76 The Atlantis Encyclopedia
Bralbral
According to Sumerian scholar Neil Zimmerer, Bralbral was an Atlantean
who founded the Kingdom of Baralku (mentioned in Polynesian folk traditions),
in Lemuria, sharing the leadership with his two sisters, Djanggau and Djunkgau.
(See Lemuria)The Bronze Age
Bronze was the Ancient World equivalent of plutonium in the Atomic Age.
Before its appearance, tools and weapons were made of either stone (usually granite
and flint) or copper. Bronze was entirely superior to both, and whoever possessed
it wielded a quantum advantage in military and industrial affairs. But it was diffi-
cult to manufacture, because it depended on the quality of the copper used and was
combined with zinc and tin. None of the three minerals occurred in abundance
throughout Europe and the Near East, where demands from every kingdom for
the new metal erupted after its discovery at the turn of the fourth millennium B.C.
The only real sources for tin were found in southern Spain and parts of
England. As some indication of the copper’s importance, the modern island of
Cypress derives its name from “Kippur,” the Assyrian word for copper, because it
was one of the few locations where it was mined in some abundance. But even
there, its quality was not consistently first-rate. Despite insufficient supplies of
copper, zinc, and tin, by 1500 B.C., the great powers, and even most of the lesser
ones, had outfitted their often massive armed forces with vast arsenals of superb
bronze weapons. The superpowers—Egypt, the Hittite Empire, Troy, Minoan Crete,
Mycenaean Greece, and Assyria—ranged against themselves literally millions of
bronze swords, spears, and battering rams, their soldiers outfitted with bronze
helmets and shields. In ostentatious displays of wealth, kings would sometimes
bedeck the walls of their cities with great sheets of gleaming bronze, or fill their
squares and temples with the bronze statues of gods and heroes.
An enormous industry arose, specializing in the manufacture of bronze tools
absolutely essential to craftsmen, artisans, and armorers from Ireland to
Mesopotamia. Clearly, native mineral deposits, especially of copper, were in-
sufficient, both in quantity and quality, to have even begun to keep pace with such
a grand-scale supply and demand. For more than a century, historians have asked
themselves, “Where did the ancients obtain the copper necessary to make so many
bronze items?” The Old World Bronze Age began around 3000 B.C., reached peak
production from the 16th to 13th centuries B.C., then came to an abrupt end about
1200 B.C. It was not logically superceded by the advent of the Iron Age, but followed
instead by the precise opposite of all human progress: a 4-century long Dark Age,
during which the lamp of civilization was extinguished in Europe, Asia Minor, and
the Near East, excepting only Pharaonic Egypt, which had nevertheless entered
a decline from which she would never recover. Moreover, iron had been known