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Hello, everyone.

We're back with another podcast for Ancient Warfare Magazine.

We're almost caught up to our latest issue, but not quite.

The issue under discussion today is ancient warfare issue 4-4, Darkness Descends, End of the Bronze Age Empires,

which basically deals with the coming of the sea peoples and the transition from the palace economies into a dark age and bronze age slowly going into Iron Age.

I'm the editor of Ancient Warfare Magazine, Jasper Oathouse, and with me tonight are Michael Taylor, Lindsay Powell, Murray Dam, and a special guest, Mark Swartz, who wrote the introduction for this issue.

Michael, would you like to start off with the first question?

Maybe something we could talk about, and this may more be a question for Mark, who is the resident expert, is it seems that one thing that may be happening here, both with the transition to iron and even with the sort of introduction of some of these

bronze technologies like pouring bronze into a clay cast and bam, out comes a sword, that

maybe there is a democratization of violence, that more and more people have

access to weapons, armor, and could that lead to the kind of destabilization of these very

controlling palace economies and even something like the Hittite Empire?

There are more rough men walking around with swords than there were 100, 200, 300 years

before.

That's a possibility, but I don't think it involves iron because I think it's, you know,

even though 1,200 BC is the beginning of the Iron Age, it takes a while for iron technology

...