Frustrated by the high price and delayed delivery of something you ordered? Blame it on “the supply chain,” we are told. Apparently, this truism has always been so. Consider the fabled Bronze Age that spread across the Mediterranean thousands of years ago.
When combined with copper, tin produces bronze at relatively low temperatures as compared to producing, say, iron products. Thus, the Iron Age trailed the Bronze Age until smelting technologies could step it up a notch.