ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Bronze Age collapse

So imagine you have a toy box with lots of different toys - some cars, some dolls, and some legos. Now imagine you have lots of friends who love to come over and play with your toys too.

Now, let's pretend all your friends decided they didn't want to play with your toys anymore. Maybe they found other toys they liked better or they just got bored of playing with your toys. This would make you sad, wouldn't it?

Well, something similar happened a really long time ago during a time called the Bronze Age. A lot of different people were living in different parts of the world during this time, and they had their own special things that they did and made.

But around 1200 BCE, something strange happened - a lot of these people's societies started to fall apart and they stopped doing the things they used to do. They stopped making cool bronze weapons and tools, and they stopped building big cities and doing trade with each other.

Just like how you might feel sad when your friends stop playing with your toys, the people of the Bronze Age probably felt scared and confused when their societies started falling apart.

No one knows exactly why this happened, but some people think it might have been because of things like natural disasters, invaders from other places, or changes in how people thought about the world.

Even though the Bronze Age collapse was a difficult time for a lot of people, eventually new societies grew up to replace the old ones, just like when you get new friends to play with your toys. And now we can learn about the Bronze Age collapse and try to make sure it doesn't happen again in the future.