Evidence of a drought believed to have caused the fall of Egypt's Old Kingdom

[Mark]

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/120817/ancient-egypt-scientists-find-evidence-natural-disasters-plagued-the-re

Ancient Egypt: Scientists find evidence of natural disasters that plagued the region

Ancient pollen and charcoal are giving scientists clues about the natural disasters that plagued ancient Egypt.

Researchers from the US Geological Survey (USGS) have found traces of both pollen and charcoal in buried sediments in the Nile Delta, which may shed light on the history of the region.

The most signifcant finding, reported Planet Save, includes evidence of a huge drought 4200 years ago that was the likely cause of the fall of Egypt's old kingdom when the Pyramids were built.

"Even the mighty builders of the ancient pyramids more than 4,000 years ago fell victim when they were unable to respond to a changing climate," said Marcia McNutt, the director of the USGS, in a statement.

"This study illustrates that water availability was the climate-change Achilles Heel then for Egypt, as it may well be now, for a planet topping seven billion thirsty people."

The team of researchers set out to see if the pollen and charcoal remnants would match droughts that were found archaeological and historical records of the region.

Researchers believed that wetland pollen would likely decline in times of drought and the amount of charcoal would increase due to fires.

They were correct.

Pollen traces and increased charcoal matched earlier records of droughts in the area, said the French Tribune.

"Humans have a long history of having to deal with climate change," said Christopher Bernhardt, a researcher with the US Geological Survey, in a statement.

"Along with other research, this study geologically reveals that the evolution of societies is sometimes tied to climate variability at all scales – whether decadal or millennial."

[Jim Webster]

Don't they have records of 'high' and 'low' niles somewhere, or is this something they were trying to put together

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

Apparently not: they rely on soil borings from Ethiopia's Lake Tana, which is the source of a major river that flows into the Nile, and the borings show the lake was very shallow around 2,200 BC (current dating).  Borings from the lake at the Faiyum Oasis indicate it dried up entirely at the same time. (Source: BRIA website http://crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-25-1-what-caused-egypt-old-kingdom-to-collapse.)

What they do not seem to have considered is the possibility of an external influence that simultaneously shattered the civilisation and disrupted the climate and messed up the hydrology.  Readers of Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision may have an idea about that ...

Patrick

[aligern]

Attempting to control the flooding of the Nile through divine intervention was clearly important to the Ancient Egyptians. However, we don't need to invent a climate change explanation for the droughts and looks which are quite normal to the area.
I'd be more inclined to trust someone who had not made their mind up by self announcing as 'Planet Save'.

Roy

[Mark]

Readers of Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision may have an idea about that ...

You tempted me to fish it out and re-read it but it isn't on the Kindle so I passed.

[Patrick Waterson]

It focusses on the catastrophe at the end of the Middle Kingdom, but he also remarks in passing that a similar event probably brought down the Old Kingdom.

Incidentally, Velikovsky is not the only scholar to posit such events. http://www.varchive.org/dag/seismol.htm

Patrick

[Erpingham]

Attempting to control the flooding of the Nile through divine intervention was clearly important to the Ancient Egyptians. However, we don't need to invent a climate change explanation for the droughts and looks which are quite normal to the area.

Are you proposing that there was no climate change in the region from pre-dynastic to now?  Surely, we have plenty of evidence that North Africa was wetter or drier at various points?  I have to say I think the report itself is quite badly written, linking a regional dry spell (I can't remember the scientific term - the opposite of a pluvial) to an alleged global water shortage caused by population numbers.  And there is a dreadful circular argument - postulate pollen decreases and fires increase if there is a drought; find pollen decrease and charcoal in sample; therefore there was a drought.  But I don't think it is exactly paradigm shifting stuff - I've been seeing similar comments in TV documentaries for a decade or more.

[Jim Webster]

Climates ALWAYS change

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

I think Roy's possibly tongue-in-cheek point is that we need not leap on the climate change bandwagon every time we discover what looks like evidence of a drought in history.  Much the same point Antony has made with his nice pinpointing of the circularity of the principal evidential arguments on offer.

