Wikipedia: BronzeAge

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Around 2000-1800 BC various new groups started appearing all around the periphery of civilization, armed with powerful new technologies: bronze implements, horses, and the light two-wheeled chariot. These weapons were used to good advantage, and by around 1600 BC all the older civilization centers had been overrun.

Egypt was temporarily occupied by the Semitic Hyskos, but these were ejected and the NewKingdomOfEgypt? - its first empire - grew up in their wake. Babylonia was conquered by the KassitePeoples?, and the IndoAryans? more or less annihilated the civilization they found in the IndusValley?. A related group, the Mitanni, set up a kingdom over much of Syria and Assyria.

Some of these groups also spread to new areas, e.g. the CelticPeoples?. Greece was overrun by the AchaeanPeoples?, who set up the first Greek-speaking kingdoms (notably Mycenae) and came to dominate the older MinoanPeoples?. The first civilization in China, the ShangDynasty?, may have developed under the influence of the TocharianPeoples? who spread eastward.

Horses and chariots require a lot of time and upkeep, and so their use was restricted mainly to warrior nobilities. These are the feudal "heroic" societies vaguely familiar to us from epics like TheIliad and the Ramayana. They are often associated with IndoEuropean languages, which probably spread out from a homeland on the caspian sea along with bronze working.

Around 1200 BC something happened that dramatically shifted power away from these kingdoms. Within a few decades city centers all around the eastern Meditteranean were sacked and the kingdoms swept away. Only Egypt, power broken, and Assyria escaped destruction. This issues in a dark age for the west, and by the time civilization had recovered, the iron age had begun.