Archaeological News: Natural Disasters in Ancient Egypt Revealed:
Researchers say they’ve traced a record of ancient Egypt’s droughts and fires with fossil pollen and charcoal deposits preserved in the Nile Delta. The record provides evidence for historic climate catastrophes, including a huge drought linked to the downfall of Egypt’s Old Kingdom, the era sometimes known as the Age of the Pyramids.
Scientists with the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the University of Pennsylvania expected that they would find less wetland pollen, an indicator of vegetation, and more deposits of charcoal, the leftovers from fires, in buried sediments from times of drought. USGS reported that they found exactly that in four different periods up to 6,000 years ago.
