Pc. Buckland et al., BRONZE-AGE MYTHS - VOLCANIC ACTIVITY AND HUMAN RESPONSE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND NORTH-ATLANTIC REGIONS, Antiquity, 71(273), 1997, pp. 581-593
A first rule of statistics is that the existence of a correlation does
not itself prove a causal connection. This is the heart of the recurr
ent question in later European prehistory whether in the Mediterranean
or in the Atlantic northwest - about volcanic eruptions, their impact
on climate, and then of the climatic impact on human populations. The
burial under tephra of the Late Bronze Age settlement of Santorini is
proof of a particular catastrophe: but is there the evidence to prove
wider European calamity?