Copper production and the fall of empires

[nancylebov]

This is a chart which seems to show that empires decline well before they fall, as shown by a sharp drop-off in copper production before the end.

I am absolutely not qualified to judge whether this is based on plausible information. If you know some appropriate history, what do you think?

Comments

[twistedchick]

I would like to see this graph stretched out to its full length, not truncated. As it is, the timeline is misleading -- since we are at 0, and it's working backward, the most immediate 1000 years are so jammed that it's hard to tell what I'm looking at.