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This chapter examines what led Mikhail Rostovtzeff, an ancient historian, almost a century ago to compare distributions of composite figures from China to Scandinavia. Rostovtzeff is known for his controversial view that the true architects of classical civilization were not those tied to the land, whether as peasant laborers or feudal aristocracy, but rather the middling professional classes of merchants, industrialists, and bankers whose social aspirations were most closely in tune with the civic values of an expanding urban society. Rostovtzeff was also embroiled in debates over the chronological position and cultural affiliations of Bronze Age metal hoards, unearthed along the shores of the Caspian and Black Seas. The chapter considers Rostovtzeff's approach to the interpretation of imagery, and his particular attraction to the imaginary creatures of nomadic art. It might be argued that the movements of monsters offered a kind of visual counterpart to Rostovtzeff's story of an ever-expanding Bronze Age civilization.

The collapse of Bronze Age civilizations in the Aegean, southwest Asia, and the eastern Mediterranean 3200 years ago remains a persistent riddle in Eastern Mediterranean archaeology, as both archaeologists and historians believe the event was violent, sudden, and culturally disruptive. In the first phase of this period, many cities between Pylos and Gaza were destroyed violently and often left unoccupied thereafter. The palace economy of the Aegean Region and Anatolia that characterized the Late Bronze Age was replaced by the isolated village cultures of the Dark Ages. Earthquakes, attacks of the Sea Peoples, and socio-political unrest are among the most frequently suggested causes for this phenomenon. However, while climate change has long been considered a potential prime factor in this crisis, only recent studies have pinpointed the megadrought behind the collapse. An abrupt climate shift seems to have caused, or hastened, the fall of the Late Bronze Age world by sparking political and economic turmoil, migrations, and famines. The entirety of the megadrought’s effects terminated the Late Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean.

The urban culture of the Bronze Age found in Harappa was a path-breaking discovery. No other Bronze Age civilization gave so much care to health and cleanliness as did the Harappan. The Indus people produced wheat, barley, rai, peas, and the like. The Indus people were the earliest people to produce cotton. The Harappans conducted considerable trade in stone, metal and shell, within the Indus culture zone. The male deity is represented on a seal. The people of the Indus region worshipped trees. Animals were also worshipped. The greatest artistic creations of the Harappan culture are seals. Sometimes Harappan culture is called Rig Vedic, but its principal features do not figure in the Rig Veda. Similarly, the de-urbanization of the Harappan city is not a simple transformation but meant the disappearance of towns, script, and burnt bricks.