As Jim, mentions, climate tends not to remain static.  The question at issue is presumably how much and how severely it altered within how much or how little space of time.  The more popular theories of the collapse of Mayan civilisation invoked a prolonged drought, and the idea has now presumably spread to the old world.

But how often has the Faiyum Oasis been completely dry in historical times?

Patrick

[Mark]

http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/08/drought-climate-change-ended-egypt%E2%80%99s-pyramid-building-era

Drought, Climate Change Ended Egypt's Pyramid-Building Era

Ancient pollen and charcoal preserved in deeply buried sediments in Egypt's Nile Delta document the region's ancient droughts and fires, including a huge drought 4,200 years ago associated with the demise of Egypt's Old Kingdom, the era known as the pyramid-building time.

"Humans have a long history of having to deal with climate change," says Christopher Bernhardt, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Along with other research, this study geologically reveals that the evolution of societies is sometimes tied to climate variability at all scales – whether decadal or millennial."

Bernhardt conducted this research as part of his Ph.D. at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, along with Benjamin Horton, an associate professor in Penn's Department of Earth and Environmental Science. Jean-Daniel Stanley at the Smithsonian Institution also participated in the study, published in Geology.

"Even the mighty builders of the ancient pyramids more than 4,000 years ago fell victim when they were unable to respond to a changing climate," says USGS Director Marcia McNutt. "This study illustrates that water availability was the climate-change Achilles Heel then for Egypt, as it may well be now, for a planet topping seven billion thirsty people."

The researchers used pollen and charcoal preserved in a Nile Delta sediment core dating from 7,000 years ago to the present to help resolve the physical mechanisms underlying critical events in ancient Egyptian history.

They wanted to see if changes in pollen assemblages would reflect ancient Egyptian and Middle East droughts recorded in archaeological and historical records. The researchers also examined the presence and amount of charcoal because fire frequency often increases during times of drought, and fires are recorded as charcoal in the geological record. The scientists suspected that the proportion of wetland pollen would decline during times of drought and the amount of charcoal would increase.

And their suspicions were right.

Large decreases in the proportion of wetland pollen and increases in microscopic charcoal occurred in the core during four different times between 3,000 and 6,000 years ago. One of those events was the abrupt and global mega-drought of around 4,200 years ago, a drought that had serious societal repercussions, including famines, and which probably played a role in the end of Egypt's Old Kingdom and affected other Mediterranean cultures as well.

"Our pollen record appears very sensitive to the decrease in precipitation that occurred in the mega-drought of 4,200 years ago," Bernhardt says. "The vegetation response lasted much longer compared with other geologic proxy records of this drought, possibly indicating a sustained effect on delta and Nile basin vegetation."

Similarly, pollen and charcoal evidence recorded two other large droughts: one that occurred some 5,000 to 5,500 years ago and another that occurred around 3,000 years ago.

These events are also recorded in human history – the first one started some 5,000 years ago when the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt occurred and the Uruk Kingdom in modern Iraq collapsed. The second event, some 3,000 years ago, took place in the eastern Mediterranean and is associated with the fall of the Ugarit Kingdom and famines in the Babylonian and Syrian Kingdoms.

"The study geologically demonstrates that when deciphering past climates, pollen and other micro-organisms, such as charcoal, can augment or verify written or archaeological records – or they can serve as the record itself if other information doesn't exist or is not continuous," says Horton.

[Erpingham]

Thank you Mark.  Interesting how a perfectly sound scientific report can be distorted by reportage.   The argument clearly follows logically here.  Still a bit concerned about the logic of the regional drought/global problem leap though.

[Mark]

Another report here (on a site called Green Prophet, so it takes a climate change angle)

http://www.greenprophet.com/2012/11/egypt-pyramid-builders-succumbed-to-climate-change/

[Jim Webster]

Anyone claiming the UK has experienced a drought this year hasn't spent much time out of doors this harvest, certainly not in the west of England and Scotland

The picture is one I borrowed from a farming forum, it's not mine

Jim Webster

[Patrick Waterson]

Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.

