"Global warming is one of the greatest threats to present day civilisation but work by a team of Scots scientists suggests the ancient Egyptians may have been earlier victims of climate change.
The pharaohs ruled their empire for hundreds of years, spreading culture, architecture and the arts before it collapsed into economic ruin. Why that happened is one of the great mysteries of history. Now a team of scientists from Scotland and Wales believe the answer lies beneath the waters of Lake Tana, high in the Ethiopian Highlands, and the source of the all-important Blue Nile. Samples taken over the past two years from sediments beneath Tana, which supplies the water which makes the lower Nile valley so fertile, reveal the lake may have almost dried up during the critical period around 4,200 years ago due to climate change. According to the team's theory, the flow of water on which the farm-based ancient Egyptian economy thrived would have slowed to a trickle, causing a devastating famine that lasted for 200 years. That would have been enough to destroy the Old Kingdom and its people, leaving only the pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza as their legacy to history. "
The pharaohs ruled their empire for hundreds of years, spreading culture, architecture and the arts before it collapsed into economic ruin. Why that happened is one of the great mysteries of history. Now a team of scientists from Scotland and Wales believe the answer lies beneath the waters of Lake Tana, high in the Ethiopian Highlands, and the source of the all-important Blue Nile. Samples taken over the past two years from sediments beneath Tana, which supplies the water which makes the lower Nile valley so fertile, reveal the lake may have almost dried up during the critical period around 4,200 years ago due to climate change. According to the team's theory, the flow of water on which the farm-based ancient Egyptian economy thrived would have slowed to a trickle, causing a devastating famine that lasted for 200 years. That would have been enough to destroy the Old Kingdom and its people, leaving only the pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza as their legacy to history. "
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