You may not speak English like a native, but you research as well as anyone, and your posts provide great historical perspectives. You have managed to write this OP well, and better than many native English speakers might, because you endeavor to write English well, and not all folks make that effort.
I have learned much from this post, as well as others you have made. My focus is lately on earlier developments, and my aversion to tyranny and slavery have caused large gaps in my education regarding the early Iron Age civilizations that replace no less bloody Bronze Age empires after their collapse ~1200 BC.
I am very grateful for this post, as I was but vaguely aware of the simultaneous rise of these hegemonies in the East and the West, as you point out. It certainly raises very significant questions regarding that timing.
Thanks!
There is always a typo in my writing. I would be more grateful if you pointed out my typo than praise.Honorable senior @valued-customer, I always appreciate your praise. By the way, I am worried that your compliments may give me arrogance.
In fact, I tried to analyze the history of China with the Bible's Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation.
However, my English is not enough, so I am comparing ancient Greek history to Chinese history. Ancient Greek history is easier than the Bible.
I am not familiar with the Bronze Age. The iron age of East Asia was 1,000 years behind the Mediterranean. So, East Asian scholars have little interest in the Bronze Age.
The first emperors of China you love appeared in the Iron Age, so historians in East Asia perceive the Bronze Age as a myth. So, I'm curious what you write about the Bronze Age Empires.
For East Asians, the Bronze Age is a myth.
Senior, I always appreciate your advice.
My present research into the origins of civilization is focused long before the Bronze Age. However, bronzes are alloys of copper and other metals, such as arsenic and tin, which developed long before iron smelting become understood. Native copper existed in raw metallic form which was easy to work without any metallurgical knowledge at all, and has been revealed by archeology to have been ongoing for thousands of years in Anatolia and N. America, at least, prior to the current understanding of agricultural development or any social structures more complex than family groups.
Sometime around ~3500 BCE the smelting of ores had been developed by neolithic researchers, and alloys of copper, beginning with arsenical ores, began to be developed because of the far greater durability of bronzes to copper metal items.
Arms and armor made of bronze were far superior to stone and leather, enabling societies possessing bronze technology to outcompete their neighbors, and when this technology developed regionally is considered to be the beginning of the Bronze Age in those locales.
As you point out, some places didn't have much of a Bronze Age, progressing either more directly to the Iron Age, as did China, or remaining at the lithic technology, as did American societies for the most part. While some places in the Americas did develop bronze, it was quite a bit later than that technology had been developed in the Old World, and the more advanced technology of the Conquistadors enabled invading cultures to take advantage of the decimation of Native American peoples by plagues introduced by initial explorers in the 15th Century.
Around ~1200 BCE, a global environmental catastrophe greatly stressed Bronze Age civilizations, which had become quite complex societies dependent on extensive trade networks due to the far poorer availability of tin than copper. A grand solar minimum caused drought and famines globally, which essentially so disrupted cultures locally that mass migrations and invasions were instigated, and these then further disrupted the empires based on bronze technologies, causing all of them to collapse.
It was centuries before similar empires re-emerged after the solar output was restored and by then iron smelting had been developed, no longer requiring relatively scarce supplies of tin for superior weapons to those made of bronzes.
Not long after this is where the above OP begins to discuss the hegemonies that subsequently developed.
Senior, only China has a historical record of the Bronze Age in East Asia. Korea, Japan, and Vietnam have historical records since the Iron Age. So, East Asians are not interested in the Bronze Age.
Since China became an iron civilization, it has become a hegemony in East Asia, and Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, which mimic China, have become iron civilizations.
It is estimated that in the Mediterranean world, iron civilization conquered the Bronze Age civilization, while in East Asia, China's iron civilization spread to neighboring countries.
I am unaware of any evidence of this anywhere. Prior to Iron Age technology, all Bronze Age civilizations had already collapsed. Once the climactic disruption caused by the grand solar minimum had ended, societies again began increasing in complexity and population, and the discovery of iron smelting and ubiquitous presence of iron ores globally made bronze technology obsolete.
In almost no cases did Iron Age technology face Bronze Age technology I am aware of.