The Collapse of Mediterranean Trade in the Bronze Age: The History of the Trade Networks across the Sea and Their Destruction

The concept of international trade was born in the ancient Mediterranean, which provided the perfect set of circumstances needed to produce an intricate trading system whose influence can still be seen in present-day economic practices. The ancient Mediterranean was home to a diverse range of cultures and landscapes, encompassing deserts, forests, islands and fertile plains. Different natural resources were available in different geographical areas, and with the advent of sailing ships around 3000 B.C., people were suddenly able to travel much further afield than ever before. This created an opportunity to trade local resources in international markets in exchange for exotic goods not available at home.

At the same time, this shift in Mediterranean trade from a local to international scale was a catalyst for immense social, political and economic changes that helped to shape the course of Western Civilization as a whole. Starting with the Egyptians and Minoans around 3000 B.C. until the decline of the Roman Empire at the end of the 5th century A.D., ancient trade in the Mediterranean brought cultures into increasingly close contact with one another, and just as in the globalized world today, these cross-cultural influences came to shape the development of belief systems, languages, economics, politics, and art throughout wide expanses of land. Traders introduced foreign goods, but also foreign ideas and new methods of expression, and they in turn took new ideas home with them from the places they visited. 

Most importantly, the evidence researchers have for tracing trade is usually incomplete and scattered due to the destruction brought about by the Sea Peoples, who are credited for ending the Bronze Age with their invasions across the region. The collapse of Mediterranean trade thrust most of the once powerful civilizations along the sea into what historians now call a “Dark Age”, and it would take several centuries to recover.