Last week the  Los Angeles   Times  had an  interesting article  on new scientific research that claims to have demonstrated that climate changed caused the widespread collapse of Bronze Age civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean around 1200 BCE. According to research done by David Kaniewski et al. on pollen samples recovered from Cyprus, a massive drought hit at just the time when the Bronze Age cultures are known to have collapsed. Ancient writings have described crop failures, famines and invasions about the same time, suggesting that the drying trend triggered a chain of events that led to widespread societal collapse of these Late Bronze Age civilizations. This is particularly interesting to me since the late Bronze Age is one of my favorite periods, especially the survival of memories of it in later mythology. The  Times  was reporting on  an article  published in the Public Library of Science's  PLoS One j...