Subscribe
Great Bronze Age civilisations like Mycenaeans, Minoans and the Hittite Empire collapsed due to drought. Scientists now know what exactly happened to trigger it.
Scientists from Stockholm University concluded that the most severe droughts in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean arose when multiple natural climate cycles coincided, a statement by the university stated.
“Rather than being caused by a single climatic event, we found that the most extreme droughts emerged when natural climate cycles operating over different timescales coincided. This helps explain why the drought associated with the Late Bronze Age collapse were so severe,” said Katherine Power, PhD student, Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University, and first author of the study.
Severe droughts have long been linked to the collapse of Late Bronze Age civilisations like the Mycenaeans, Minoans and the Hittite Empire. However, the climatic processes behind these events have remained uncertain.
“To investigate this, Katherine Power and Qiong Zhang, professor in paleoclimate modelling, Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University and co-author of the study, used a state-of-the-art climate model to reconstruct the evolution of the Mediterranean climate over the past 8,000 years,” noted the university statement.
“Our results show that the region underwent a gradual drying trend over thousands of years, driven by slow changes in Earth’s orbit. Superimposed on this long-term trend we also found shorter-term fluctuations in the Atlantic Ocean and atmosphere,” said Power.
The researchers found that most severe droughts occurred when several natural climate cycles aligned, temporarily reinforcing one another and producing droughts far more intense than the long-term drying trend alone.
“The convergence of these processes pushed the Eastern Mediterranean beyond a critical hydroclimatic threshold, reducing water availability and increasing pressure on agriculture and food security within already vulnerable societies,” said Power.
According to the authors, these findings change how we think about past droughts. Understanding these processes is highly relevant today, they added:
“The Mediterranean is one of the world’s climate change hotspots and the area is projected to become warmer and drier during the coming century. Our findings suggest that future drought risk may depend not only on long-term human-driven warming, but also on how natural variability in the Atlantic Ocean interacts with that background trend,” said Power.
By revealing how different climate processes combine to amplify drought, this research can provide new insights into the risks of future hydroclimatic extremes in a warming world, the researchers said.
