Posted on 12/08/2001 2:51:43 PM PST by blam
Thursday, 26 July, 2001, 12:12 GMT 13:12 UK
Disaster that struck the ancients
The pharaohs of the Egyptian Old Kingdom had built the mightiest legacy of the ancient world - the pyramids at Giza. But after nearly a thousand years of stability, central authority disintegrated and the country collapsed into chaos for more than a 100 years.
What happened, and why, has remained a huge controversy. But Professor Fekri Hassan, from University College London, UK, wanted to solve the mystery, by gathering together scientific clues.
His inspiration was the little known tomb in southern Egypt of a regional governor, Ankhtifi. The hieroglyphs there reported "all of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger to such a degree that everyone had come to eating their children".
Dismissed as exaggeration and fantasy by most other Egyptologists, Fekri was determined to prove the writings were true and accurate. He also had to find a culprit capable of producing such misery.
Stalactites and stalagmites
"My hunch from the beginning was that it had to do with the environment in which the Egyptians lived." Fekri felt sure the Nile, the river that has always been at the heart of Egyptian life, was implicated.
He studied the meticulous records, kept since the 7th Century, of Nile floods. He was amazed to see that there was a huge variation in the size of the annual Nile floods - the floods that were vital for irrigating the land.
But no records existed for 2,200BC. Then came a breakthrough - a new discovery in the hills of neighbouring Israel. Mira Bar-Matthews of the Geological Survey of Israel had found a unique record of past climates, locked in the stalactites and stalagmites of a cave near Tel Aviv.
What they show is a sudden and dramatic drop in rainfall, by 20%. It is the largest climate event in 5,000 years. And the date? 2,200 BC.
As Israel and Egypt are in different weather systems, Fekri needed evidence of some worldwide climate event to link this to the collapse of the Old Kingdom. And the evidence came out of the blue.
Geologist Gerard Bond, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, looks for climate evidence in the icebergs of Iceland. As they melt on their journey south, they leave shards of volcanic ash on the ocean floor.
Dry lake
How far they travelled before melting tells him how cold it was. Cores of mud from the ocean floor revealed to him regular periods of extreme cold - mini ice ages - in Europe every 1,500 years, and lasting 200 years. And one mini ice age occurred at 2,200 BC.
Fekri Hassan: Looked at lake-bed cores
Gerard's colleague, Peter deMenocal, looked at climate records for the rest of the world at exactly the same time. From pollen records to sand, the story was the same - a dramatic climate change from Indonesia to the Mediterranean, Greenland to North America.
Scientists were confirming everything Fekri believed - severe climate change causing widespread human misery 4,200 years ago, misery we are only now learning about for the first time.
Back in Egypt, Fekri wanted to put the last piece of the puzzle in place. He wanted direct evidence of this severe climate change in the Nile. And he found it drilling cores in a large lake that had been fed by a tributary of the Nile in ancient times.
He discovered in the critical period, as the Old Kingdom collapsed, the lake had dried up completely - the only time in the whole history of this lake that this had happened. At last, Fekri felt he had proved that the writings on Ankhtifi's tomb were really true. It was nature that had driven people to desperation.
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I thought you were going shopping...
Uh, uh, uh, I had to stay home and wait for a call? Yeah, a call, that was it... ;')
It's nap time here. ZZZZZZ
I have no more excuses, either, since the call arrived just before I posted that. :') But a nap does sound good...
Sorry, today, when everyone has cell phones, waiting for a call is not a good enough excuse.
Just admit it, you are addicted to GGG. ;)
I knew, I was doing the right thing, to ask you to take over the ping list.
You get an outstanding GGG performance star. :)
Jewish tradition places the death of Joseph at 1452 BCE.
I agree.
I didn't realize that this is the thread where GGG was born. Thanks, Ernest.
Oklahoma dirt-farmers know what happened to the Egyptians because "Sh-t happens".
['Civ bows to the crowd]
The pyramids were not made by men but by Gods who used the pyramids for sporting purposes.
Please see Alien vs Predator for further details.
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http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/11/04/wmet04.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/11/04/ixhome
Oh well, better late than never LOL!
This fits. It's always seemed odd that large ancient urban centers would grow up in areas without water...
Never too late. There is much to learn.
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Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
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