where things regressed hard. Unlike the fall of the Roman Empire and many of the Chinese Dynasties, the Bronze Age gives off this sense of complete mystery; who were these ancient people? How come they dissappeared, and how could they have been so advanced? In popular fiction culture, those lost civilizations are often eventually revealed to have been decadent priesthoods who built insanely huge monuments and made outstanding crafts (relics and macguffins our heroes and villains can fight over), but had some large flaw that was their downfall. Apart from the relics of incredible power, the Bronze Age has all these features.

The people of the bronze age had a very tangible relationship with their deities, constructing temples and shrines on scales seemingly beyond the means available to them... and begging the question whether forces beyond the knowledge of history played a part.  Fantasies of aliens visiting Earth in the distant past and being received as gods by primitive humans are lent an air of credulity by the enormity of the monuments the ancient empires left behind. Not the part where all pyramids look the same though. The only thing that lends credulity towards is the fact that that is simply the best way to lay down a huge structure without concrete or steel.

In the Bronze Age, a rough template for a social order for agrarian societies would be outlined. There would be city states and kingdoms who's population would be divided up into various largely hereditary classes of kings, nobles, priests, scribes, warriors, artisans, merchants, peasants and slaves. Most of whom were rural supporting a few urban centers, wealth was mostly calculated in terms of food and agricultural productivity, most people never travel more than 20km from the place of their birth, work would be done mostly by hand with some applications of animal power and a few instances of utilizing wind and running water (boats with sails and traveling down river). While there would be exceptions, significant changes within these parameters and a lot of variations on the theme, this set up would predominate until the [[Industrial Revolution]].