Rome itself is a possible analogous example, in that the failure of distribution networks caused critical food shortages. That, in turn, was a problem because the economic model of the empire depended on continuous expansion to sustain itself, and the heart of the empire was incapable of supporting itself with locally available resources. Rome went from a city of ~1 million to tens of thousands, and didn’t reach that point again until the 1800s. Extend the analogy to a world with no more frontier to expand into (except the technological frontier) and fragility is, I think, the default.
The late bronze age collapse is one where the exact causes are unclear, but in any case, once the long range trade routes stopped, people couldn’t get the materials needed to make a lot of bronze tools they’d been reliant on, the major societies all collapsed in short order, and they didn’t recover for centuries (after the start of the iron age, and I doubt that’s coincidence since iron and steel, unlike bronze, don’t require multiple inputs from different geographic regions).
Rome itself is a possible analogous example, in that the failure of distribution networks caused critical food shortages. That, in turn, was a problem because the economic model of the empire depended on continuous expansion to sustain itself, and the heart of the empire was incapable of supporting itself with locally available resources. Rome went from a city of ~1 million to tens of thousands, and didn’t reach that point again until the 1800s. Extend the analogy to a world with no more frontier to expand into (except the technological frontier) and fragility is, I think, the default.
The late bronze age collapse is one where the exact causes are unclear, but in any case, once the long range trade routes stopped, people couldn’t get the materials needed to make a lot of bronze tools they’d been reliant on, the major societies all collapsed in short order, and they didn’t recover for centuries (after the start of the iron age, and I doubt that’s coincidence since iron and steel, unlike bronze, don’t require multiple inputs from different geographic regions).