It now seems that such a disastrous drought may have affected northern Italy in the Bronze Age. There are indications that the Terramare culture, which had flourished in the Po delta/plain in northern Italy since the seventeenth century BC, suddenly collapsed around 1200 BC. Kristian Kristiansen, a highly regarded scholar of Bronze Age Europe, notes that a massive migration seems to have taken place at that time, involving up to 120,000 people who left “in several huge exoduses.” Why did they leave? Kristiansen cites a number of possible factors, including demographic pressure and competition
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