1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed

by Eric H. Cline

there are Rapid Climate Changes (RCCs), which are marked by “cold spells”—that is, a sea surface temperature (SST) drop of 2–3°C in the southeastern Aegean region. These are caused by frigid polar air coming down into the region, creating arid conditions in the Aegean, as Drake discussed in his 2012 article. Such RCCs are well dated and have occurred some six times during the Holocene (the period from approximately 12,000 years ago to the present), once every 1,450 years or so (i.e., at about the same intervals as the Bond events).101 They have been linked to major changes that can be seen in the archaeological record, such as the domestication of plants and animals during the Neolithic Revolution, which began approximately ten thousand years ago, but of particular interest to us is the one dated to 3.1–2.9kya, ca. 1100–900 BC.