JOIN TODAY
JOIN TODAY

Drought May Have Doomed Bronze Age Civilizations

News August 15, 2013

(Wikimedia Commons)
SHARE:

Lions-Gate-Mycenae
(Wikimedia Commons)
MARSEILLE, FRANCE—Around 1300 B.C. the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean began to collapse, and the Hittite, Mycenaean, and Syro-Palestian cultures, among others, eventually vanished. Wars, crop failures, and famines have all been suggested as triggers for this spectacular collapse, but now climatologists led by Joel Guiot of Aix-Marseille University say that climate change was likely responsible. The team analyzed pollen samples from a deep core taken at a lake on Cyprus and found that about 3,200 years ago the island's lush landscape transformed into an arid one during what was the driest period in the region for the last 5,000 years. They also found less charcoal in later sediments, suggesting the population declined in the wake of the drought. 

Recommended Articles

Features January/February 2024

In the Time of the Copper Kings

Some 3,500 years ago, prosperous merchants on Cyprus controlled the world’s most valuable commodity

Read Article

Features July/August 2021

The Ugarit Archives

Thousands of cuneiform tablets written in a distinctive script tell the dramatic story of a Bronze Age merchant city in Syria

Read Article
(Dick Osseman/ Wikimedia Commons)

Digs & Discoveries November/December 2016

And They’re Off!

Read Article
(Courtesy Department of Antiquities, Cyprus)

Digs & Discoveries January/February 2016

Living the Good Afterlife

Read Article
(Courtesy Kadir Kaba)

More to Discover

Features July/August 2013

Lost Tombs

In search of history's greatest rulers

Read Article

  • Features July/August 2013

    The First Vikings

    Two remarkable ships may show that the Viking storm was brewing long before their assault on England and the continent

    Read Article
    Courtesy Liina Maldre, University of Tallinn

  • Features July/August 2013

    Miniature Pyramids of Sudan

    Archaeologists excavating on the banks of the Nile have uncovered a necropolis where hundreds of small pyramids once stood

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Vincent Francigny/SEDAU)

  • Letter from China July/August 2013

    Tomb Raider Chronicles

    Looting reaches across the centuries—and modern China’s economic strata

    Read Article
    (Courtesy Lauren Hilgers, Photo: Anonymous)

  • Artifacts July/August 2013

    Ancient Egyptian Sundial

    A 13th-century limestone sundial is one of the earliest timekeeping devices discovered in Egypt

    Read Article
    (© The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY)