Bronze Age society ‘not hit’ by climate change

Scientists have found that climate change could not, as commonly assumed, be responsible for a huge population collapse in Europe at the end of the Bronze Age.

Archaeologists and environmental scientists from UCC, the University of Bradford, University of Leeds, and Queen’s University Belfast have shown that the changes in climate that scientists believed coincided with the fall in population in fact occurred at least two generations later.

Their results, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show human activity started to decline after 900BC, and fell rapidly after 800BC, indicating a population collapse. However, the climate records show colder, wetter conditions didn’t occur until about two generations later.