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The climate catastrophe hidden behind "The Odyssey"

2026-08-30 21:22:35Histori SHKRUAR NGA MAGGIE QUINLAN
Actors Matt Damon and Zendaya during a scene from the film "The Odyssey" by director Christopher Nolan.

A new study finds that the collapse of civilization in the "Bronze Age" was due to a lack of water. Are today's droughts pushing us towards a similar collapse?

Christopher Nolan's latest film has drawn tens of millions of viewers to a world of stormy seas and burning cities. Without the monsters, that world is grounded in reality. The Odyssey, a story of survival after the Trojan War, is set during the decline of civilization in the Bronze Age.

A new study links this collapse to severe climate change. And the authors warn of “future impacts.” Scientists have long known about a mysterious and severe drought that occurred more than 3,000 years ago, coinciding with the collapse of kingdoms and states across the Mediterranean.

Research published last month sheds light on the likely cause of that drought. A slow drying trend and a faster natural cycle of dry weather, superimposed on each other. By the end of the Bronze Age, West Africa's monsoon system had shrunk for thousands of years, turning the once-green Sahara into a desert. Less rain over Africa meant less rain over the Mediterranean. This phenomenon was amplified when the region experienced a drought caused by natural climate cycles from the Atlantic, which cause the region to oscillate between wet and dry periods that last for decades.

Katherine Power, a Stockholm University scientist who led the study, says the environment at the time could explain the mass migration and conflicts of the Odyssey era.

For decades, scholars have speculated about the reason for the large-scale movement during this time, which is also known as the period of the so-called "Sea Peoples."

The climate catastrophe hidden behind "The Odyssey"
Europe's major rivers are at record low levels

Archaeologists argue that climate change could help explain migration and political collapse at the end of the Bronze Age. New discoveries are helping to solve the puzzle.

"We don't necessarily know why people moved back then," Power says. "But if we say, 'The climate was getting worse and worse and making it harder to survive, that could be a possible reason."

"A perfect storm of misfortune"

According to the researcher, the developments back then are still relevant today. Europe's major rivers are at record lows and drought is creating conditions for devastating fires, as well as causing historic crop losses. This includes the lowest corn harvest in France in 50 years.

The same cycles of Atlantic wetness and drought are still at play, but now they are occurring in the context of a world that is warming as a result of humans burning oil, gas and coal.

"I think it's even more alarming and poses even more of a threat," Power says.

But is what happened then a reflection of what could happen today?

Eric H. Cline, an archaeologist at George Washington University who wrote a book on the source of the Bronze Age crisis, says drought and disease were part of the "perfect storm of disasters" that led to the collapse of society.

He draws parallels with today. In an email to DW, he said that "we should be very concerned" about climate change as a significant factor in the decline of civilization. "This fear is not at all exaggerated."

Was there a key moment for the collapse?

Power's research focused on searching for patterns that might lie behind isolated Bronze Age drought events.

They began by examining plant spores, ice cores, cave rocks and other natural data related to the drought. Then, she and co-author Qiong Zhang, a paleoclimate scientist at Stockholm University, turned to modeling to get a broader picture.

The climate catastrophe hidden behind "The Odyssey"
The ruins of Tiryns, a Greek palace city that was destroyed during the Bronze Age collapse amid drought and regional unrest.

Their model looked at the entire planet, superimposed on a grid, with each cell covering an area of ??roughly 125 kilometers. A supercomputer then calculated conditions in each of these cells, for each month, over thousands of years. This allowed the scientists to study the entire Mediterranean.

The climate catastrophe hidden behind "The Odyssey"
More and more trees are dying due to lack of rain and water caused by climate change.

"We're not isolated to just one core or one cave now," Power argues. "We can look further and build a bigger picture."

What they found was not a single event that dramatically and suddenly changed the climate. Instead, shorter cycles of wetness and drought lined up alongside a longer-term warming trend. “When we look for links between climate change and changes in civilization, we often look for that one big, extraordinary, sudden, catastrophic event,” says Power, adding that it is “slow, gradual changes that push a society over a threshold.”

She said it may have been a steady decline in water supplies that led to a slow decline in harvests, which prompted people to migrate, sparking conflict. "It doesn't take much to push a society beyond its comfort zone," Power concludes./ DW

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