Around 1200 BCE, major Mediterranean civilisations began collapsing; scientists have now reconstructed the climate conditions surrounding the crisis

Representative Image (AI-generated) Around 1200 BCE, several of the eastern Mediterranean's most powerful civilisations, including the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite Empire, Canaanite city-states and parts of New Kingdom Egypt, began experiencing a period of dramatic decline. Historians have long debated whether warfare, invasions, earthquakes, internal unrest or climate change played the biggest role in this Bronze Age collapse. Now, a new study published in Science Advances has reconstructed regional climate conditions during this pivotal period finding that prolonged drought likely placed severe pressure on societies already facing multiple challenges.Using climate simulations alongside geological and paleoclimate records, the researchers reconstructed rainfall patterns across the eastern Mediterranean between roughly 1500 and 1100 BCE. Their findings suggest that a sustained decline in rainfall around the end of the Late Bronze Age would have significantly affected agriculture, food security and political stability across the region. A clearer picture of the ancient climateIn order to understand the environmental context of the collapse of the Bronze Age, the scientists used a...