Spot the deliberate mistake in this paragraph from the Green prophet article:

They waited seventy days for her to reappear. Finally she came. For a moment just before sunrise, the bright star Sirius, daughter of Ra, shimmered over the pyramids of Cairo. For generations she had always appeared as a sign that the Nile would soon flood, bringing water, fertile sediment and life to the people of Egypt. But one year her promise of sustenance failed.  Something happened around the year 2200 BCE.  Perhaps the snow melt from the highlands of Ethiopia never arrived. Or the infrequent rains stopped coming altogether.

Clue: when was Cairo built?

Concerning the subject as a whole, would drought be the only possible cause of increased carbon deposits combined with reduced amounts of pollen?  Anything that incinerated large amounts of vegetable matter would have the same effect.

Claude Schaeffer writing in 1948 (Stratigraphie comparée et chronologie de l'Asie occidentale (IIIe et IIe millennaires)) noted 'five or six great upheavals. The greatest of these took place at the very end of the Early Bronze, or the Old Kingdom in Egypt. At each of these occurrences, life was suddenly disturbed and the flow of history interrupted.'

Patrick

[Mark]

http://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium-1.554347 - article is behind a paywall. Article taken from agade (and it takes 5 minutes or so to edit into place, you can thank me now)

Droughts ruined Mideast empires at end of Bronze Age, study says Scientists from Israel and Germany argue that a climate crisis did in civilizations, helping spawn the first Kingdom of Israel and other new political entities. By Nir Hasson

Between 1250 and 1100 B.C.E., all the great civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean – pharaonic Egypt, Mycenaean Greece and Crete, Ugarit in Syria and the large Canaanite city-states – were destroyed, ushering in new peoples and kingdoms including the first Kingdom of Israel.

Now scientists are suggesting a climatic explanation for this great upheaval: A long dry period caused droughts, hunger and mass migration. Such is the conclusion of a three-year study published this week in Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University.

The researchers drilled deep under the Kinneret, retrieving 18-meter strips of sediment from the bottom of the lake. From the sediment they extracted fossil pollen grains. "Pollen is the most enduring organic material in nature," says palynologist Dafna Langgut, who did the sampling work.

According to Langgut, "Pollen was driven to the Kinneret by wind and streams, deposited in the lake and embedded in the underwater sediment. New sediment was added annually, creating anaerobic conditions that help preserve pollen particles. These particles tell us about the vegetation that grew near the lake and testify to the climatic conditions in the region."

Radiocarbon dating of the pollen revealed a period of severe droughts between c. 1250 and 1100 B.C.E. A sediment strip from the Dead Sea's western shore provided similar results.

Langgut published the study with Prof. Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, Prof. Thomas Litt of the University of Bonn and Prof. Mordechai Stein of Hebrew University's Earth Sciences Institute.

"The advantage of our study, compared to pollen investigations at other locations in the Middle East, is our unprecedented frequency of sampling - for about every 40 years," says Finkelstein.

"Pollen is usually sampled for every several hundreds of years; this is logical when you're interested in prehistoric matters. Since we were interested in historical periods, we had to sample the pollen more frequently; otherwise a crisis such as the one at the end of the Bronze Age would have escaped our attention." That crisis lasted 150 years.

The research shows a chronological correlation between the pollen results and other records of climate crisis. At the end of the Bronze Age – c. 1250-1100 B.C.E. - many eastern Mediterranean cities were destroyed by fire. Meanwhile, ancient Near Eastern documents testify to severe droughts and famine in the same period – from the Hittite capital in Anatolia in the north to Ugarit on the Syrian coast, Afek in Israel and Egypt in the south.

The scientists used a model proposed by Prof. Ronnie Ellenblum of Hebrew University, who studied documents that describe similar conditions of severe drought and famine in the 10th and 11th centuries C.E.

He showed that in areas such as modern Turkey and northern Iran, a reduction in precipitation was accompanied by devastating cold spells that destroyed crops.

Langgut, Finkelstein and Litt say a similar process occurred at the end of the Bronze Age; severe cold spells destroyed crops in the north of the ancient Near East and a reduction in precipitation damaged agricultural output in the eastern steppe parts of the region. This led to droughts and famine and motivated "large groups of people to start moving to the south in search of food," says Egyptologist Shirly Ben-Dor Evian of Tel Aviv University.