Eric H. Cline, writing for the New York Times:
A 2012 study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science found that the surface temperatures of the Mediterranean Sea cooled rapidly during this time, severely reducing precipitation over the coasts. The study concluded that agriculture would have suffered and that the conditions might have influenced the “population declines, urban abandonments and long-distance migrations associated with the period.”
Fascinating. One of the hallmarks of the modern nation-state is it’s ability to deal with regional climate variation.
In some sense, climate change in the eastern Mediterranean in the late Bronze Age was global climate change to its inhabitants of the time.