How would gunpowder affect the development of Bronze Age civilization?

[Tjakari]

Gunpowder is one of those weird things that are beyond crucial to the development of modern history but are also more than able to be created and used millennia before its OTL introduction.

Provided you have the appropriate amount of time to develop whatever techniques and technologies to make gunpowder widely used in weaponry. How does that affect the development of the civilizations of the Bronze Age (Hittites, Egyptians, Babylon) does it lead to more stable polities, wider urbanization, the aversion of cavalry armies altogether?

 

[Sime]

Gunpowder is one of those weird things that are beyond crucial to the development of modern history but are also more than able to be created and used millennia before its OTL introduction.

Provided you have the appropriate amount of time to develop whatever techniques and technologies to make gunpowder widely used in weaponry. How does that affect the development of the civilizations of the Bronze Age (Hittites, Egyptians, Babylon) does it lead to more stable polities, wider urbanization, the aversion of cavalry armies altogether?

Assuming it does get invented, it would remain a secret knowledge of an high caste (of priest, maybe?). You would probably end up with the equivalent of the Gunpowder empires of OTL, where the state monopolized the military.

It would happen where there are absolute monarchies, but i don't know how innovative ancient empires were.

Anyway, i don't think that muskets will be invented as fast as it happened in OTL Europe. Maybe they'll use the as bombs or grenades, but with a standardized production.

Gunpowder could be used in sieges (like at Helm's deep ), or by planting mines on the battlefield. About fending off barbarians, i'm not sure, because OTL barbarians got to "civilize" quickly in OTL, basically everywhere.

Take note that the gunpoweder empires were led by mongol/turkic dynasties.

Anyway, i think that there is a misconception about gunpowder: everyone see its employment as the only solution to barbarian raids and colonization, but i think that military tactics/organization and logistics were more important than just having a musket. Consider that muskets were highly inefficent until the XVII century, and were often replaced by bows.

More than gunpowder, i think that to fend off barbarians you need coordinated infantry tactics.

So you need more widespread warfare in antiquity, and thus more political fragmentation. Perhaps a divided Palestine with warring city states?

 

[Artaxerxes]

More than gunpowder, i think that to fend off barbarians you need coordinated infantry tactics.

Logistics is a massive part of it as well, 'barbarians' lived off the land, it took a lot of money and food to field an army that could chase them down or fend them off and subdue them. Attempts to go into the Steppes or wilderness to chase them down would see the armies dwindle and wear themselves down until either the army collapsed, the leaders gave up or the 'barbarians' carved up and chopped up the army that had become stranded miles from anywhere.

 

[altwere]

I think that you will get, grenades, and maybe big cannons but not guns.
No steel and bronze is very expensive. Grenades can be made in clay pots with stone filling.
I can also see its use in mining and maybe use in building canals.

 

[Escape Zeppelin]

I think that you will get, grenades, and maybe big cannons but not guns.

I think you'd get primitive guns like those seen in China soon after gunpowder's invention. Basically just hollow tubes. There are examples of them made of materials as simple as leather wrapped bamboo. Although they are less gun and more handcannon.

 

[RGB]

Gunpowder takes a surprising amount of logistics to be produced, collected and deployed in amounts that are militarily useful.

Like more than most Bronze Age states could muster - and that's before we get into the methods of delivering that force to the enemy, most of which rely on well-developed metallurgy on a large scale. Operating a single good, full-sized bronze 1500s field cannon with accompanying crew and supplies would almost certainly bankrupt an average bronze-age Levantine city-state.

 

[Tripwire]

Gunpowder takes a surprising amount of logistics to be produced, collected and deployed in amounts that are militarily useful.

Like more than most Bronze Age states could muster - and that's before we get into the methods of delivering that force to the enemy, most of which rely on well-developed metallurgy on a large scale. Operating a single good, full-sized bronze 1500s field cannon with accompanying crew and supplies would almost certainly bankrupt an average bronze-age Levantine city-state.

It's the saltpeter that's so hard to collect, right? Though it sounds like sulfur mines are also heavily concentrated in Italy only. Maybe the Romans missed their opportunity.

 

[TFSmith121]

Basic ingredients are manure and urine, plus sulfur and charcoal

Less that it is hard to collect, more that it takes time and resources to get useful quantities of nitrates from waste - but it is certainly doable.

Milling the stuff into useful form isn't simple, but given the horsepower and techniques shown by ancient mining and metallurgy (Laurium comes to mind), presumably the resources could have been made available for the French and Swiss (Gallic and Helvetian?) methods of nitrate production from waste.

Cave and surface deposits are presumably also available across Eurasia; economically useable amounts were found (historically) in North America in the Ohio River country, among other locations.

Best,

 

[GdwnsnHo]

It's the saltpeter that's so hard to collect, right? Though it sounds like sulfur mines are also heavily concentrated in Italy only. Maybe the Romans missed their opportunity.

That is an absolutely terrifying idea. Right up there with Philip of Macedon using it.

It sounds silly, but I'd love to see it emerge in Ancient Egypt. Perhaps it is discovered just prior to one of the intermediate periods, or after the Hyksos invade - and we see Egyptians with cannons.

Egyptian warships with cannons.... whelp, goodbye, see ya - I'mma go home *runs for the hills*

 

[RGB]

Less that it is hard to collect, more that it takes time and resources to get useful quantities of nitrates from waste - but it is certainly doable.

It's doable but for larger societies. Bronze age kingdoms were notable military powers if they could summon like ten thousand fighting men in one place. Any more than that and we're into great empire territory - granted powder might help consolidation earlier too.

Not only that but collecting nitre from waste is an ongoing process that has to be institutionally established rather than something you can round up a bunch of people to do ad-hoc.

Milling the stuff into useful form isn't simple, but given the horsepower and techniques shown by ancient mining and metallurgy (Laurium comes to mind), presumably the resources could have been made available for the French and Swiss (Gallic and Helvetian?) methods of nitrate production from waste.

Classical Laurium was certainly not maintained by a Bronze Age society by any measure, but that does make a good point that the Classical period would have been a decent time to discover gunpowder because the other institutions to support its exploitation were there.