Prof Jiang’s Predictive History and other lectures Secret History #15: Capital and the Bronze Age Collapse
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Feb 5, 2026 A lecture traces how rivers, bronze and scarce tin created long-distance trade networks and early globalization. The talk maps shipwrecks, trade routes and surprising players from the Indus to Scandinavia. It links capital and bronze as proto-currency that reshaped motives, inequality and empire networks. A perfect-storm collapse—climate, earthquakes and migrations—toppled the system and gave rise to new civilizations.
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Bronze Became The First Global Currency
- Bronze functioned as the first truly global currency because it was universal, durable, and transportable, enabling long-distance trade across the Bronze Age world.
- Mr./Prof. Jiang links tin scarcity and dispersed sources to the rise of wide trade networks and specialized trade cities like Troy that controlled routes for profit.
Three Properties That Turn Objects Into Capital
- Capital has three crucial traits: universality, store of value, and mobility, and when a commodity meets these it becomes money and drives globalization.
- Jiang argues proto-capitalism (bronze) enabled rapid growth but also creates structural fragility that can cause sudden collapse.
Egypt Reports Sea Peoples Invasions
- Egypt recorded massive attacks by Sea Peoples and survived but was left exhausted and lost its global preeminence.
- Jiang presents the Sea Peoples as refugees/pirates driven by drought and famine who overwhelmed Mycenaean and Hittite powers.